Religious extremism, now a global phenomenon, is not nascent in Bangladesh. In fact, since its independence, Bangladesh has been grappling with religious extremist groups’ attempt to eradicate one of the core principles of Bangladesh nationalism — secularism. One of the consequences of this is reflected in Dhaka’s domestic politics, a tug of war between the political secularists and the radical Islamists, a constant challenge shaping the idea of what Bangladesh nationalism stands today. A look at the radical Islamist organisations and their terror links will give a clear picture in this regard. And this is significant for India as Bangladesh is a neighbour country and Hindus in Bangladesh have been facing a severe onslaught of Islamic extremism.
Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), the largest Islamist political party of Bangladesh, established by Abdul A’ala’ Maududi in Hyderabad (present India) in 1941, was banned in 1971 soon after Bangladesh’s independence, for colluding with the Pakistani Army and being a prominent anti-liberation force in the 1971 Liberation War. However, the ban on JeI, now known as JeI Bangladesh (JeIB), was lifted during the presidency of the Zia government in 1976. Through a constitutional amendment in 1979 that allowed for formation of political parties based on religious, the political activities of JeIB ensued and they remain engaged to materialise their vision of establishing an Islamic political system in Bangladesh and allied with both Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Awami League (AL) to establish its political power.
The implementation of 1973 International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) Act, following changes and amendment in 2009 “to provide for the detention, prosecution and punishment of persons responsible for committing genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and other crimes under international law”, was promised in the election agenda by the Awami League government that came to power in 2009. The subsequent trial and prosecution of top JeI members from the 1970s gravely affected the political aspirations of the JeI, which was faced with cancellation of its registration as a political party in 2013 following a High Court order that deemed its registration illegal. Its student wing, Islamic Chhatra Shibir (ICS) is an influential in university spaces as well as the madrassa system, reported to have close links with Pakistan’s external intelligence agency, Inter Services Intelligence (ICS). The student wing has been notorious for its violent activities in educational institutes to things it deemed “un-Islamic” and have been recently involved in radicalising its cadres against the Awami League government.
Extremist groups that emerged in the 1980’s-1990s period, such as the Muslim Millat Bahini (MMB), Hizb-ut Tahrir (HT), Harkat-ul Jihad Al Islami Bangladesh (HuJIB), Hizb-ut Towhid (HuT), Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), Jamaat-ul-Mujahedeen Bangladesh (JMB), to name a few, were inspired by ideology of the Taliban and Islamic Caliphate, established by fighters (and their followers) who joined Afghan jihad to fight against the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. The common aim among these radical Islamist organisations is to establish an Islamic rule in Bangladesh. Significant among them is Jamaat-ul-Mujahedeen Bangladesh (JMB), reported to have formed in 1988.
Its ideology is based on a reductionist interpretation of Islam based on Salafist doctrine, whereby it is opposed to democracy as a system of governance, cultural events and entertainment and ‘anti-Islamic’ forces and wants strict implementation of Sharia as the only rule of law.
It is suggested that JMB had links with Al Mujahedeen, the most prominent, however, being Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB). JMB proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the Bangladesh government in 2005 for their involvement in terror activities and violence campaign in the country that peaked in 2005, such as series of bomb attacks on NGOs and various cultural events, targeting and claiming lives of lawyers, journalists, policemen, public figures, minority groups and innocent civilians.
Maulana Abdur Rahman, its chief, among other leaders of JMB and JMJB were hanged in 2007 after being found guilty of murdering two judges in Dhaka. JMB is also reported to have links with Pakistani terrorist group Laskhar-e-Taiba (LeT), whereby JMB members are claimed to receive training from LeT in Pakistan and received funding from individual JMB sympathisers who worked in Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Libya, as well as international NGOs based in West Asia. JeI is also reported to provide indirect fund to JMB.
