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August 29, 2006

Bangladesh: Government Condones Islamists' Death Threats

We reported on August 12 that a bomb had been thrown at Rajshahi University by student activists of the Islami Chhatra Shabir (ICS). The group is the student wing of the second largest party in the government's 4-party coalition, Jamaat-e-Islami.

We discussed Jamaat-e-Islami, its history of siding with Pakistan against the Bengali populace during the war of independence which led to Bangladesh seceding from Pakistan in 1971. The Jamaat-e-Islami leader, Motiur Rahman Nizami, ordered the killing of countless Hindus at this time while he was head of ICS, its student wing.

The Jamaat-e-Islami, like its counterpart in Pakistan, seeks to establish sharia rule over Bangladesh, and therefore had a lot in common with the Islamist terrorist group Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). All seven leaders of the JMB's ruling council had links with the Islami Chhatra Shabir and/or Jamaat-e-Islami. On May 29, five members of JMB's ruling council were sentenced for death for killing two judges in a bomb attack in November last year.

We discussed the links between the JMB and the government on August 17, anniversary of the nationwide serial bombings carried out by JMB and its partner Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) whose leader Bangla Bhai was also a member of JMB's ruling council.

The government seems oblivious to the excesses of Jamaat-e-Islami and its vicious student wing, and makes no effort to condemn the violence done in its name.

And again, the fanatics of Islami Chhatra Shabir are making headlines again, this time for threatening the life of a nationally renowned author and man of letters, Hasan Azizul Haq. This man is also a professor at Rajshahi University. What makes the threat so serious is that Islami Chhatra Shabir members already murdered a professor at the same university. Professor S. Taher Ahmed of the Geology & Mining Department had been murdered on February 3. One of the three arrested in the killing claimed that another lecturer at the University, Mahbubul Alam Salehi, had been named as one of those who gave the order for Professor Ahmed to be killed.

Salehi had fled after the murder, but was later arrested. He had been released from bail at the start of this month, and had gone back to the university, guarded by police, to hold a rally. Salehi is head of the local Islami Chhatra Shabir faction at Rajshahi. It was in response to protests against his visit that a homemade bomb was thrown by ICS students, a device which injured two fine arts students.

We also mentioned how on December 24, 2004, another professor from the same Rajshahi University, 65-year old Dr Mohammad Younus (Yunus) of the Department of Economics was brutally murdered by three members of Islami Chhatra Shabir. After being gagged with a towel, Professor Yunus was stabbed in the chest, stomach, head and torso by his assailants. Though carried out by ICS activists, the killing had been ordered by Abdur Rahman, the head of JMB, who is now awaiting a death sentence.

And on Friday November 16, 2003, a Hindu professor at Chittagong in the southeast of Bangladesh was attacked by six members of Islami Chhatra Shabir at his home. Professor Muhuri, principal of the Nazirhat College, was shot through the head, causing his skull to explode (pictured -graphically). The killer who shot him was allowed to escape punishment because of his connections to the government.

Professor Hasan Azizul Haq is only the latest professor to be threatened by Islami Chhatra Shabir, and so far, the Jamaat-e-Islami has failed to say anything about the matter, no arrests have been made, and it is doubtful if any arrests will be made until Haq becomes the victim of a killing.

And what was the lecturer and award-winning author's crime? He had made a speech promoting secularism in education. He made the speech at a seminar on August 21, and on August 24, a rally was held by ICS at the campus of Rajshahi University, in which speakers claimed that the author should either leave the country like Taslima Nasrin, or to die like Professor Humayun Azad.

Professor Azad, the author of 50 books and a supporter of women's rights was brutally attacked by three men armed with butcher's knives outside the Bangla Academy in Dhaka, on February 27, 2004. The attempted murder was ordered by Abdur Rahman, head of JMB, on account of Professor Azad's "blasphemy". The attack did not kill the author and academic, but on August 14 that year, he died in an apartment in Munich.

The students who were calling for the death of Professor Hasan Azizul Haq were fired up by two newspaper reports which had been published in pro-Jamaat dailies, Natun Probhat and Naya Diganta, describing and condemning his calls for secularism to be respected. At the rally, activists disseminated copies of the articles.

Professor Haq claimed that the articles were total concoctions, and bore no resemblance to the actual comments he had made at the August 21 seminar.

The rally had been convened by Zulfikar Nayeem, and those who spoke there included Mahbubur Rahman, Mokhlesur Rahman, Abul Alim and Nomani. They called Professor Haq "Nastik and enemy of Islam", and said he was not welcome on the canvas, and burned an effigy of the renowned author and educationalist.

