The Rise Of Religious Zealotry

BLOOMINGTON

A specter of violent Islamic extremism haunts the state of Bangladesh. Withglobal attention focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the rise of violentIslamic fervor in another part of South Asia has gone unnoticed. The desperatelypoor country with large ungoverned tracts could become a haven for Islamicterrorists, forced to vacate other countries. Consequently, the unchecked riseof the kind of religious extremism now happening in Bangladesh bodes ill for thecountry, its neighbors and indeed the world.

The rise of religious zealotry in Bangladesh poses a paradox. The countrybroke from Pakistan in 1971 despite the common bond of Islam. Its constitutiondeclared that the country would be both democratic and secular. More to thepoint, despite periodic tensions between Muslims and Hindus, Islamic extremismwas a marginal phenomenon, not cutting a wide swath across the country'spolitical and social life. Some formal trappings of democracy still remain inplace in Bangladesh. For example, the country still holds competitive elections,though marred by electoral violence. The secular dimensions of the state,however, have long been in decline, with formal commitment to secularism erasedin the 1980s, during an extended span of military rule when Islam was declaredthe state religion of Bangladesh.

Residual commitment to the rights of religious minorities has all butevaporated. Bangladesh's dwindling Hindu minority population has borne the bruntof the wrath of the Islamic zealots. These developments have taken place underthe aegis of a coalition that includes the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) andtwo religious parties, the Jamaat-i-Islami and the Islamic Oikye Jote (IOJ).Thanks to its parliamentary dependence on the religious parties, the BNP hadevinced scant interest in containing the recrudescence of religious extremism.As a consequence, in the past few years, violent attacks on the oppositionpolitical party, the Awami League (AL), become routine; death threats againstindependent-minded journalists common; and the harassment of religious andsectarian minorities, primarily the miniscule Ahmadiyya community, widespread.Islamic zealots insist that men grow beards and wear skull caps while women donveils.

Politicians, deemed of a secular persuasion by zealots, have beenassassinated. In the past few years, unknown assailants killed two prominentopposition leaders, Ahsanullah Master in May 2004 and SAMS Kibria in January2005. In August 2004, the veteran Awami League politician, Ivy Rehman, wasassassinated in a bomb blast at a political rally, which also almost cost thelife of Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the leader of the opposition. However, the bombkilled 21 individuals at the rally and injured many more. Many suspect theseattacks to be the work of a range of Islamist organizations, including theJagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, the Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami and the Harakatul-Jihad-i-Islami Bangladesh. Faced with systematic Western donor pressure, inMarch 2006, the government arrested one of the top leaders of the bannedterrorist outfit Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, Siddiqul Islam, known asBangla Bhai, literally "Bengali brother." He is widely believed to have beeninvolved in the brutal murder of several members of the Purba Banglar CommunistParty.

What explains Bangladesh's precipitous lurch toward Islamic extremism?Several factors, some deep-seated, others of a more recent origin, are at work.Despite the country's rocky transition to democracy in the late 1980s, the normsof democratic political participation simply failed to take hold in Bangladesh.The two principal political parties, the BNP and the Awami League, differedlittle in their programmatic commitments, barring the BNP's known intransigencetoward minorities. Commitments were woven largely around the personalities oftheir respective leaders, Begum Khaleda Zia, the wife of the assassinatedmilitary dictator, General Zia-ur-Rehman, and Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the daughterof the slain founder of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. The necessity toplease donor communities forced both political parties to participate inminimally competitive elections. However, neither party demonstrated muchwillingness to abide by the election results. Consequently, parliamentaryproceedings frequently became farcical, with the defeated party eitherboycotting the proceedings or resorting to rallies, strikes and demonstrationsto scuttle the other's policies.

Both parties played a role in undermining political institutions. Forexample, intent on imposing their will, they routinely removed senior civilservants after each national election, replacing them with individuals known forpartisan loyalties. Thus, both the neutrality and probity of the civil servicehas long been compromised. Similarly, police and paramilitary forces have becomethe handmaidens of the party in power.

The institutional decay allowed for the rise of religious intolerance. As theBNP and AL regimes alike proved to be inept and corrupt, they needed facileexplanations for their failures of governance. The AL largely blamed the BNP andoffered some semblance of protection to minorities to garner their vote. The BNP,on the other hand, not content to simply attack the AL, resorted to populistscape-goating. Minorities, especially Hindus, were characterized as being agentsof the neighboring behemoth, India. With a rising tide of Islamic fervor, thelast elements of a syncretic Bengali culture are under attack. Since 2001, thegovernment formally banned Poila Baisakh celebrations that herald thetraditional Bengali new year. The BNP could pursue such strategies with impunitybecause of the increasing anemia of political institutions and a free, butfrequently irresponsible, press.

Yet domestic factors alone cannot explain the turn toward radical Islam.External forces are also at work. Periodic harassment and violence towardMuslims in India, like killing of Muslims in Gujrat, became fodder for theIslamic zealots in Bangladesh. The regime and its ardent supporters boosted thecause of Islamic solidarity through the exploitation of unfortunate events inIndia.

Two other convergent forces have facilitated the promotion of religiousconfraternity. Though hard to measure, ample funds have flooded Bangladesh inrecent years from Saudi religious charities, spawning the growth of Wahhabimadrassas across the country and propagating a particularly parochial andxenophobic vision of Islam. Weak state institutions that might regulate theirgrowth, combined with the lure of monetary rewards for clergy and acolytes, haveenabled the madrassas to thrive.

A final factor explains the growth of religious zealotry. In an effort to sowdiscord in India's troubled northeastern states, Pakistan’s Inter-ServicesIntelligence Directorate (ISI-D) has also penetrated Bangladeshi society.Despite the horrors that the Pakistani Army had perpetrated in East Pakistan in1971, which contributed to the emergence of Bangladesh, a small segment ofBangladeshi society maintained its fondness for a unified Pakistan. In largepart, loyalty to Pakistan stemmed from an unyielding hatred for India.

The convergence of domestic and external forces threatens to envelopBangladesh. Owing to real and imagined grievances of Muslim populations in theMiddle East and elsewhere, the world has witnessed a growing strand of violentIslamic zealotry that threatens the stability of states from Indonesia toPakistan and even parts of Nordic Europe. Unless the external world, well beyondthe reaches of South Asia, takes heed and contains the spread of Islamicextremism in Bangladesh, it may eventually confront a more powerful andhydra-headed monster. The zealots that the madrassas spawn will not be contentto wreak havoc in Bangladesh and instead will become the next foot soldiers ofthe global jihad.

Sumit Ganguly is a professor of political science and holds the RabindranathTagore Chair at Indiana University in Bloomington. Rights: © 2006 Yale Centerfor the Study of Globalization. YaleGlobalOnline