Prelude to Terror: Crises of Governance and Identity in Bangladesh

Taj Hashmi

The case of Bangladesh is very special. Unlike Muslims in countries in the Islamic heartland, Bengali Muslims throughout history had been syncretistic until their exposure to the anti-landlord (anti-Hindu) and anti-colonial movements and “jihads” in the 19th century. Although “peasants’ Islam” represents the main stream of Islam in Bangladesh, urban Muslim elite’s “great traditions” of Islam have been the main custodians of Islam in the country. Faltering governance in Bangladesh since its emergence in 1971 has reinforced political Islam and Islamism both by default and by design.

It’s noteworthy Bangladeshi Muslims didn’t espouse Jihadism only after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, for the first time. Thousands of Bengali Muslims joined the 19th century Jihad in northwestern India and southern Afghanistan in the 1820s-1850s. Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi (1786-1831) launched his Jihad against the Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh (for his alleged anti-Muslim role) and later his followers fought the British Raj. His Jihadist organization was known as the Jamaat ul-Mujahedeen. Interestingly, the Jamaat ul-Mujahedeen Bangladesh (JMB) is the offshoot or continuation of the same old Jihad waged in the 19th century.

An understanding of Islamism in the country requires an understanding of the gap between what the people have attained since independence and what their secular-nationalist leaders have been promising since long. Of late Bangladesh has come out of the shell of religious tolerance, peace and tranquility; it has been witnessing terrorist attacks, including suicide bombing since the late 1990s. One may impute Islamist resurgence and terrorism in Bangladesh to various indigenous and foreign factors, such as bad governance, the lack of freedom, mass poverty and the widening gap between the rich and the poor.

The post-Cold War obsolescence of communism has made Islam more attractive to Muslim “subalterns” across the board. Interestingly, civil, military, Islamic and quasi-secular elites and large sections of the masses are using Islamism as their ideology in the ongoing conflict of hegemony. Consequently, while the polity remains Islamized culturally and politically, half-baked democracy remains marginalized and sandwiched between various types of Islamism and military rule.

The failure of the “welfare state” under the “national-socialist-secular-democracy” introduced by Sheikh Mujib paved the way for an “Islamic solution” to the problems of bad governance and mass poverty. Mujib’s introduction of the one-party dictatorship in early 1975, which to a large extent was a replica of the Soviet system, struck the last nail into the coffin of his tottering regime.

Meanwhile, exposure to Middle Eastern pre-modern Islamism to millions of Bangladeshi workers had established Islamism as an alternative order at the grassroots. Both the military and civilian rulers exploited Islamism for the sake of legitimacy. The Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion-induced Afghan Jihad of the 1980s accentuated transnational Islamism throughout the Muslim World, including Bangladesh.

Thousands of Bangladeshi Muslim youths who swelled the ranks of Afghan Mujahedeen in the 1980s have been the vanguards of various transnational Islamist terror networks in Pakistan and Bangladesh. In 1976 “Absolute faith in Allah” replaced “Secularism” as one of the four State Ideologies, and in 1988, Islam became the “State Religion”. However, the state-sponsored Islam from above isn’t the main factor behind the rise of political Islam, and Islamist terrorism in Bangladesh.

Due the changed situation of the post-Cold War era, Bangladeshi Muslims felt Muslim and Islam were the punching bags of the West. Very similar to what happened elsewhere in the Muslim World, Bangladeshi Muslims – including Western educated upper classes and their children – became more Islamic, culturally, politically, and spiritually. Meanwhile, Political Islam had emerged as an alternative to Capitalism, while socialism/communism had “died” in most places 1990.

There’s hardly anything surprising about the July 1 terror attack in Dhaka. While, purportedly Islamist terrorists had been killing secular writers, bloggers, and members of the minority communities quite for some time, especially after the Shahbagh Rally had began in early 2013 demanding death penalty for the “War Criminals”. The execution of several Jamaat leaders for their alleged war crime alienated and agitated many Muslims. It’s not unlikely that some of these terrorists are offshoots from Jamaat supporters.

We mustn’t ignore the following facts: a) Thousands of Bangladeshi Muslims have had exposures to the Afghan Jihad, Taliban, al Qaeda, and of late, to the ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Hundreds of Bangladeshi men (and some women) have already joined the ISIS in Syria. b) Marginalised and angry people from higher echelons of society have been swelling the ranks of Islamist terrorists for the last thirty-odd years, across the world. None of the 9/11 terrorists were poor, madrassa- educated people. Almost all the terrorist leaders (with a few exceptions) have been secular-educated engineers, doctors, and technocrats. d) No wonder all the terrorists killed in the Gulshan Attack were from secular- educated upper middle class/rich families.

One of the terrorists who attacked an Eid congregation in Kishoreganj district this Thursday – killed by police – was also a former student of an English-medium private university in Dhaka. Thus contrary to popular assumption, terrorism isn’t a derivative of madrassa education.

In sum, terrorism isn’t all about poverty. It’s not a backlash of the poor, but a weapon of the weak. One doesn’t doubt that they are misguided. Any society, which promotes pre- modern values, glorifies death, not life, and provides no peaceful alternative for change and improvement become a safe haven for terrorism, anarchy, and nihilism. Good governance ensuring equal opportunities and justice at home, and good relationship with neighbouring countries is the only antidote to terrorism, in Bangladesh and beyond.

Dr Hashmi teaches security studies at Austin Peay State University in the US. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Global Jihad and America: The Hundred-Year War Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan (Sage, 2014). Email: [email protected]