CAN BANGLADESH AVOID ISLAMIC EXTREMISM?

By Kazi Anwarul Masud (former Secretary and ambassador of Bangladesh)

(Written in October 2008)

 Definition of political parties has changed from the time of Edmund Burke as “an organized assembly of men, united for working together for national interest” to one that may not accept members from the minority community and is insistent on establishing Islamic rule or Khilafat. Indeed the head of the Hizb ul Tehriri (Bangladesh) publicly announced that “we always want to oust all governments in all Muslim countries in the world to establish Khilafat states”. The world is already mired in the militant activities of al-Qaeda operatives, their latest victims being the carnage at the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad. The conflict is not only inter-religious or intra-religious, the hydra headed Medusa has taken under development, poverty, tribal and cultural differences among people to unleash its fangs of poison. Containment of such vitriolic political propaganda leads one to explore the possibility of banning disruptive political parties. To be banned a political party does not have to be communal such as Jamaat-e-Islami (Bangladesh), before the amendment of its constitution, the party reportedly refused membership to people from faiths other than Islam. This should have been a clear violation of fundamental rights under the UN and all other bodies. In 1951 German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) at the request of then Chancellor Conrad Adenauer declared the Socialist Reich Party as unconstitutional on the grounds that German Basic Law (Constitution) held that “political parties shall participate in the formation of the political will of the people” and that political parties’ main internal structure shall conform to democratic principles”. FCC also banned the Communist Party of Germany (then West Germany) on the ground that the party advocated to overthrow of constitutional order. FCC also upheld administrative limitations put on National Democratic Party in the Holocaust Denial Case. In the US where the First amendment ensured practice of all religions the Supreme Court had struck down as unconstitutional the nondenominational prayer in New York public schools. Muslims all over the world have been critical of Western attitude towards Hammas who had won the elections in Gaza.  The Western argument rests upon the Oslo Accord that prohibits advocacy of “racism or pursue implementation of their (political parties) aims by unlawful or non-democratic means”. Hammas’ Charter, interalia, declares: “We must spread the spirit of jihad among the Ummah (Muslim nation), clash with the enemies and join ranks of the jihad fighters”. Given Israeli occupation of territories since 1967 and untold miseries inflicted upon the Palestinians by the Israeli authorities the Oslo Declaration appears to be knit picking. Because this brings up the question of the right of self-determination, failing which armed conflict as had happened in the case of Bangladesh where international jurists resolved the freely expressed desire of the people of East Pakistan as the will of the “people” because only the people, and not ethnic communities, can express such will to be free.

 Almost ad nauseam the question of morality is being raised in judging both the national and international behavior of states and the evaluation of the code of conduct, more or less uniform in character, prescribed to be followed by the civilized states have placed morality as the center piece in global theater. Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of decolonization has been the imperceptible regression of presumptions relating to “racial superiority and civilized mode of behavior” of the metropolitan people vis-à-vis those living in the periphery and the gradual metropolitan recognition that the subalterns, at least some among them, can be invited to their breakfast, lunch and dinner table for “civilized” conversation. Whether the condescension shown by the metropolis towards the periphery is based on morally defensible arguments is debatable. There is, however, no denying the fact that the world divided as it is into First, Second and the Third( or even Fourth) worlds does testify to the great existential divide among the people living in these well defined worlds where division is more vertical than horizontal and promotion from one to another is well nigh impossible. A few individuals through diligence and/or accident may move residentially from the Third to the First world thus forming a part of the Diaspora who after the tragic events of 9/11 impelling the West to legislate various forms of anti-terrorist acts are facing “spiraling progressive alienation” and forced to continually negotiate the parameters of minority citizenship. As it is from the beginning of history social stratification or societal division based on wealth, power and status has been a defining characteristic of civilizations. Social stratification took global shape with the advent of colonization and poverty began to be distributed among the people living in the periphery and the wealth of the periphery was shipped to the metropolis. One of the most bizarre aspects of colonization was the self-assumed patriarchal attitude of the colonizers towards the colonized and their missionary zeal to carry on their shoulders “the White Man’s Burden” of educating the “natives” unable to stand on their own feet. Little heed was paid to the scholars who committed the sacrilege of pointing out that though some among the “natives” were indeed cannibals but a vast majority of them were adorned with etiquette and mores which were far superior to the ones the metropolitans were determined to impose on the periphery. In effect both in their own lands and in the conquered territories the colonizers were subscribing to the FIRST PRINCIPLES of Scottish socialist philosopher Robert Owen who thematized that it was necessary for a large part of mankind to exist in ignorance and poverty to secure for the remaining part such degree of happiness as they now enjoyed. During and after the process of decolonization the newly and aspirant independent countries began to question the hypothesis inherent in the modernization theory which explained underdevelopment in terms of lack of certain qualities in the “underdeveloped” societies such as drive, entrepreneurial skill, creativity and problem solving ability. The articulate among the freed people rebelling against intellectual dystrophy and sanitized academic orthodoxy by and large put their faith in the dependency theory which explained that the continued impoverishment of the Third World was not internally generated but was the result of a structural condition of global domination in which the dominant forced the dominated to be producers of raw materials and food stuff for the industrialized metropolitan center. However the entire colonial discourse should not be seen through the prism of Manichaeism expressed in binary structure between good and evil because the colonizers were not totally exploitive in nature but were also donors of liberal values so much in demand in the world today.  On the other hand even if the sub-alterns were to be magnanimous and forgiving for the politico-socio-economic exploitation in the by-gone days by the advanced countries it is not certain, despite occasional camaraderie shown by the West through aid to tsunami victims and the expected financial pledge following publication of the report by the Africa Commission that the West would sincerely like the developing countries to move forward at a sprinter’s speed. ODA is yet to be given at 0.7% of the GDP pledged by the developed world decades ago. The US and EU are yet to get rid of farm subsidies which is many times more than the assistance given to the Third world. Tariff and Para-tariff barriers imposed by the developed countries on the exports of the developing nations are yet to be removed. Debts owed by the poorest countries are yet to be entirely written off. 

