When intolerance marches to religious extremism

 

Muslims protest against a possible move to change status of State Religion Islam in the Constitution at Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. (Photo: AFP)

On July 1 Bangladesh marked the 4th anniversary of a black day, but it passed silently as the nation continues to shiver under the spell of the Covid-19 pandemic.

On the fateful evening of 2016, five local extremists, linked with global terror outfit Islamic State (IS), barged into a café in capital Dhaka and opened fire, killing 20 guests, mostly foreigners.

The worst terror attack in Bangladesh's history was the culmination of a deadly campaign by homegrown Islamic extremists since 2013. The campaign left some 50 people dead, including atheist bloggers, liberal writers, publishers and academics, LGBT activists, religious minorities, and foreigners. Dozens of atheist bloggers and writers fled to Europe and America following death threats.

It was a lethal blow to Bangladesh's long-held image as a liberal Muslim country, and its economic and political fallout threatened the political future of ruling Awami League.

The government response was heavy-handed. Some 50 leaders and operatives of extremist outfits were eliminated in a series of police raids, and dozens were arrested and put on trial in the following months. Amid this massive crackdown, extremist outfits almost broke down.

On the other hand, political and non-political Islamists were fought on two fronts.

First, the leadership of Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest Islamist party and long-time opponent of Awami League, were put on trial, leading to executions and jailing by War Crimes Tribunals, for their crimes against during 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. The party is gasping for survival because of its weak organization, infighting, and lack of influential leaders.

Awami League was also successful in neutralizing some top radical Islamic groups like Hefazat-e-Islam (Protectors of Islam) allegedly by buying out their leaders.

In 2013, Hefazat organized a rally of half of million Muslims in Dhaka to demand a strict blasphemy law and execution of atheist bloggers for defaming Islam. The rally turned violent as protesters attacked vehicles, shops and clashed with police, leaving dozens dead and scores injured.

Four years since the café attack, has Bangladesh overcome religious extremism? Not really.

Three recent incidents show that extremism is alive and active in the naiton's social psyche, and the efforts to uproot it by brute force and political tact have failed.

Repatriation of the Rohingya: Real deal or mind game?

Rohingya Muslims enter Shahporir Dwip Island in Bangladesh after crossing the Naf River on Sept. 13, 2017 to escape a military crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine State. The Rohingya issue remains a thorny political and diplomatic problem between the neighboring countries. (Photo by Stephan Uttom/ucanews.com)    

The failed attempt to send 150 refugees out of over one million currently residing in overcrowded camps in Cox's Bazar back to Rakhine State in Myanmar was the first concrete step for their repatriation.

The problem is that none of those in the first batch of 2,260 refugees due to be sent home were willing to go. Most of them responded by fleeing their temporary shelters and going into hiding. Others held daylong protests opposing the repatriation move.

Dhaka has been working enthusiastically to return the Rohingya to Myanmar but the deal has been delayed several times after a repatriation deal was signed in January of this year.

The first deal, inked without any third party involvement, sparked an international outcry.

Bangladesh, one of the world's most densely populated and impoverished nations, was forced to sign the deal as it creaks under the weight of domestic pressures including a shortage of resources. Finding more resources to feed some one million refugees has invited a backlash from many Bangladeshis.

Yet the deal failed to defuse the mounting international criticism of Myanmar's handling of the crisis. It did not include third party oversight and, importantly, lacked any input from those at the center of the crisis — the Rohingya.

That being said, none of the deals signed so far have taken into account the key concerns and demands of the Rohingya, including calls for justice over the atrocities they have suffered, the return of their property, reparations for the damage done, and the right to citizenship in Myanmar.

No relief for minorities in Bangladesh as crisis looms

In some senses the term "minority" is disparaging as it denotes the weakness or powerlessness of a group. It also indicates that a group is inferior to another party and instills in that group a perpetual inferiority complex while implying it can expect to be further neglected and marginalized.

Yet being in a minority for many people and groups is an everyday reality, be it in a religious, ethnic, socio-economic or political sense.

Bangladesh has two major groups of minorities — religious and ethnic — who are visibly more weak and powerless, inferior and disenfranchised than the economically, politically and numerically dominant Muslim majority. 

Rohingya repatriation plan not sustainable

Plan to send refugees back to Myanmar lacks foresight as they are still unwelcome in Rakhine State (Photo: Stephan Uttom/ucanews.com)

The world's most unloved people, the most persecuted, the godforsaken — call the Rohingya Muslims by whatever name you prefer.

Those born in Rakhine State in Buddhist-majority Myanmar are unwanted in their place of birth and equally unwelcome in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

They seem like left-out pages of history, as they cannot call the place they were born "home" in any true sense of the word despite their historical presence there being enshrined in the 2,000-year-old Arakan kingdom (located where Rakhine now lies) as early as the 8th century. 

What can Pope Francis and Bangladesh achieve from upcoming trip?

Pope Francis’s apostolic journey to Bangladesh (Nov. 30-Dec. 2) is highly expected to be welcoming, joyful and peaceful, unlike his somewhat prickly trip to ethnically and religiously divided Myanmar days before.

Francis will be the third pontiff to visit the Muslim-majority nation. 

