Talibanisation Of Bangladesh Gets Real: Will Yunus Be Held Accountable When He Travels To US Next Week?

Fears that Bangladesh is steadily going the way of Afghanistan are turning out to be grimly true.

Apart from the unrelenting attacks on minorities, mostly Hindus, radical Islamists in the impoverished country that is facing a serious balance of payments crisis are also targeting Muslims to force them to adhere to harsh sharia laws. 

Over the past two weeks, radical Islamists have attacked Muslim women in Dhaka, Cox’s Bazar, and some other parts of the country for venturing out in public without a male relative accompanying them or for dressing ‘indecently’ and even for listening to music. 

Islamists have also attacked and demolished shrines like mazars (mausoleums with graves of Muslim holy men) in many parts of the country. They have also stormed Muslim religious establishments and warned clerics and others against playing music, including Sufi devotional music. 

These Islamists also want men to grow beards and adhere to a strict and regressive sharia code of conduct. Their charter of demands mirrors what the Taliban has enforced in Afghanistan. 

What is alarming is that not only have the authorities — the police and even the army — turned a blind eye to the depredations of these Islamists, they also appear to have the silent support of many in Bangladesh. 

Radical Islam has even found new recruits among the educated class with a growing number of professionals like doctors, engineers, lawyers, and university teachers and students, apart from mainstream politicians, advocating the sharia, closer ties with Pakistan, a ban on idol worship, restricting the rights of religious minorities, and propagating Urdu and Arabic. 

Just last week, students of Dhaka University wanted to organise a mass marriage of Hindu girls (all students of the university) to Muslim men. Many Hindu girls were allegedly held hostage and told they would have to get married to Muslim men, many of them their fellow students or ex-students of the university. 

An outrage on social media and complaints and condemnations by many prominent people forced the university authorities to cancel the event. But no action was taken against the organisers. 

That many students of Dhaka University (Bangladesh’s topmost seat of higher education) and the Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET) have become radical Islamists is evident from the sight of Islamic State flags on display outside many departments in these two institutions. 

Additionally, attacks on minorities have continued unabated. A report compiled by the Bangladesh Hindu, Buddhist & Christian Unity Council (the apex body of minority bodies in the country) and released Friday (20 September) documents the numerous attacks on minorities and minority institutions in Bangladesh between 4 August (the eve of Sheikh Hasina’s ouster) and 20 August. 

According to the report — and it is based on official figures — nine people from minority communities were killed, 69 places of worship (temples, monasteries, and churches) were attacked, looted, and destroyed, four women were raped, 915 houses of minority communities were vandalised and torched, 953 business establishments belonging to minorities were looted and burnt, and the lands of 21 Hindu families were taken over forcibly in the 17-day period between 4 and 20 August. 

“These are official figures based on complaints lodged by minorities with the police and army. The actual figure is much higher because most of the complaints were not registered or people were too scared to lodge complaints,” an office-bearer of the minority council told Swarajya. 

Hindu community leaders told Swarajya that since 20 August, attacks on Hindus and other minorities have continued unabated. Many disturbing videos have emerged of abducted Hindu women being forcibly converted to Islam and being married off to Muslim men, of attacks on houses and business establishments owned by Hindus, and of Hindu teachers of schools and colleges and even Hindu government employees being forced to resign by Muslim mobs. 

“There has been no respite for minorities in Bangladesh. Abduction of Hindu girls continues, entire families are being forcibly converted to Islam, and Hindu-owner properties are being encroached on forcibly. The administration is doing nothing. Anti-Hindu rhetoric is on the rise,” said a leader of the Hindu Mahajote. 

The latest attacks are on Chakmas in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), an area that has long been coveted by Muslims of the country. Successive regimes have encouraged Muslims to settle down in the CHT, reducing the indigenous Chakmas to a minority. 

Muslim mobs attacked Chakmas after the latter refused to obey illegal eviction notices served on them by Islamist organisations. 

From Thursday afternoon, frenzied Islamist mobs started attacking the Chakmas and setting their houses and properties on fire after looting them. Videos of Muslim men carrying away household articles and gadgets from Chakma houses and merchandise from shops owned by Chakmas are in circulation. 

The army, which was granted magisterial powers earlier this week in order to empower it to tackle such mob violence, not only refused to help the beleaguered Chakmas but also participated in attacks on them. 

Army soldiers fired on Chakmas who were fleeing for their lives. Videos of army soldiers encouraging the Muslim mobs to attack and loot Chakma houses and shops have also emerged. 

A number of Chakmas, who are mostly Buddhists, are feared to have been killed. Chakmas have been under attack from Islamists for the past few decades. Countless Chakma girls have been abducted, gang raped, trafficked, or forcibly converted to Islam and married off to elderly Muslim clerics. 

Chakma lands have been encroached upon and their properties taken over forcibly by Muslims. Lakhs of Chakmas have fled to India to save themselves.

The latest atrocities on minorities in Bangladesh have not evoked much condemnation and outrage from even the country’s intelligentsia and so-called liberals. 

Instead, the caretaker administration headed by Muhammad Yunus has downplayed the grisly attacks on the country’s religious minorities and termed all reports of such attacks as “highly exaggerated.”

Yunus’ refusal to acknowledge the attacks on his country’s religious minorities and the lack of robust condemnation of these attacks from Bangladesh’s civil society are proof of the steady Islamisation of the country.

Worse still, Yunus has appointed radical Islamists to sensitive posts. For instance, he has appointed a pro-Jamaat-e-Islami lawyer, Tajul Islam, as chief prosecutor of the Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal that was, ironically, set up to try Islamist collaborators of the West Pakistani regime as well as radical Islamists. 

Yunus has also freed many Islamists who had been jailed by the Awami League government for heinous crimes, including attacks on minorities. He has also lifted curbs on Islamists collecting funds and receiving money from overseas. All this is making the Islamists stronger. 

The Talibanisation of Bangladesh poses a grave regional security threat. That is why Yunus must be prevailed on by his handlers in Western countries to stop mollycoddling Islamists and adopt tough measures against them.

Yunus will be travelling to the United States (US) early next week to attend the seventy-ninth session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly. He will be meeting many in the US administration and also officials of some Western nations. 

The US and other Western countries that are backing Yunus must apply pressure on him to reverse his pro-Islamist measures and crack down hard on his country’s radicals. They must force him to protect Bangladesh’s minorities and take measures that will irreversibly weaken the Islamist surge in the country.

The cost of not doing so will be very high for not only South Asia but the rest of the world as well.