 The West’s hesitancy in taking pro-active and coercive measures is understandable on the ground of possibly being accused of “neo-colonialism” and also because in pre-9/11 era the nation-states were jealous and zealous in guarding their territorial integrity against external encroachment. The newly independent countries defined neo-colonialism as the influence exercised by the ex-colonialists and super power USA through financial, educational and cultural institutions, such influence being more insidious and undetectable than when the colonies were being directly ruled. Besides the unwitting or even willing collaboration by the compradors (elites brought to power by the ex-colonial masters after giving independence to the colonies) and the pressure of globalization prevented the Third World nations from developing an independent political and economic identity.

 Though some Muslim scholars consider the essentialist construction of the people and the religion of Islam dominant in the western academic orthodoxy as grossly distorted, yet one must also acknowledge that the deviants of Islamic religion immersed in their own grotesque interpretation of pristine Islam do pose serious threat not only to the West but also to Muslims who they consider to have deviated from the “true” path . Time is past for the Muslim world to hold on to tortured nationalism by blaming the West for failing to seize the moment when western technology was on its way to irreversibly change the contours of global civilization. It is past time for the Islamic world to clean up the Augean Stable, get its act together and unite with the West and others to fight the common enemy—terrorism. Islamic renaissance is unlikely to emerge from the destructive acts of Osama bin Laden. Efforts should be directed towards achieving “global civic ethics” as recommended by the Commission on Global Governance echoing Immanuel Kant’s theory of “universal moral community” that derives from the principle that all people are bound together morally regardless of their distinctive culture and identity. If it is recognized that human security is central to global peace then a government’s right to rule must be weighed against its people’s right to security. In cases if it is found that people’s security is being threatened under the cloak of religious activism then the state should assume its responsibility to put ban on such religious activism which incipiently tries to crawl towards staging a so-called Islamic Free Election Trap to stage a coup to establish a theocratic state. Devoutly Muslim Bangladeshis are unlikely to countenance any Machiavellian machination by religious extremists because Bangladesh has a tradition of secular culture which is neither atheistic nor agnostic. The government in power regardless of political expediency is duty bound to arrest any movement towards religious extremism and ensure freedom of choice to the people.*

 Global discomfort is evident these days over overt preeminence of religion in politics in some countries. President Bush’s reelection, despite Iraq imbroglio, is now being believed to have been caused by the rise of conservatism among Americans and by the strength of “Christian votes”. Political analyst Muqtadir Khan apprehends that existential anxiety felt by the deeply religious Americans due to the terrorist acts on 9/11( Alexis Tocquiville claimed that religion was the first political institution of American democracy) translated into a political backlash is threatening American secularist and liberal views. Political Christianity of “born again Christians, conservative Catholics, conservative African Americans, conservative Hispanics, are concerned more with gay marriages and abortion than with job loss, outsourcing of jobs, or rising cost of Iraq invasion. Evangelical Christianity and Pentecostal movement have not only given George Bush the White House back but also the Republican Party control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The question that arises in the minds of the many is whether religion-conservatism has become the order of the day or the Bush victory is to be regarded as a quirk of history in an otherwise sequential historical progress of the world towards Francis Fukuyama’s liberal democracy constituting the “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and the “final form of government” and as such signaling the “end of history”. But Fukuyama himself has conceded that “one is inclined to say that the revival of religion in some way attests to a broad unhappiness with the impersonality and spiritual vacuity of liberal consumerists’ societies”.

 Though the Iranian revolution of 1979 which created a theocratic state came as a rude shock to the Western world it was not totally unexpected because opposition to Reza Shah Pahlavi was building up for quite some time and anti-American feeling was bristling among the people for CIA engineering the ousting of nationalist Prime Minister Mosadegh and the reinstallation of the Shah to the Peacock throne. Besides the western world was not unduly worried because the “enemy” was an identifiable nation-state which could be attacked and fought against. The decade long Iraq-Iran war during which Saddam Hussein’s regime was fully supported by the West particularly the US was predicated on the premise that the spread of theocratic political movement could be contained.  The discomfort felt by the largely Sunni majority Arab states at the emergence of a Shiia theocratic state in their neighborhood was fully exploited by the West. Additionally the need for oil and military bases induced the western countries to ignore the “democracy deficit” prevalent in the Middle Eastern client states of the West. The threshold of western tolerance for radical Islamic movement was so high that in its mono-centric policy of aiding the Afghan mujahedeens through Pakistani Intelligence Services to dislodge the Soviets from Afghanistan, the West failed to see the emergence of brutal Taliban regime till the tragic events of 9/11 occurred. Oliver Roy sees  implicit threat in this brand of modern Islamic political fundamentalism claiming to recreate new Islamic societies, not simply by imposing the Sharia laws but by establishing Islamic state through political action. Islamists see Islam not merely as a religion but as a political ideology which should be integrated in all aspects of the society.

 After Afghanistan, Islamic fundamentalism went global with its appeal to a section of Muslim society based on moral, cultural and political grounds. The Islamists argue that western culture particularly the one practiced by western women is essentially degenerative and incompatible with Quranic literalism. They argue that the values propagated by the West to threaten Islamic purity and hence their advance is to be thwarted at any cost. Political argument is by far the easiest to sell to the wayward Muslim population who despite declaration of piety could have nursed in the darkest corner of their heart a desire to commit the original sin. The Islamists argue that the reasons for economic backwardness, political repression and societal dysfunction were caused by western, particularly American assistance given to the repressive regimes in the Muslim world. So Osama bin Laden’s deputy Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri faced little problem in becoming an ideologue of hatred to some marginalized Muslims living at the fringe of an often affluent society. In his Knights under the Prophet’s Banner, a manifesto on jihad, al-Zawahiri explains that it is legitimate to strike western population, not just their governments and institutions, because they “only know the language of self-interest, backed by brute military force”. The problems faced by the Islamic secular movements have been compounded by the iconic presence of Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis in literatures trying to explain the democratic deficit generally suffered by the Muslim world. To Huntington in Islam God is Caesar, in Confucianism Caesar is God, and in European Orthodox Christianity God is Caesar’s junior partner. Unhesitatingly Huntington declares: “The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam”. Historian Bernard Lewis saw the clash of civilizations earlier than Huntington in terms of Islamic vs. Christian and post-Christians and rigid theocratic hierarchy vs. permissive secular modernism. Lewis perceived Muslim world’s “downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression” being caused by the Islamic world’s defeat at the hands of Judeo-Christian civilizations. But in this sweeping critique of Islam Lewis and others have forgotten that refusal of western hegemony does not necessarily mean wholesale abandonment of western values. Professor Robert Hefner correctly asserts that there is no clash of civilizations between Islamic and Christian world and the really decisive battle is being waged within the Muslim civilization where ultra-conservatives are competing with the moderates and democrats for the soul of Islam. In understanding the intensity of the battle it is necessary to distinguish between neo-fundamentalists with transnational reach and secular Islam which believes in the subordination of religion to the state. In this debate one may have to make the difficult choice of whether or not to ban religion based political parties.

