The extremists began by claiming control of women’s body.
In the political vacuum that emerged after uprooting the Bangladesh ruling leader, religious fundamentalists in a city announced that young women could no longer play football. In the second, he forced the police to free a man who had harassed a woman in public to not cover her hair, then wrapped her in a garland of flowers.
Followed more brazen calls. At a rally in the capital Dhaka, the protesters warned that if the government did not punish anyone who disrespects Islam, they would execute with their hands. After days, an illegal group carried out a large march, seeking an Islamic Khalifa.
As Bangladesh tries to rebuild its democracy and make a new future chart for its 175 million people, a streak of Islamist extremism that had long been lurked under the country’s secular facade, bubbling on the surface.
In the interview, representatives of many Islamist parties and organizations – some of which were banned earlier – clarified that they were working to push Bangladesh in a more radical direction, a change that has been given very little attention outside the country.
The Islamist leaders are emphasizing that Bangladesh creates a “Islamic government” who punishes people who insult Islam and “Vinay” – apply vague concepts that give way to vigilance or democratic rule in other places.
Political spectrum officials who were drafting a new constitution admitted that the document was likely to leave secularism as a defined feature of Bangladesh, replaced it with pluralism and resumed the country with more religious lines.
The radical turn is particularly harassing women students who helped to exclude the country’s oppressive Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
He expected to change his one-party rule with a democratic openness that adjusts the diversity of the country. But now they find themselves competing against a religious populistism that leaves women and religious minorities, in which, including Hindus and followers of the small sects of Islam, especially weak.
“We were at the forefront of protests. We preserved our brothers on the road,” 29 -year -old Sheikh Tasnim Feroz EMI said, Graduate Sociology of Dhaka University. “Now after five, six months, the whole thing turned around.”
Critics say the interim government, led by 84 -year -old Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, has not sufficiently pushed back against extremist forces. He accuses Mr. Yums of being soft, lost in mourning of democratic reforms, affects the struggle and unable to clarify a clear vision because extremists take more public places.
Their lieutenants describe a delicate balance act: they should protect free speech and right to protest after years of powerism, but doing so gives an opening for extremist demands.
The police, who was largely deserted after Ms. Hasina’s fall and was demorla, could not keep the line now. The Army, which has picked up some policing duties, is growing rapidly with the interim government and the student movement, which wants to justify officers for previous atrocities.
What is happening in Bangladesh, which shows a wave of fundamentalism consuming this region.
Afghanistan has become an extreme ethnic-religious state, which deprives women of the most basic freedom. In Pakistan, Islamist extremists have increased their will through violence over the years. In India, a Hindu right -wing wing has reduced the traditions of secular democracy of the country. Myanmar has been caught by Buddhist extremists while overseeing a campaign of ethnic cleaning.
Nahid Islam, a student leader who was a government minister in the interim administration of Bangladesh before going away recently to lead a new political party, admitted that “fear” would slip to extremism.
But they hope that despite the change in the Constitution, democracy may be a displacement for cultural diversity and religious extremism. “I don’t think a state can be built in Bangladesh that goes against the basic values,” he said.
Some point to a Bengali culture with a deep tradition of art and intellectual debate. Others have hope in the size of the country’s economy.
Women are so integrated in Bangladesh economy – 37 percent In formal labor force, one of the highest rates in South Asia is that any attempt to bring them back home can lead to a backlash.
Extremist forces are trying to push their way into the picture after 15 years, in which Ms. Hasina suppressed her and made her happy.
He ran a police kingdom, which broke on the Islamist elements, which also included the mainstream that could create a political challenge. At the same time, he tried to win the religious conservatively of Islamist parties by allowing thousands of irregular Islamic religious seminars and putting $ 1 billion towards the construction of hundreds of mosques.
With Ms. Hasina’s departure, small extremist organizations that want to raise the system perfectly, and more mainstream Islamist parties that want to work within the Democratic system, seem to be converging a more conservative Bangladesh’s shared target.
The largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, sees a big opportunity. The party, which has significant commercial investment, is playing a long -term game, analysts and diplomats said. Although this is unlikely to win the expected election at the end of the year, the party is expected to discredit mainstream secular parties.
Jamaat general secretary Mia Golam Parwar said that the party wanted an Islamic welfare state. The nearest model, in its mixture of religion and politics, is Türkiye, he said.
“Islam offers moral guidelines for both men and women in terms of behavior and morality,” said Mr. Parvar. “Within these guidelines, women can participate in any profession – sports, singing, theater, judiciary, military and bureaucracy.”
In the current vacuum, however, local level men are coming up with their interpretations of Islamic rule.
In the agricultural city of Taraganj, a group of organizers decided to hold a football match between two teams of young women last month. The goal was to provide entertainment and motivate local girls.
But as preparations were going on, Ashraf Ali, the leader of a Town Mosque, announced that women and girls should not be allowed to play football.
Sports organizers usually announce a game details by sending loudspeakers tied to rickshaws around the city. Mr. Ali sent people to not attend, by sending his own speakers.
On 6 February, when the players were converting into their jersey in classes, the local officials were converting to the dressing room, holding a meeting about the game. Mr. Ali announced that he would “become a martyr rather than permission for the match,” said Sirjul Islam, one of the organizers.
The local administration announced the cancellation of the game and placed the area under the curfew.
22 -year -old Tasma Akar, who traveled by bus by bus to play in the match, said that he had seen “a lot of cars, army and police”, who told the players that the match was closed.
Ms. Akara said that this was the first time she faced such protest while playing football in her decade.
“I am a little afraid now what could happen,” he said.
The organizers carried out a women’s match a few weeks later in the presence of dozens of security forces. But as a precaution, he asked young women to wear stockings under their shorts.
With the incredible hazards of the preacher, the organizers said they were not sure they would take risks again.
During an interview, the leader of the mosque, Mr. Ali, proudly said: He had disputed some worldly. In a rural area like Taraganj, he said, female football contributes to “indecent”.
The women’s game was only their latest reason. Over the years, he has campaigned and petitioned against Ahmadiyya, which is a long -lived minority Muslim community, trying to get his 500 members out of his territory.
A mob was attacked by a mob at the place of worship of Ahmadiyya that Ms. Hasina’s government collapsed, part of a national wave of anarchy that targeted minority religious places, especially of Hindus. The Ahmadiyya community continues to live in fear; The attendance in his prayer hall has shrunk by about half.
They are not allowed to rebuild the destroyed symbol of the hall or transmit their calls for prayer from loudspeakers. Mr. Ali removed any responsibility for violence. But the preaching of campaigners like him continues to abolish Ahmadiyya Hatics, which needs to be expelled.
“The public is respectable,” said Akam Shafiqul Islam, president of the local Ahmadiyya chapter. “But these religious leaders are against us.”
