Hefazat-e-Islam’s threat of
civil war in Bangladesh: Political Islam is on the march, but where is
the moderate Islamic narrative?
Based on the
author's contribution as a panellist in the release of Visiting Research
Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Frances Harrison’s
Report "Political Islam and the Elections in Bangladesh" released at
Senate Hall, University of London, on 30 September, 2013
By Sultan Shahin, Editor, New Age Islam
5 November 2013
According to news
reports in Bangladesh press radical Islamist group Hefazat-e Islam has
warned the country of a civil war if the government goes ahead with its
plan to control Qaumi madrasas like state-funded Alia madrasas. “We
won’t allow Qaumi madrasas to be controlled by the government. Lakhs of
people will be killed if anyone tries to control Qaumi Madrasa,” Hefazat
Ameer Shah Ahmed Shafi told a press conference in Chittagong on October
27. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina , however, said on November 4 that her
government wants to finalise the Qaumi Madrasah Education Policy in
consultation with all concerned, including Ulema-Mashayekh and Islamic
scholars to make Qaumi Madrasah education more suited to the modern
times.
Regardless of the
merits of the case one gets a sense from Hefazat-e Islam threatening
civil war in which "lakhs of people will be killed" as well as the
events surrounding the "sudden" emergence of Hefazat that Political
Islam is on the march in Bangladesh. A creeping radicalisation of the
society is going on. Unimpeded. No organised effort is being made to
check its growth in the only way it can be checked – with a
counter-narrative of moderate, mainstream Islam. Bangladesh has the
reputation of a moderate Islamic country which said NO to Two-Nation
Theory and put its ethnic, linguistic identity above its religious one.
Spiritual, mystical
side of Islam is not much in evidence, however, today, in Bangladesh as
also in many other parts of the Muslim world.
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