 An inconclusive debate remains about the incompatibility of democracy with monotheistic religions. Robert Dahl in his classic book Polyarchy had set eight essential requirements for democracy: - right to form and join organizations; freedom of expression; right to vote; eligibility for public office; right of political leaders to compete for support for vote; and institutions for making government policies dependant on vote and other expressions of preference. Other political scientists have added that democracy must also have a constitution that by itself is democratic in that it respects fundamental liberties and offers protection to minorities. Additionally democratically elected governments must rule within the confines of their constitutions, be bound by law and be accountable. From historical observations it has been found that religions place inherent obstacles in the way of democracy. Philosopher John Rawls found it particularly difficult in a pluralistic society in which citizens hold a variety of socially embedded, reasonable yet deeply opposed comprehensive doctrines to arrive at an overlapping consensus. In the case of Islam some western scholars have found that because of Prophet Mohammed(sm)’s fusion of military and spiritual authority and because Quranic laws are deemed to be final the space for democratic debate for the formation of secular laws does not exist in Muslim societies. Some other scholars however have found that appropriation of political Islam by Islamic fundamentalists is untenable and millions of Muslims living outside the Arab world live in intermittent democracies and they may not become victims of so-called Islamic Free Election Trap in which fundamentalists use democratic means to get to power only to abolish democratic practices through legislation.

  In underdeveloped societies political community are sometimes fragmented into opposed religious, ethnic, racial, and ideological groups, more familiarly known as identity politics, and democratic structure being fragile religion-based politics can invite instability. In Bangladesh, it is believed, that corporations run by religious extremists make an annual net profit of twelve billion taka of which ten percent is used by fundamentalists for organizational purposes like carrying out regular party activities, providing remuneration and allowances to about half a million party cadres and running armed training camps. The number of primary schools since liberation has doubled while that of Dakhil madrasas has increased eight fold. Concern about possible rise of Islamic extremists who look for areas of   weakness has been expressed by Western countries. Bertil Lintner, Elizabeth Griswold, Time magazine, Wall Street Journal and others have voiced concern about rising religious extremism in Bangladesh. Indians being our next day neighbor and having been subjected to religion based atrocities, both from within and without, had linked increasing activities of Islamist extremists with then ruling coalition in Bangladesh. If one were to look at the political landscape of Pakistan one can easily find the basis of strength of Muttahihiha Majlis-e-Amal, a conglomerate of religion based parties that were courted by Late President Ziaul Huq till today in order to marginalize moderate political parties like that of Benazir Bhutto. Added to the woes of democracy deficit in Pakistan Brussels based International Crisis Group observed that sectarian conflict in Pakistan was the direct consequence of state policies of Islamisation and marginalization of secular democratic forces. Cooption and patronage of religious parties by successive military governments have brought Pakistan to a point where religious extremism threatens to erode the foundation of the state and society.  The Islamists in Bangladesh who reportedly have transnational links are likely to have links with their fellow travelers in Pakistan and other countries.

