“Mullahs Are Coming”! Cry Wolf In Bangladesh
By Taj Hashmi
03 March, 2010
Countercurrents.org
A leading newspaper of Bangladesh, Daily Star, in its Weekly Magazine on February 26 2010 came up with a cover story, “Crime in the Name of Belief”. It is about recent caning of three poor women by village elders backed by mullahs in Bangladesh for their (alleged) commission of adultery. The rest of the story is about similar violations of women’s rights with impunity in the 1990s. Interestingly, it also displays the recent photo of a village elder in police custody for caning a woman through a salish or informal village court. So far so good. Nevertheless, what is alarming is the demonizing of Bangladesh as an Islamist country or on the verge of becoming one. A dramatized and imaginary image of a village woman being stoned by men appears on the cover of the magazine; as if to portray stoning of women for committing adultery is in vogue in the country!
Although Islam does not sanction stoning to death for any crime, including adultery, this is the popular belief due to the prevalence of stoning among certain Islamist countries. While village elders and vested interest groups with poor and compliant mullahs’ backing resorted to one or two symbolic stoning (no one was ever stoned to death) in the 1990s; no one has been ever stoned in the country during the last decade and a half. Consequently one wonders as to why this outrageous distortion of reality is being sold as “Crime in the Name of Belief”. One wonders as to why some people see the hidden hands of omnipresent Islamists pulling the invisible string to turn Bangladesh into a “Taliban State”.
Political Islam or Islamism is not a new phenomenon in world history. However, ever since the “least expected” Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the subsequent taking over of the country by Ayatollah Khomeini, the specter of Islamism is haunting the world. The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 1996 gave a further shock to the world. Meanwhile, since the end of the Cold War, Islamism has been ascending as an alternative to capitalism, democracy and “dying” communism. Since almost all Muslim-majority countries are former colonies, the Islamic backlash is a postcolonial retaliation against former colonial masters and their “friends”. This coincides with the rise of neo-conservative Islamophobia in the West. Thanks to the Islamophobes’ and their “ex-Muslim” clients’ concerted efforts, the gulf between the two worlds – Muslim and Western – has become wider.
The catastrophic 9/11 was the last straw on the camel’s back. Henceforth academics, politicians, journalists and laymen in the West started coming up with their own views and arguments on everything Islamic or Muslim; sometimes reflecting their wisdom and scholarship, but mostly their educated guess, ignorance and built-in prejudice against everything Islam and Muslim stand for. These academics, journalists, analysts and observers not necessarily represent the official policy of any country in the East or West. They have been attacking not only the religion and its adherents, Prophet Muhammad and the Holy Quran as obscurantist and promoters of terrorism with impunity; they have also been portraying several Muslim-majority countries as “promoters of terrorism” or “on the verge of staging an Islamist revolution”. Bangladesh is no exception in this regard.
Bangladesh is full of tragedies and ironies. Due to gross mismanagement and rampant cronyism, soon after the independence in 1971, average Bangladeshis started losing faith in Socialism and Secularism, two of the state-ideologies along with Nationalism and Democracy. Military rulers who ran the country up to 1990, taking full advantage of people’s disillusion with so-called socialism and secularism, “Islamized” the country, the constitution and the polity. Soon Islamist obscurantist forces, which had been defeated but not destroyed after 1971, thanks to the patronage of military and civilian rulers from the major political parties including the BNP and Awami League (AL), re-emerged in full vigor at every level.
Meanwhile, side by side with constructive writings and movements against political Islam by human rights and feminist activists in the country, some ultra-radical activists started a vicious campaign not only against Islamism but also against everything Islam and Muslims represented. Very much in tune with Salman Rushdie, Ibn Warraq, Daniel Pipes and their ilk, Taslima Nasrin emerged as the most radical and controversial Islamophobe in the 1990s. Despite some of her very constructive writings, she started attacking Islam right and left through her prose and poems, essays and fictions. Her malicious writings were / are full of lies and half-truths, reflecting her prejudice against Islam. It seems the prospect of becoming a celebrity overnight as a “victim of Islam” with the blessings of Islamophobes everywhere (which she got aplenty) motivated her most to write against Islam. The aftermath of her ridiculous portrayal of Bangladeshi Muslims as anti-Hindu bigots in her novelette Lajja (or Shame) in 1994 is now history.