Bangladesh impunity gives minorities little chance of justice

A man walks past the burned-out home of a Hindu family in this file photo (Photo by Antuni David)

It hurts every time I hear about violence against minorities, be it last week’s attack on Hindus by Muslims in the Comilla district, or persecution of Muslims by radical Buddhists in Myanmar.

Perpetrators no doubt have their own compelling reasons to pound on small and powerless groups of people – land disputes, religious bigotry, political conspiracy, ethnic conflicts or blasphemy – but nothing can justify violence as a tool for settling problems. The issue is doubly shameful for a multi-religious nation like Bangladesh with a long history of secular culture.

In most parts of Bangladesh, Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Buddhists mix easily. While Muslims account for 90 percent of the population, most follow a moderate form of Islam that allows all religions to come together to celebrate religious and national festivals. A sense of interfaith harmony is woven into the social fabric.

But, this is not the whole picture. For decades, many Hindus have struggled for survival amid attacks and pogroms by Islamic fundamentalist groups, political parties and governments. Police and the judiciary have often responded with apathy, thereby emboldening the perpetrators.

The severity of the situation can be seen in the statistics. Major attacks on Hindus, who from partition in 1947 onwards were depicted as enemies of the state, peaked in the 1971 liberation war, when some 70 percent of the three million people killed were Hindu. Numbers reduced dramatically: in 1947, Hindus accounted for 30 percent of the country’s 42 million people, but today they account for only 9 percent of an estimated 160 million.

Their broad support for the Awami League government has only added to perceptions among Islamists that they were enemies of the dominant religion. In 2001, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its Islamist ally, the Jamaat-e-Islami Party took over from the Awami League and launched a series of offensives against Hindus. Pledges by the Awami League, on its return to power in 2009, to bring the perpetrators of the killings to justice have never been fulfilled.

The shrinking of Bangladesh’s Hindu population has much to do with the exodus of entire communities. “Minorities never want to leave the country, but they have been forced to leave,” said Rana Dasgupta, a Hindu lawyer and secretary of the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council.

They are not the only minority to suffer, however. Christian churches were vandalized in 1998, and in 2001 an Islamic militant group bombed a Catholic church in the Gopalgonj district during Sunday mass, killing 10. The mastermind of the attack was detained and interrogated but not prosecuted.

Buddhists too have been hit by attacks. In September 2012, a Muslim mob angered by an apparently blasphemous Facebook image allegedly posted by a Buddhist man destroyed about 100 Buddhist homes and 30 temples in the Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar districts. Police detained 250 people but again no prosecutions were made.

Violence against Bangladesh minorities continues unabated, largely because of a culture of impunity against attackers and the failure of legal mechanisms to deliver justice to victims. Tribal groups have been forced to leave the country en masse as the perennial victims of land grabs and violence, with no recourse to compensation. Elements of the government apathetic towards minority rights give their tacit support, and this seeps into the courtroom, where justice is rarely delivered.

Minority leaders are growing more vocal about rights, and campaign for special provisions to protect their communities. They have called on the government to formulate a law to protect minorities from future violence, to create 60 reserved seats in parliament and to transfer cases of violence against minorities to a fast-track court that can resolve them quickly.

It’s time to take these into consideration. The rights of minorities need protecting, and the culture of impunity that allows their tormenters to walk free must end. Failure to do so would be a national disgrace – after all, a nation’s excellence depends on how well it treats its most vulnerable members.

For original opinion piece click Bangladesh impunity gives minorities little chance of justice  

A bad example doesn’t make a bad religion

Recently, I picked a war of words with one of my close friends over his derogatory remarks on Islam. “Not all Muslims are bad people, but Islam is a religion with wrong principles,” he said to my utter disgust.

We were talking about widespread corruption and other social vices in Bangladesh and trying to find out their socio-historic roots. One of the discussion topics was the recent attack on a Buddhist community here, by an angry Muslim mob.

Hundreds of years ago lower caste Hindus converted to Islam en masse, largely to escape injustice and torture by the upper class in a society heavily based on social caste system. My friend says the decision to embrace Islam was wrong.

“No religion is inherently bad, because every religion teaches people to be good,” I said, but he didn’t change his stance. He countered by saying he had read Qu’ran and found its teaching ‘unacceptable’.

I tried to find some practical reasons behind his prejudice and misconceptions.

My friend has been a non-practicing Catholic for a long time, since even before we met four years ago; he was born in a Catholic parish to a Catholic father and Protestant mother. The family moved to a predominantly Muslim area due to his father’s job and he grew up in that area.

There was no Catholic church nearby, only a small evangelical Protestant church with about a hundred believers. Most of the children he knew were Muslims and some of them treated him like a crow among peacocks. So, he grew into adulthood hating Muslim, but also with ignorance about his own religious faith.

Then, a few months ago, his world came crashing down when a bad road accident left his right leg smashed. Most people didn’t think he would walk again, and he didn’t think so either, but he made it within six months. It was around then that he started believing ‘God does exist’!

But the more he turned to the Church, the more critical he became about Islam and Muslims.
While my friend’s case has unique aspects, most Christians in the country share the same views on Islam.

Taking sporadic cases of injustice and torture by opportunist Muslims, most Christians vilify the whole Muslim world. Is that fair?

Original Post: A bad example doesn’t make a bad religion