 Though British political philosopher Edmund Burke used the term “terrorism” in the 18^th century to demonize the French Revolution, Maximillian Robes Pierre’s “first maxim to conduct the people by reason and the enemies of the people by terror”, and his reiteration that “terror is nothing else but justice, prompt, secure and inflexible”; modern terrorism in one form or another has been a part of human history since 1^st century.  Of the early religious terrorists (religious terrorism is motivated primarily by religion as opposed to ethnic or a politically ideological terrorist group) the notables were Hindu Thugees, the Muslim Assassins, and the Jewish Zealot-Sciari. The Thugees pursued religious ends by offering their victims to the Hindu Goddess of destruction   -- Kali (the Thugees were active from the 7^th till mid-19^th century India). The assassins killed politicians and clerics who refused to submit to their brand of Islam. Zealot-Sciari, on the other hand, used political violence for religious solution. Though short lived this group waged what they believed to be God ordained war against Canaanites for possession of the Promised Land. Marxism created its own brand of terrorism subscribing to Italian revolutionary Carlo Piscane’s theory of the “propaganda of the deed” recognizing the usefulness of terrorism to deliver a message to an audience other than the target and draw attention to and support for the terrorist’ cause. Piscane’s theory was put into practice through the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 and of Arch Duke Ferdinand of Austria triggering the outbreak of the First World War. Throughout history, particularly during the colonial period the colonizers resorted to what may be described as “state terrorism” and a segment of the colonized in their yearning to be free embarked upon their own brand of terrorism. One could readily recall the barbarism of the Fascist and the Nazi regimes and the on-going Israeli genocidal acts in the occupied territories as examples of state terrorism In the second category of response to state terrorism one could cite China, Indo-China, Kenya, Malaysia, Cyprus , India, Bangladesh and countless others. In the category of the state sponsored terrorism one could cite the example of Kashmiris trained and armed by Pakistan (denied by the Pakistani authorities) and sent across the Line of Control in Kashmir to conduct terrorist acts in Indian Kashmir. While it is immoral to keep free people in bondage it has to be enquired how expansive the definition of terrorism should be to support armed rebellion. Thus we are faced with the problem of defining terrorism which would have universal acceptance. To cut through the Gordian definitional knot terrorism expert Arnold Schmidt suggested to the UN that if the core of war crimes—deliberate attacks on civilians, hostage taking, and killing of prisoners—is extended to peace times then one could simply define acts of terrorism as “peace time equivalent of war crimes”. The US authorities have been able to agree on some of the fundamental elements of terrorism as follows:- (a) terrorism is the unlawful use of violence against non-combatants, governments and societies, (b) it is used to inculcate fear and/or intended to coerce/intimidate, (c) by sub-national groups or clandestine agents,; (d) in furtherance of political, religious or ideological goals. To Harvard University’s Jessica Stern   the “deliberate evocation of dread is what sets terrorism apart from simple murder or assault”. Had it not been for the events of 9/11 perhaps terrorism either of al-Qaida variety or state terrorism would not have brought about the fundamental change in international order. State terrorism by the Fascists and the Nazis got their fitting reply with their total defeat and replacement of these regimes by western style democracies. The disappearances of the colonies, aberrations (like apartheid in South Africa), and defeat of military dictatorship in various parts of the world drew the curtain down on state terrorism. Finally the disappearance of communism persuaded Francis Fukuyama to conclude that liberal democracy constituting the “endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution” and “the final form of human government” and as such constituting ‘the end of history” has arrived. Though free from defects and irrationalities of earlier forms of governments Fukuyama unhesitatingly conceded that today’s stable democracies of the West were not without injustice or serious social problems. Though there can never be any justification for terrorism because the children at Beslan went to school like any other children do every day every where in the world, nor for the genocidal attacks on unarmed civilians by the Pakistani army on 25^th March 1971 in the then East Pakistan, massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica by Milosevic forces, or the civilians in Rwanda; yet the bombings of USS Cole, and US embassies at Kenya and Tanzania leaving scores dead and wounded did introduce the world to non-state actors who were capable of inflicting great damage to the most powerful nation on earth without incurring much loss to the perpetrators themselves. Such acts fit the terrorists’ agenda because their concerns are generally macro-concerns and essentially political in nature. The violence wrought upon the American people on 9/11 appear to have been partly motivated by revenge (for what the perpetrators viewed as unjust American actions against the Muslims) and the political aspirations of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida – both rejected by the Muslim world. There was therefore no perceptible adverse international reaction when NATO bombed Afghanistan (already a pre-industrial society) to a pulp for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden for trial. War on terror, however, lost its innocence when Iraq was invaded first on the assumption that Saddam Hussein was capable of launching weapons of mass destruction against the West under an hour and later on the ground of his alleged links with the al-Qaida. When both the arguments proved to be false then the ultimate argument of freeing the Iraqis from the clutches of tyrant was advanced. But the legality of Iraq invasion has remained questionable till today since the invasion took place neither in self-defense nor with the approval of the UNSC. Besides, argued Princeton Professor Michael Walzer that as with domestic crimes, use of force would require actual or imminent boundary crossing, invasion or physical assault. Otherwise any use of force by one state against the political sovereignty or territorial integrity of another state would constitute aggression and would be a criminal act. But given the fact that the group of “new sovereigntists” dedicated to defending American institutions against alleged encroachment by international laws and institutions who consider US sovereignty as absolute, illimitable and non-dissipatory and given the fact that so much water has flown down the bridge since Iraq invasion the question of its legality remains an academic issue. Effectively what happened in the UNSC on Iraq despite Madeline Albright’s assertion that US arguments for Iraq war were not persuasive enough for the Europeans to accept or James Rubin’s putting responsibility for American debacle in UNSC on shifts in the US justification for waging the war as demanded by changing situation on the ground; was perhaps most cogently explained by Michael Glennon of the Fletcher School of Diplomacy that UNSC’s failure to prevent the Iraq war was not a failure at all but was due to the incompatibility of the new global configuration resultant of the towering preeminence of the US with the way UNSC was framed to work.

 The war of attrition waged by the Sunni Arabs in Iraq against the US occupation coupled with the slow progress on Palestine issue do not appear to have produced the desired result either in Iraq or elsewhere. On the contrary writes Dr. Peter Warren Singer (of Brookings Institution) that at broader levels the US and the Islamic world stand at a point of historic and dangerous crises as American description of the “war on terror” is broadly interpreted as the “war on Islam” by much of the world’s Muslim community. Singer is uncomfortable with Bernard Lewis’ deterministic view point that Islam as a doctrine rejects modernity and is thus placed in a “millennial rivalry” with the Judeo-Christian West. In Lewis’ monolithic analysis of Islam (the terms Arab and Muslim have been frequently interchanged in the analysis) runs the risk of committing the mistake made by McCarthyism of misdiagnosis of the “red menace” rolled into Soviet Union, China and Third World into one monolithic and inseparable structure.

 Some western leaders mindful of furious reaction by many Muslims are more cautious in identifying the terrorists. Immediately after the 7^th July London bombings Tony Blair told the British people that “the vast and overwhelming majority of the Muslims, here and abroad, are decent and law abiding people who abhor the act of terrorism every bit as much as we do”. Shockingly, however, London suicide bombers have been found to be mostly born and bred in the UK albeit of Pakistani and Jamaican origin. Whereas in the past terrorists were foreigners imbibed with Jihad’s mentality, London bombers were mostly young and the objects of their attack were of little symbolic value (like the Twin Towers representing American capitalist might). Despite the fact that the London carnage was lesser damaging than the Madrid bombing or the Twin Towers the counter-terrorist experts fear that Jihad’s network span Europe from Poland to Portugal. Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh was killed by a Dutch of Moroccan descent born and bred in Europe. Today the Muslims constitute the majority of immigrants in most European countries estimated at between 15 and 20 million and projected to double by 2025. These second or third generation children of immigrants “are the latest, most dangerous incarnation of that staple of immigration literature, the revolt of the second generation. They are also dramatic instances of what could be called adversarial assimilation—integration into host country’s adversarial culture”.