His most ennerving comment in his speech had been a criticism of the way the government recognised Qawami madrassa degrees, calling such a move "a communal step that demeans the constitution....The state and religion are separate things. The fusion of religion with the mainstream national education and state system can never be accepted. It will be very dangerous for countrymen irrespective of religion."

Shabir said at first that he was not intimidated, and said his speech had concerned education, the state, and secularism, not religion. However, on Sunday August 27 he filed a report with the police at Rajshahi, requesting that he and his family should receive protection.

But Professor Haq was not the only academic and thinker to be threatened by the Islami Chhatra Shabir - also attacked and threatened was Muhammad Zafar Iqbal, head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology in Sylhet, northeast Bangladesh. Zafar Iqbal is also an award-winning science fiction writer, who also holds to the secular model of education in Bangladesh.

Zafar Iqbal studied in Dhaka University and completed his Ph.D. from University of Washington. Later he worked as a scientist at California Institute of Technology and Bell Communication Research. His research area revolves around physics, computer, electronics and fibre optic communication. He designed one of the first Bangla word processors in 1984.

His books are aimed mainly at the young, children and adolescents, and aim to inspire in them an interest in science. His books are popular, and he was won awards for these. He spent 18 years living in the United States before taking up his professorship at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology.

The threats to these two noted educationalists have been roundly condemned, and the Awami League, the main opposition party has stated through its general secretary, Abdul Jalil, that the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Islami Chhatra Shabir have been working to make the country a haven for Islamist militants. Jalil said that the Jammat/Shibir wanted to kill the non-communal, democratic intellectuals, politicians and litterateurs. Jalil demanded the immediate arrest and exemplary punishments of culprits, but in Bangladesh, a nation governed by corruption, and preparing for a general election at the start of next year, such hopes are meaningless. Seventeen prominent individuals signed a statement condemning the threats, and claiming that the government was giving shelter to militants.

The nature of the threats are barbaric. Syed Badrul Ahsan is the executive editor of the Dhaka Courier, and describes how the Islami Chhatra Shabir militants have threatened to slice Professor Haq of Rajshahi University into small pieces, and to cut out Zafar Iqbal's tongue.

Mr Ahsan writes a history of the Jamaat-e-islami and their youth wing ICS from the time when Bangladesh struggled to gain its independence from Pakistan, a struggle which cost 3 million lives. A powerful indictment of the malevolent forces at work within Islamist movements, the article is worth reading. This is just an extract:

Note with how much clarity the fundamentalists have served notice on Muhammad Zafar Iqbal, the academic and writer we all know and respect so avidly. He is a brave man every inch of the way. But even bravery sometimes finds itself in a straitjacket.

Zafar Iqbal has been warned, in no uncertain terms and in manner reminiscent of all those wonderfully scripted murder thrillers produced in Hollywood, that unless he stops spouting secular notions of life, he will have his tongue cut out. What will then happen to that severed tongue has not been spelt out.

So much for democracy, for the right of a person to disagree with another. But whoever said people who have been playing communal politics and have found their niche in organizations like the Jamaat and the Muslim League believe in democratic pluralism?

Way back in 1953, the Jamaat-e-Islami under Abul A'la Maudoodi created mayhem in Lahore, so much so that blood flowed along the streets of the city. And it would not stop until General Azam Khan came along. In those days of Jamaat initiation into the politics of violence, the targets were men of unimpeachable integrity like Sir Zafrullah Khan. No, no one wanted to have his tongue cut out or have his body turned into mincemeat. But he had to be pushed out of Islam because he swore by the Ahmadiyya version of faith.

In the years since then, Maudoodi's followers have come a long way. Some of the best moments of their lives came in 1971 when Golam Azam swiftly made it a point, per courtesy of the Pakistani genocide, to offer assistance to Tikka Khan in the matter of doing away with the miscreants out to destroy Islam and Pakistan in these parts. The miscreants, of course, were seventy-five million Bengalis whose very simple wish was to assert themselves in the politics of their own land.

While the country prepares itself for the general elections, the violence and the threats are going to increase. Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh's main council may all be behind bars, with the majority awaiting hanging, but their footsoldiers remain. And their allies in government, always ready to seize an opportunity, are allowing the activists of Jamaat-e-Islami to run free, intimidating the defenders of freedom of speech, and trampling on the spirit of independence and secularism that first gave birth to Bangladesh.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at August 29, 2006 11:54 PM

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