September 13, 2013
M. Serajul Islam
The 15th amendment has
re-established secularism in the Bangladesh Constitution. Yet it has left
provisions in the Constitution that are based on Islam and conflict with
secularism, intact. For instance, Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim or “in the name of
God, the Compassionate, the Merciful”, Islam as the state religion and the
right to form religion based political parties are still in the Constitution
even after secularism has been made one of the four state principles. The
country’s secular forces have strongly urged the Government to delete these Islamic
provisions and demanded that Jamaat be banned to resolve this conflict.
The government has not shown any
inclination to ban Jamaat. It has also not shown any interest in deleting the
other Islamic provisions because it knows it could do so only at its peril. In
fact, far from drawing the line between Islam and politics, the Prime Minister
and senior leaders of the Awami League (AL) have been accusing the
BNP/Jamaat/Hefazat as enemies of Islam because they are aware that using the
force of Islam would help them achieve their political objectives. In recent
times, the Prime Minister and AL leaders have accused the BNP/Jamaat/Hefazat of
committing the worst possible act against Islam. They have accused them of
burning the holy Koran “in thousands.” The Prime Minister and her party leaders
are thus knowingly using Islam to turn the people against the BNP/Jamaat and
Hefazat.
Religion and politics
Are the Government leaders guilty
of violation of the Constitution that prohibits using and arousing the
religious sentiments of the people to achieve political ends following the
re-establishment of secularism in the Constitution? Yes, they are. The ruling
party leaders, in fact, are guilty of committing the same unconstitutional acts
that they regularly accuse the opposition political parties of committing. They
are fanning hatred against the opposition by appealing to the religious
sentiments of the people. The ruling party is using Islam to turn the people
against the BNP/Jamaat/Hefazat after the three had used Islam to push it into a
political corner in the country’s politics. Thus, the Constitution and its
provisions and spirit notwithstanding, both the ruling party and opposition are
liberally using Islam for their respective political objectives.
The AL leaders are using Islam to
get out of a corner where they find themselves as a result of the Shahabag
Movement that led the opposition to accuse the ruling party of taking stand
against Islam. It looked almost certain that the BNP was about to become
history when the Shahabag movement exploded and turned the country’s politics
on its head. The Awami League cleverly owned the movement that should have been
an anti-government one because it was the government that had messed up the
trials of the war criminals upon which the youth had gathered at Shahabag. In
fact, in the early days of the Shahabag movement, also called the Gonojagoron,
the BNP was at a loss about what to do; whether to support the Shahabag
movement or go against it as its ownership was taken over by the ruling party.
BNP’s lifeline
In retrospect, the revelation of
the anti-Islamic blogs offered BNP a lifeline at a time when it was sinking
into a political black hole. The Awami League, immersed in the feeling that it
had the BNP in political quicksand, went into denial over the humungous
damaging potentials of the anti-Islamic bloggers among the Shahabag youth. Thus
when Rajiv Haider, a Shahabag youth leader was killed, it embraced him as the
“first martyr of a new liberation war”. It was however not the BNP that saw the
potentials of the anti-Islam blogs first. It was Hussein Mohammad Ershad,
ironically an ally of the ruling party, who saw it first and accused the
Shahabag movement as one of Murtads and infidels. The BNP/Jamaat/Hefazat merely
followed former President Ershad. It was nevertheless the ruling party that
turned the accusations of HM Ershad/BNP/Jamaat/Hefazat into a knot around its
neck by going into denial over the anti-Islam blogs.
The anti-Islam blogs spread like
wildfire. Before the Awami League could realize its mistake in owning the
Shahabag movement and going into denial over the anti-Islam blogs, the Hefazat
emerged on the centre stage of the country’s politics. When it did, it was not
the BNP that went to the Hefazat. After the Hefazat arrived in Dhaka on April 4
to show their numbers and then threatened to come back to Dhaka again on May 5,
it was the ruling party that sent emissaries to the Hefazat. Ministers went to
meet Huzur Shafi and were spurned. When the Hefazat made its outlandish
13-point demand that was a prescription to take Bangladesh back to medieval
times, government ministers assured the Hefazat that the government had already
met many of their demands!
The government failed to win over
the Hefazat. The Hefazatis arrived in Dhaka on May 5. It was then that the BNP
awoke to the potentials of the Hefazat in its political game plan to force the
Awami League to accept its demand for elections under a neutral caretaker
government. It also made what was a big mistake. It spurned the ruling party’s
offer for talks and served it a 48-hour ultimatum to step down. That did not
happen. The million plus Hefazatis who had parked at Shapla Chattar and
demanded that they would not go home till the anti-Islamic bloggers were hanged
were sent home running by a two-hours long operation carried at dead of night
of May 5-6 by the Border Guards/RAB/Police.
Shapla chattar mayhem
How many people were killed that night is still unclear. There have been wild numbers from the opposition of many thousands against government’s claim of only a few. The Government has seriously contested Odhikar’s claim that 61 were killed for which the human right organization’s chief is now in jail and is being held there without bail. The controversy over how many were killed that night notwithstanding, the news that spread across Bangladesh was that many Hefazatis were in fact victims that night. What was damaging for the ruling party was the fact that ordinary folks all over Bangladesh believed that the supporters of Hefazat were killed in the cause of Islam.
How many people were killed that night is still unclear. There have been wild numbers from the opposition of many thousands against government’s claim of only a few. The Government has seriously contested Odhikar’s claim that 61 were killed for which the human right organization’s chief is now in jail and is being held there without bail. The controversy over how many were killed that night notwithstanding, the news that spread across Bangladesh was that many Hefazatis were in fact victims that night. What was damaging for the ruling party was the fact that ordinary folks all over Bangladesh believed that the supporters of Hefazat were killed in the cause of Islam.