 Bangladesh, like many other countries, would have to construct its own brand of democracy keeping in view its social, historical and cultural traditions. One, however, becomes apprehensive when religion is advocated to be one of the pillars of our socio-political construct. Undeniably Bangladesh is a Muslim majority country and most of the people are devout Muslims. But the absence of the teaching of  giving unto God what is God’s and unto Caesar what is Caesar’s by practicing Muslims as opposed to Christianity due to historical reasons opens up the possibility of   strengthening the presence of what journalist Christopher Hitchens would call “Islamo-fascist” and historian Niall Ferguson would label “Islamo-Bolshevists” committed to revolution and reordering the world in a way that would undo modernism and take countries like ours to 6^th century Saudi Arabia. Our denials, notwithstanding, the question, however, remains whether sub-state actors living in a shadowy world received political patronage from some of the leaders of the erstwhile government. Madrashas continue to flourish and the degrees awarded by these institutions continue to be recognized as equivalent to the degrees given by colleges and universities making religious education equal to secular education. Though Bangladesh government is not beholden to Islamist political groups like former President Musharraf’s dependence on Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal, consisting of ultra- Islamists one may consider establishment of a single Madrasa Regulatory Authority under parliamentary oversight with powers to bring the Madrasas in line with mainstream education; and to derecognize Madrasa certificates as equivalent to degrees issued by boards of education and universities.

 Democracy is a dynamic process, it is evolving and is to yet to reach Francis Fukuyama’s “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and as such constituting the “end of history”.   It has been said that a state’s raison d’etre does not lie in the protection of equal individual rights  but in the guarantee of an inclusive process of opinion and will formation in which free and equal citizens reach an under standing on which goals and norms lie in the equal interest of all.     Clearly then an ethical question would arise as perceived by Italian political scientist Luigi Bonante while discussing the difference between the individual and the state. He argues that while the state has sufficient tools to defend its rights and reject its duties; for the individual as recipient it is much harder to elude his duties than to achieve his freedom. This asymmetry provides strong argument for the protection of human rights. The Orwellian tyranny of the majority was further compounded by increasing activism of Islamists who wish to recreate a truly Islamic society not simply by imposing the sharia but by establishing an Islamic state where religious edicts will be integrated into all aspects of society. US State Department’s Religious Freedom Report of 2002 on Bangladesh recognized the disadvantages faced by the minority community in access to jobs in government, in the military and in political office. Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) report observed that the Bangladesh government was not doing enough to prevent the country from becoming a haven for Islamic terrorists. Washington based Center for Strategic and International Studies in its Transnational Threat Update before the 1/11 change over stated: “The current security climate in Bangladesh may allow terrorist groups to organize attacks using a radiological dispersal device. Concerns over this possibility are plausible given that radio substance have proven accessible to terror groups within the country”.  If we accept David Held’s ( of London School of Economics) assertion that we no longer live in a world of discrete national communities but in a world, in David Held’s words, “ overlapping communities of fate”; then the Muslims in Bangladesh do not constitute the majority community as they are surrounded by Hindu majority India and Buddhist majority Myanmar and in the vicinity by non-Muslim South East and Far East Asian countries. 

 Pakistani Intelligence Services (ISI) trying to destabilize North Eastern India from Bangladesh. Early this year Indian Foreign Secretary Shayam Saran in a speech at Delhi warned that India would not ignore her neighbors’ conduct “to allowing the use of their territories for cross border terrorism and hostile activities against India”. Predictably Bangladesh authorities continued to dismiss these allegations. People, however, found it difficult to be totally dismissive of a study conducted by an eminent Bangladeshi economist that corporations run by religious fundamentalists make an annual profit of twelve billion taka every year ten percent of which is spent by the fundamentalists for organizational purposes like carrying out regular party activities, providing remuneration and allowances to about half a million party cadres, and running armed training camps. The number of madrashas in Bangladesh is estimated to be 64000 (sixty four thousand) divided into two broad categories—Aliya madrashas run with governmental support and control, and Dars-e-Nizami or Deoband style madrashas who are totally independent. Jamat-e-Islami, founded by Maulana Abu ala Maududi, had grown out of Deoband madrasha system. Jamat from the very beginning was inspired by Ikhwan ul Muslemin or Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt with the aim of bringing about an Islamic revolution and creating an Islamic state. Initially in undivided India Jamat was opposed to the concept of Pakistan. Later, however, when Jamat came to support Pakistan as the Islamic state for the Indian Muslims, Bengali nationalism was totally unacceptable to them. Unsurprisingly therefore Jamat sided with the Pakistani occupation forces in East Pakistan and fought against the war of liberation. Unfortunately successive military governments needing an ideological platform to justify their opposition to Awami League supported and patronized Jamat-e-Islami and today Jamat and another Islamist party are members of a

Coalition government in Bangladesh.

 Predictably Bangladesh authorities have dismissed Eliza Griswold’s report in New York Times (January 23, 2005) raising the possibility of Bangladesh giving birth to the next Islamist revolution. Griswold wrote about the alleged attempts by Bangla Bhai to bring about Talibanization in some parts of the country bordering India through violent means. In Griswold’s eyes Bangladesh politics have never strayed far from violence and thuggery has been a constant feature of Bangladesh politics and is increasingly so today.  Traveling through Bangladesh she concludes “The global war on terror is aimed at making the rise of regimes like that of the Taliban impossible, in Bangladesh the trend could be going the other way”.

 Bangladesh authorities found the report “baseless, partial and misleading” and reiterated the government’s commitment to democracy. What is surprising that dismissal of Griswold’s report notwithstanding Bangladeshi media continues reporting on the defiance and violence perpetrated by Bangla Bhai and his cohorts of Jagrata Muslim Janata Banglaesh (JMJB) under the nose of the governmental authorities and of the government’s inability to arrest Bangla Bhai despite the orders of the Prime Minister that he be arrested. The press has also questioned the sincerity of the government to arrest Bangla Bhai and has endorsed the essence of Griswold’s story by reporting the admission of JMJB’s leaders that they have been active underground for the last six years to establish a Taliban like rule in Bangladesh (DS-27.01.05). It is not the first time that Bangladeshi authorities have been upbraided by domestic and foreign media and institutions for their inability to contain the virus of religious intolerance and for its increase in recent days. Eliza Griswold hazards a guess that it could be because the government is “in any case divided on precisely the question on how much Islam and politics should mix”. Bertil Lintner’s article in the Far astern Economic Review (April 2002) warned about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh. Time magazine and the Asian Wall Street Journal alleged of sanctuaries being given to transnational Islamists elements. Zeal of the Islamic fundamentalists found expression in the Friday sermon of the head priest of a prominent mosque at Dhaka accusing President Bush of being a “terrorist” while addressing a gathering of people who had gone to the mosque to offer their prayer, branding two judges of the High Court as enemies of Islam because they had suo moto given a judgment declaring illegal religious edicts passed by village priests, and declaring a prominent lawyer of the country as “murtad” because he was defending in a court of law a case on behalf of the Ahmadiyya community who are being persecuted by the religious zealots.