Most of the above mentioned radical Islamist organisations faced strict military crackdown by 2007, which is why the intensity of terror attacks got largely subdued and the country witnessed a period of silence till 2013. Since 2013, a new, violent surge of terror attacks grappled Bangladesh, the most violent onslaught the country has witnessed in its history since independence. Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), formed in 2007 and believed to be an Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) affiliate, became notorious for committing a series of terror attacks from 2013-2016 until its ban in 2015.
The target of these violent terror attacks were secular/ non-religious bloggers, secular writers, teachers and activists, that began with the killing of secular blogger Ahmad Rajib Haider in 2013. Following its ban, ABT is reported to carry its activity mainly online, brainwashing its supporters to carry out attacks. This period also witnessed the resurgence Hefazat-e-Islam (HeI), an umbrella radical Islamist organisation, based on a coalition of more than 25,000 madrassas across Bangladesh, emerged in 2010 as a reaction to the government’s 2009 Women Development Policy draft that gave women equal rights to inheritance.
Following the murder of Ahmad Rajib Haider who was an active member of the 2013 Shahbagh Campaign, HeI held a rally where it presented its 13-point demands to the government, which includes death penalty for blasphemy, declaring Ahmadiyas to be non-Muslim, denouncing foreign, non-Islamic cultural influence, enforcing strict gender segregation in public. Unlike other radical outfits that are based in Dhaka, HeI carried out its operation from Chittagong, Ahmad Shafi as its supreme leader.
The decline of JeI is claimed to be the reason behind HeI’s rise to prominence as the most significant radical outfit in Bangladesh. However, the incident that shook Bangladesh was the 2016 Holey Artisan Cafe hostage crisis, where Bangladeshi terrorists killed 22, mostly foreigners. Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility behind the attack, although the Awami League government denied local militant groups’ link with foreign terrorist outfits and mainly accused them to be ‘neo-JMB’.
A stark difference noticed in patterns of terror attacks since 2013 is that the attackers mostly belonged to educated (even foreign educated), affluent family background, denoting urban, educated, elite youth population’s attraction towards radical Islamist ideology. The reason lies behind the successful use of cyber radicalisation by ‘tech-savvy’ Islamist terror outfits to attract these new sections of population.
The funding methods via tapping into money flows from foreign nations (remittances) through an informal ‘hundi’ system largely seem to be behind the funding of these terrorist outfits. Besides hundi, these outfits’ engagement at domestic fronts via criminal activities, legitimate business and self-funding (monthly contribution from group members), donations from non-profits and industrialists also contributed to its terror funding that seemed harder to be contained.
The Awami League government since it came back to power in 2009, employed several counter-terrorism measures. The 2009 Anti-Terrorism Act was implemented to “make provisions for the prevention of certain terrorist activities, effective punishment thereof” and it’s the subsequent Money Laundering Prevention Act 2012 and the Mutual Legal Assistance Act 2012 in Anti-Terrorism Amendment Act 2013 included provisions to counter financing of terrorist organisations by anyone both within and outside the country. Moreover, the government also established a 600-member police unit — CTTCU (Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime Unit) — in 2015 to combat terrorism, cybercrimes, terrorism financing and mobile banking related crimes.
The Rapid Action Battalion, anti-terrorism unit of the Bangladesh police that has been active since 2004, also played a significant role in cracking down on terrorist outfits that contributed to the silencing of violent terrorist activities since 2017. Bangladesh ranked 43rd among 163 countries in the Global Terrorism Index 2023, in the low range of terrorism scale, signifying the success of government measures to counterterrorism in the country.
Bangladesh, however, is not completely free of radical Islamist influence. The recent sight of thousands of protestors outside a hospital in Dhaka where Delwar Hossain Sayedee, vice-president of the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami party, died after suffering a heart-attack in jail, is concerning. Delwar Hossain Sayedee had been sentenced to death in 2013 for committing heinous crimes in the 1971 Liberation War. The support for a person who was sentenced for committing war crimes tells that the Islamist influence in the country continues to linger on — a persistent challenge to Bangladesh nationalism and to the Awami League government that will face the national election early next year.
The writer is an author and columnist and has written several books. He tweets @ArunAnandLive. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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