The news spread by word of mouth as
the million plus Hefazatis returned home to tell their story. For this, the
ruling party must blame its over-zealous secular activists who under estimated
the strength of Islam in the country. It must also blame itself for its failure
to realize the potentials of the anti-Islamic blogs. It had formed a Committee
to look into the anti-Islamic blogs after there was a national outcry over it
but belatedly when the damage was done and the ruling party was caught on the
wrong side of Islam in the perception of the public. The Committee has never
submitted its report although the government blamed Jamaat for writing those
blogs! After a few flip flops that damaged its credibility on Islam, the AL led
government arrested four Projonmo leaders, gave them bail and only recently
said that their trial would start in November.
Therefore, the ruling party, for
its own mistakes, is today confronted with an issue that is growing into one
more damaging than many other issues it faces as national election draws close,
issues like the Padma Bridge, Hallmark, Destiny, share market scam, law and
order, etc. The ruling party is facing the dangerous prospect of being
perceived among the people as a political party that has issues with Islam. To
state that the BNP has pushed the Awami League to such a predicament would be
giving the party credit it does not deserve although it goes without saying
that the BNP would have liked the ruling party to be in such a predicament in
its dream. It is for this reason that the leaders of the ruling party have gone
on the offensive and accusing the BNP/Jamaat/Hefazat as enemies of Islam.
However, in choosing to use the Islam card against the opposition, the AL is
making its predicament worse and sinking more into the political quicksand over
Islam.
Koran burning
It is now repeating it’s mistakes
in blaming the BNP/Jamaat/Hefazat for burning thousands of Korans. It is
fanning religious sentiments in a manner that many are seeing as the most
blatant violation of the use of religion for achieving political ends. It is
also showing disrespect for the country’s judicial process for which it blames
the opposition regularly. The AL led government has already filed a case in the
court against Jamaat for burning Korans during the disturbance in front of
Baitul Mukarram on May 5. The case is now pending and therefore, public
discussion on it is not only against the Constitution; it is clearly a case of
contempt of court. The more serious matter is the conclusion that people are drawing from the
Koran burning accusation. It has been quite some time that the ruling party has
spun the accusation of Koran burning against BNP/Jamaat/Hefazat.
So far, there is no outcry among
the people against the three that the AL wanted and it is unlikely that they
would. The people have no love lost for the Jamaat. They agree with the ruling
party over a host of its accusations against the Jamaat. In fact, they would
perhaps not even care if Jamaat were banned as a political party. However, they
are not ready to believe that Jamaat would burn Koran. That accusation against
Hefazat is more unacceptable to the people who know that the Koran is
everything to them. The people also know that this accusation against BNP is
nothing but an absurd political ploy.
In fact, the people outside AL are
unhappy that the ruling party would be accusing fellow Muslims of burning Koran
“in thousands.” They feel it would boomerang on the ruling party for reasons
that the ruling party has not convincingly proven the grave charge.
Unfortunately, the accusation has the potentials to seriously damage
Bangladesh’s national interests that those making it are not even caring to
consider. If news that the Prime Minister has been accusing her fellow citizens
of “burning Korans in thousands” were to spread to the Middle East countries,
as it must have, they would not take the matter lightly. They would not care
who made the accusations and against whom; they would hold it against Bangladesh.
These countries employ millions of
our expatriates who remit billions of US$. Certainly, they would not want to
employ people from a country where the Koran is burnt. It is a wonder how a
ruling party would be so oblivious to such a simple equation in diplomacy and
foreign relations. Since this government came to power, export of manpower to
these countries has declined. UAE has not imported manpower from Bangladesh in
the last 2 years although the demand for manpower of the sort that Bangladesh
could supply has increased greatly. Saudi Arabia, that recently relaxed the
Ikama issue that the government had claimed as a success of its diplomatic
efforts has not worked at all in favour of Bangladesh. The AL led government
has further complicated Bangladesh’s case with the Middle East countries by
bringing the accusation of Koran burning against the BNP/Jamaat/Hefazat.
Political use of religion
The bottom line nevertheless is
that both the ruling party and the opposition are using religion for their
political ends. View expressed by secularists notwithstanding, this is normal
and logical. It happens in all countries; even in USA where the country’s
Constitution prohibits use of religion in politics. In his elections, President
George Bush unashamedly admitted he heard voices from Heaven guiding him to the
White House and openly sought support from Christian fundamentalists for his
political objectives. In next door India, whose Constitution we copied for
giving secularism a place in our Constitution, a party like the BJP that is
based on Hindu fundamentalism and openly espouses Hinduism political ends has
gone to power in the past and waiting in the wings to go to power again.
Therefore, that the political
parties in Bangladesh would use Islam, the religion of the majority of the
people, for political ends is something that no constitutional provision could
prohibit. This is realpolitik. It is now the ruling party that is using Islam
to corner the opposition for political objectives. Unfortunately for the ruling
party, it is falling victim to the very religious sentiments that it is
attempting to raise against the BNP. It is only helping revive in the minds of
the people the fact that it did not take action against those who had
humiliated and disrespected Islam and its Prophet in a manner that even those
who hate Islam profoundly would not dare.
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The writer is a retired career Ambassador and can be reached on email: ambserajulislam@gmail.com
The writer is a retired career Ambassador and can be reached on email: ambserajulislam@gmail.com
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