 Most madrasas are used to educate male students while a few also impart education to girls. Since madrasa education does not carry much financial benefits in a labor market demanding non-ecclesiastical skills the students graduating from madrasas are forced to become madrasa teachers or priests in mosques. Coming from impoverished families they are forced back into poverty in a world racing for material advancement. This vicious cycle of poverty and deprivation may find expression in anti-western feeling particularly in the aftermath of the decimation of Afghanistan and the illegal invasion of Iraq. Many madrasa students may find it difficult to understand the venality of the Taliban regime and of their participation in the 9/11 carnage necessitating regime change in Afghanistan. To many of them Osama bin Laden is a hero. Understandably the US Congress keeps itself informed of the madrasa education in South Asia. A report by the Congressional Research Service (International Terrorism in South Asia) states that among the approximately ten thousand madrasas in Pakistan some that have been implicated in teaching militant anti-western, anti-American and anti-Hindu values. Many of these madrasas are financed and operated by Pakistani Islamist political parties and foreign entities. Foremost US analyst on South Asia Stephen Cohen states that the largest Islamic sects with the greatest control over religious schools are the Deobandis (as opposed to the Barlevis) who are among the most militant in their demand for Pakistan to become truly Islamic. Incidentally Deobandi groups were in the forefront of declaring Ahmadiyyas as non-Muslim in Pakistan. Cohen believes that the reaction of Parvez Musharraf’s generation of army officers against Zia ul Huq’s Islamic zealotry in no way represents a rejection of the limited strategy of using radical Islamic groups as instruments of Pakistani foreign policy, especially against India. This tour d’horizon of Pakistani religious extremism was necessary because terrorism, particularly religious terrorism, is almost always transnational. During his latest visit to South Asia Ambassador Cofer Black, State Department coordinator for counter terrorism spoke of Indian allegations relating to terrorist camps in Bangladesh (denied by Bangladesh authorities) and of the “need to determine exactly the threat not only to Bangladesh but also the potential utilization of Bangladesh as a platform to project terrorism internationally”. Noted Indian journalist Prem Shankar Jha felt that the 8/21 assassination attempt on Sheikh Hasina was possible due to a combination of political expediency and ambivalence over whether to ride the tiger of religious intolerance or to confront it”. He warned against the propagation of “an intolerant arabicised brand of Islam that was alien to Bangladesh’s secular culture”.

 The emergence of religious intolerance in Bangladesh, documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and US State Department among others, should be seen in global context. If the Muslims are to prove historian Bernard Lewis wrong that “Islam was never prepared, either in theory or in practice, to accord full equality to those who held other forms of worship, and that the centuries old rivalry between Christianity and Islam is no less than a clash of civilizations—the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the world wide expansion of both”, then the Islamic world would have to adorn itself with all the traits of modernity. The Islamic world would have to disown death sentences for writing Satanic Verses, stoning and imprisoning of rape victims, public flogging, stoning and decapitation of criminal offenders. Globalization is no longer a choice; it is a reality that all countries have to deal with. In this game the West has a decided advantage over the Muslim world, particularly the least developed among them. Countries like Bangladesh will remain dependent on the developed economies and international financial institutions if they are to transform their societies into more advanced ones. This quest is fraught with difficulties that should not be further compounded by inviting religious extremism, however politically expedient such a move may be.

 Jaamat-e-Islami’s collaboration with the Pakistani occupation army in 1971 and some of whose leaders being guilty of crimes against humanity are undisputed.  Jaamat leaders are yet to be tried because one of the reasons was  that  the Genocide Convention which came into force as international law in 1951 was ratified by only two of the permanent members of the UN Security Council and it was not until after the last of the five permanent members ratified the treaty in 1988 and the Cold War came to an end, that the international law on the crime of genocide began. As such an international tribunal never investigated allegations of genocide in Bangladesh in 1971. Had it not been so then Jamaat could have found itself on the dock along with Slobodan Milosevic and Rwandan war criminals, and perhaps, in future some for the crimes committed at Darfur in Sudan. Christopher Hitchens in his book The Trials of Henry Kissinger used the term “genocide” as appropriate for the war crimes committed in Bangladesh in 1971 and castigated Henry Kissinger for downplaying the aspirations of the Bengali nation for independence. Susan Brown Miller and Pierre Stephen and Robert Payne in their books Massacre and Against Our Will and the Archer Blood telegrams to the US State Department (now declassified) have documented the genocidal acts by the occupation army and Jamaat’s anti-liberation wings namely Razakars, Al-Badr, Al- Shams etc. ****

 If the worry of the international community is to safeguard its values and its way of life against the onslaught by Islamic fundamentalists’ inflexible and nihilistic war of attrition then care should be taken of Jamaat’s politics in Bangladesh. One can argue that Jamaat’s representation in the parliament has been through democratic elections and its inclusion in the government is a prerogative of the parties which won the elections then the world, and no less the Islamic world, with intermittent democracy, should be made aware of the so-called Islamic Free Election Trap in which the fundamentalists use democratic means to get to power only to abolish democratic practices through legislation. Fusion of military and spiritual authority and Quranic literalism as opposed to the concept of the separation of the Church and the State is intrinsic to Jamaat’s political philosophy. Problem with Islamic political parties like Jamaat in Bangladesh is “the persistence of ambiguity” suffered by Islamists almost everywhere. Marina Ottaway and others define this ambiguity as “tensions remaining between the old goals of creating Islamic states and enacting uncompromising versions of the Sharia and the new goal of becoming influential players in a pluralistic, democratic system”. Jamaat’s spiritual Guru Maulana Maududi described the movement’s purpose “to initiate the deen in the form of a movement so that religiosity does not become static in our personal lives, but we struggle to implement this deen and also try to crush those forces that are against its implementation”. On another occasion Maulana Maududi declared “we take a person in Jamaat when he understands the meaning of Kalima-e-Tayyiba and makes it mandatory that he fulfills the minimum criteria of Islam”. Evidently Jamaat’s philosophy does not allow inclusiveness of other religions or democratic norms. This partly explains Jamaat’s initial opposition to the Muslim League’s demand for a separate homeland for the Muslims in British India, and its opposition to Bangladesh liberation movement can be seen from Jamaat’s perspective as dismemberment of a Muslim state caused by the machination of a Hindu India. That the occupying Pakistani army was brutalizing Bengali Muslims (along with Hindus) was seen as “collateral damage” that must be borne if the Bengali Muslims were to be freed from the contagion of Hindu influence.