Since the 1990s there has been a surge in both Islamism and Islamophobia globally. In 1991 for the first time in the history of Bangladesh, Jamaat-i-Islami, the vanguard of Maududi’s undemocratic “Islamic State” played the decisive role in forming the BNP-led government under Khaleda Zia. Soon Bangladesh witnessed the rise of several Islamist outfits, some with millennial programs to wage total war of nihilist destruction. While Bangladesh has been going through a turbulent phase, the arch rivals BNP and AL not only resorted to vilifying each other as “anti-Bangladesh”; but they have been also competing against each other to gain more credibility as “Islam-loving” by coaxing various obscurantist
Islamist entities. AL’s signing an MOU with Islamist Khilafat Majlis in 2006 may be mentioned in this regard; the AL agreed in writing to introduce Shariah law once elected to power jointly with the Khilafat Majlis. However, at the end of the day, BNP emerged as “the winner” in gaining more Islamist support forcing the AL to emerge as the “only champion” of secularism and democracy.
As fear-mongering brings rich dividends by undermining political (social and economic) rivals, we also witness crude to not-so-subtle display of hate-crime among politicians and their supporters in the over-polarized polity of Bangladesh. During President Clinton’s visit in early 2000, as per Bangladesh government’s advice, he had to cancel his scheduled trip to a village not far from Dhaka as the highway was supposed to be “infested” with Islamist terrorists, “beyond the control” of Bangladeshi armed forces. One month after 9/11, we noticed colored posters in Dhaka with photos of Bin Laden and Khaleda Zia together, portraying them as “friends” on the eve of the parliamentary Elections in 2001.
One wonders who resorted to such cry wolf methods without any qualms about tarnishing the image of Bangladesh and portraying a major political party as pro-al Qaeda. This was done more vigorously during the height of HUJI-JMB terrorist activities in the recent past. Within hours after the killing of 57 army officers by border security (BDR) troops in February 2009, sections of the media, civil society and AL smelt Islamist hands behind the carnage; while the court did not find any political motive or Islamist hand behind the killing. This finger-pointing was part of the cry wolf technique to discredit the rival BNP and its Islamist allies.
Meanwhile, neither Islamophobes nor Islamists have been sitting idle. Nine-Eleven added a new dimension to the quest for the “New World Order” by liberal democrats, Islamists, erstwhile communists and the marginalized others. Islamophobes and proponents of the unipolar world came up with vitriolic literature and propaganda against Islam and Muslims, some scholars rightly depict as the rise of “Neo-Orientalism” in the West. Side by side with the rise of Islamophobia in the West, there has been tremendous growth in Westophobia among Muslims. One is not sure, if this is what Huntington foresaw as the “Clash of Civilizations”! Then again, as there are self-deprecating rabid Westophobes in the West; the Muslim World, including Bangladesh, is not free from self-denouncing admirers of the West and “Neo-Orientalism”.
What is distressing is the prevalent culture of hate and mistrust between “liberal-democratic-secular” and “Islam-loving-conservative” people in Bangladesh. The problem is further compounded by the mutual name calling and portrayal of political rivals as “Enemies of Islam” or “Friends of Bin Laden”. The Star Magazine’s portrayal of “Islamists’ stoning women in the countryside” could further widen the gap in the divided polity of Bangladesh. One may mention ill-informed or biased Western journalists’ biased writings in this regard. Bertil Lintner, Eliza Griswold, Alex Perry and Selig Harrison have not been helpful in understanding the real issues in Bangladesh. Again, they have ardent admirers among sections of Bangladeshi intellectuals. Since a picture tells a thousand words, the Star Magazine’s dramatized image of a Bangladeshi woman being stoned is very damaging to the image of Bangladesh. This portrayal of the country, unfortunately lends support to Lintner’s infamous article which in 2002 portrayed Bangladesh as “a cocoon of terror”, ripe for an Islamist “revolution”.