 Jamaat’s current acceptance of democratic pluralism and female leadership in the stewardship of the country is tactical and was undertaken when Jamaat was convinced of the irreversibility of the existence of Bangladesh as a sovereign and independent state. Character of Jamaat-e-Islami is not only apocalyptic, it is nihilistic. The confessional statements made by the terrorists relating to terrorism committed on 17^th August have proved unambiguously their connection with Jamaat or its students’ wing at some point during their political career. Many of these terrorists were trained by Pakistan Intelligence and the CIA through President Zia –ul-Huq of Pakistan to fight the Soviet invasion resulting in the placement of the brutal Taliban regime that swore to forsake modernity in favor of a return to a sacred past with disastrous consequences for Afghanistan and beyond. Effectively Taliban supported Al-Qaida attacks on the US mainland have practically defined the dawning of a new era in world politics and placed Islamist extremism at the center stage of international political conversation.

 One suspects that the Western psyche nourished by centuries of opulence may not be adept to detect the serpentine and subterranean Eastern way of thinking not borne out of moral vacuity but resultant of interminable struggle with poverty. A case in point could be the recent advice given by the EU ambassadors that it is not important with whom the 14 party combine conducts the political dialogue but that dialogue has to take place to break the current impasse. While the advice is well intentioned its simplicity beguiles the Bangladeshi mind. It is so difficult to accord further legitimacy to the governance of the country to a group which reluctantly accepted the emergence of Bangladesh but may very well be behind the Islamist terrorism in the country. Perhaps the Europeans, more than others, are acutely aware of the fact that religion has been often used to justify violation of human rights by postponing temporal justice to divine judgment.

 There is however no denying the fact that religion based politics generates fear among minority communities the protection of whom has been pledged by all civilized countries both in their domestic law and international commitment. In Bangladesh for example the recent events involving terrorist activities allegedly perpetrated by Islamic extremists have strengthened the demands of the secularists to put a ban on religion based political activities. The 1972 Bangladesh Constitution did provide for such a ban. The post-1975 conservative establishments amended the Constitution once in 1977 and again in 1988 by passing the 8^th amendment making Islam the state religion. Additionally the Vested (Enemy) Property Act enacted during Pakistani rule through which 2.1 million acres of Hindu owned land were confiscated remains in our statute book even today. Every year US State Department’s Religious and Human Rights reports, reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch chronicle abuses perpetrated on minority communities in Bangladesh. The leader of the opposition in Bangladesh Parliament has demanded of the government that the two ministers from Jamat-e Islami be interrogated by the police to “unearth the mystery” behind religious militancy in the country. Another opposition political leader has alleged that Jamatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh and Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh( of Bangla Bhai fame) are in fact creation of Jamat-e-Islami; that Jamat had funneled more than one crore taka to the Talibans after the US attacked Afghanistan in 2001; that al-Qaida through Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence and Jamat-e-Islami had engaged many militant Bangladeshis to wage war in Afghanistan against NATO forces; that Jamat-e-Islami shelters at least sixteen radical groups in the country committed to establish Taliban like Islamist regime in Bangladesh.

 One wonders when question is being raised about the audacity of Jammat-e-Islami leaders about the liberation war and their description of the war as a civil conflict. It should not be lost on Jamaat that the moment the Bangalis refused to be a part of Pakistan the population of then East Pakistan ceased to be one “people” and the armed forces and the civilians who took up arms as well as those who did not but rebelled against the central authority the “civilian” character of the conflict had dramatically changed. It was not the French Revolution against an insensitive King and aristocracy or the Bolshevik Revolution against the Czar though both changed the course of the world history; it was a war by the people, for the people and of the people. Unless one has become amnesiac one has not forgotten that a Jamaat leader himself as the President of East Pakistan Islami Chatra Sangha and as the chief of the infamous Al-Badr back in 1971 helped then occupying Pakistani army in carrying out massacre, looting and rape. The present Amir of Jamaat-e-Islami as President of Islamic Chatra Sangha directly supervised the formation of Al-Badr Bahini and became its commander-in-chief. The atrocities committed by the Pakistani army and their cohorts-namely Jamaat-e-Islami and their offshoots like Al-Badr, Al-Shams and other collaborators have been documented in many books, journals and research papers.  Yet a follower of Jamaat-e-Islami, albeit unsurprisingly, he would rather accept Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report that less than 26000 people died in what he termed as “civil conflict” than the figure of three million killed mentioned by the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. To quote a report on Bangladesh by the International Crisis Group on Bangladesh( Report no. 121) Islamists, especially the Jamaat-e-Islami Party, are often accused of siding with Pakistanis, joining in genocide and allegedly actively assisting massacres, especially targeted killing of intellectuals in Dhaka in the last weeks. The same report states that as early as April 1971 US officials protested their governments support for West Pakistan and argued that the overworked term genocide is applicable. Perhaps, one of the most telling accounts of Jammats' collaboration during our war of liberation has been given in a book named WITNESS TO SURRENDER by Pakistani Major Siddiq Salim of the anti-liberation role played by Jamaat, Muslim League and Nizam-I-Islam. His book is regarded as a detailed professional account of the war. He wrote that due to the atrocities committed by the occupation army the Bengali population who were not very fond of us before now they hated us bitterly. Hence there was no question of mass cooperation by the Bengalis. Of the collaborators Salik said that the elderly and the prominent among them formed the Peace Committies while the young and able bodied were raised as Razakars to augment the strength of the Pak army who numbered 100000 while the Razakar numbered 50000.

 These days Bangladeshi liberation war heroes, sector commanders, civil society and politicians appear to have reached near unanimity in their demand that Jamaat-e Islami, the political party that collaborated with the Pakistani occupation forces during the war of liberation should be banned and barred from contesting the elections and all those found guilty of crimes against humanity should be tried by a special tribunal. The argument is not only based on acts against humanity perpetrated by them during the war of liberation but also to prevent the incendiary nature of religion-based politics in Bangladesh. It now appears that though the military government in 1976 had repealed the restriction on communal politics imposed by the 1972 Constitution they and successive governments had not repealed the Special Powers Act of 1974, still in force, providing for ban on communal politics and punishment for violation of the SPA.  We should, however, be conscious that the proposed tribunal does not imitate the one that tried Saddam Hussein as many people believe that Saddam was already prejudged to be hanged before the trial even began. Our endeavor should be to have tribunals like the International Criminal Court or the Rwanda Tribunal that would receive international legitimacy. If political parties are meant to strengthen social coordination among different interest groups in order to maximize social benefits then parties like Jamaat that foster dissention and sectarianism among the people should not be allowed political space in the country. If  Bangladesh were to  revert back to secular politics  which was one of the country’s founding principles it would not have to  compromise  its Muslim identity because the great majority of the people are devout Muslims and do practice  religion in their  day to day life and Jamaat never got even two digit popular votes before 2001 elections .

 The claim Bangladesh used to make to be a moderate Muslim country was shattered into pieces by the 17^th August bomb blasts through out the country. What surprised many were the audacity and the ease with which the terrorist acts took place with clock work precision keeping the intelligence and law enforcement agencies completely in the dark. The  incompetence displayed by these agencies or their inability to force the authorities to listen to their advice assuming the agencies had prior knowledge of the bomb blasts because the authorities were reportedly apprehending disturbances by the opposition mourning the thirtieth anniversary of the brutal killing of the Father of the Nation and his family members  is simply incredible. Equally puzzling is the possibility as to why the law enforcement agencies were asked to stand down when nothing untoward happened on the 15^th August. Besides if the serial blasts were planned in mid-April and one of the key planners was in the country from April 17^th to August 20^th and a Kuwaiti based NGO mainly financed the bombings then one must ask the efficacy of employing such a large number of people at huge expenditure presumably to spy upon political opponents instead of on enemies of the state.

 Immediately after the serial blasts both President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, European Commission, and other world leaders condemned the bombings. Being victims of Islamic terrorism themselves the western leaders warned Bangladesh anew of the serious situation prevailing in the country which has called into question the claim of Bangladesh as a moderate Muslim country. However it was not the first time that the foreigners had warned Bangladesh authorities of the incipient and stealthy progress of Islamic extremism in the country. In April 2002 Bretil Linter wrote in the Far Eastern Economic Review that after the fall of Kandahar hundreds of Talibans and al-Qaida fighters had arrived by boat from Karachi to Chittagong. A few months later Time magazine’s Alex Perry provided details of southern Bangladesh becoming “a heaven for Jihadists”. Early this year Eliza Griswold in a piece in The New York Times raised the possibility of Bangladesh giving birth to the next Islamic Revolution. Indian government has been incessant in their allegations of Bangladesh providing safe heaven and materials to the Indian insurgents fighting in the North Eastern India.                  

 Pakistani Intelligence Services (ISI) had been trying to destabilize North Eastern India from Bangladesh from a long time. Early this year Indian Foreign Secretary Shayam Saran in a speech at Delhi warned that India would not ignore her neighbors’ conduct “to allowing the use of their territories for cross border terrorism and hostile activities against India”. Predictably Bangladesh authorities continued to dismiss these allegations. People, however, found it difficult to be totally dismissive of a study conducted by an eminent Bangladeshi economist that corporations run by religious fundamentalists make an annual profit of twelve billion taka every year ten percent of which is spent by the fundamentalists for organizational purposes like carrying out regular party activities, providing remuneration and allowances to about half a million party cadres, and running armed training camps. The number of madrashas in Bangladesh is estimated to be 64000(sixty four thousand) divided into two broad categories—Aliya madrashas run with governmental support and control, and Dars-e-Nizami or Deoband style madrashas who are totally independent. Jamat-e-Islami, founded by Maulana Abu ala Maududi, had grown out of Deoband madrasha system. Jamat from the very beginning was inspired by Ikhwan ul Muslemin or Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt with the aim of bringing about an Islamic revolution and creating an Islamic state. Initially in undivided India Jamat was opposed to the concept of Pakistan. Later, however, when Jamat came to support Pakistan as the Islamic state for the Indian Muslims, Bengali nationalism was totally unacceptable to them. Unsurprisingly therefore Jamat sided with the Pakistani occupation forces in East Pakistan and fought against the war of liberation. Unfortunately successive military governments needing an ideological platform to justify their opposition to Awami League supported and patronized Jamat-e-Islami and today Jamat and another Islamist party are members of a Coalition government in Bangladesh.

 Unfortunately it is generally believed that while politicians can see up to the next election a statesman can see up to the next generation. In the present global construct that is expected to last as long as one can see the Muslim countries and the Muslim Diaspora in the developed countries would continue on their path of progressive alienation from the mainstream of the society they live in. For the crimes committed by a few, coincidentally belonging to the same religion, most of the Muslim communities, unless living in a cluster of countries like the Arabs, would  face tremendous odds in every sphere of life. If a Muslim is asked to change his/her religion just because of the difficulties being faced on account of religion differential then the answer would be a resounding  negative, and would possibly make the victim more devout as a form of revolt against inequity. The British Ministers were instructed not to use the phrase “war on terror” even while discussing terrorism. Intelligent as they are it was not for nothing that the British had ruled the waves and had established the greatest empire where the sun never set. In the ultimate analysis  till inter-faith dialogue becomes an essential part of global discourse and the prejudiced among the West become more adaptable and publicly dissociate themselves from historian Niall Ferguson’s fortress mentality of the rich and powerful living in a secluded world in this age of globalization, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations would continue to haunt mankind and Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” would remain a dream.