An article in the Christian Science Monitor takes a closer look at the 500 bomb blasts that rocked Bangladesh last month:
For years, they gathered in hidden training camps, mosques, and madrassahs, learning how to use weapons and build bombs. In their diaries they scrawled slogans of political alienation. On Aug. 17, their ideology culminated in a series of nearly 500 bomb blasts that shook the nation and killed three people.In the aftermath of the attacks, Bangladesh is confronting a realization long suspected but consistently overlooked: Islamist militant groups have taken firm root here, demonstrating a widespread, highly coordinated, and well-funded network. The government, after consistently denying the threat, recently blamed Jama’atul Mujahedin Bangladesh (JMB), for the attack.
Bangladesh is not supposed to be a breeding ground of extremism. Although one of the world’s poorest countries, it is often lauded as a development success story. Poverty rates have declined, life expectancy is up, and the economy has consistently grown by 5 percent annually for years – above average for most developing nations.
But remarkable development and extremism are not mutually exclusive.
I feel a bit ignorant right now. I didn’t know that the word on the street was that B’desh was considered a “success story.” The only time I ever hear about it in the news is when some Typhoon wipes it out. Seriously, I’ve always felt that it’s one of the most underreported on countries.
Abdur Rahman, the spiritual head of the organization, told the press last year that he admired the Taliban and had traveled to Afghanistan. He claimed his organization had been operating underground since 1998, with the aim of founding an Islamic state. His network was active across the country, he said, with 10,000 trained full-time operatives, and 100,000 part-time activists, funded with a payroll of more than $10,000 a month, a huge sum by Bangladeshi standards.
I’m sorry did he just use “admired” and “Taliban” in the same sentence, and then say that he went to Afghanistan? People are going to start calling for his assassination real soon now.
Abul Barkat, an economist at Dhaka University, says he’s spent the past seven years tracing Jamaat’s growing financial power. What he discovered frightened him. “Their central vision is to capture state power,” he says, adding the party generates almost $200 million in annual profit, according to his analysis of Jamaat-owned businesses, which he says runs the gamut from banks and insurance companies to technology and media concerns. “They are an economy within the economy – a state within a state,” he says, with some profits used to fund militant organizations like JMB.
Holy crap. 200 million in annual profit? That can foment a whole lot of extremism in a country as poor Bangladesh. With that kind of fundraising power I’m not sure why spiritual leader Rahman didn’t audition for this.
Democratic institutions, they say, have been paralyzed by corruption and the enmity between the ruling BNP and the opposition Awami League. Both parties, when not in power, boycott parliamentary sessions and implement nationwide strikes.“Democracy has gone far downhill since it came in 1991,” says William Milam, a former US ambassador to Bangladesh. “Bangladesh is really not a democracy because the government which is elected freely and fairly cannot govern – and that applies to both parties.”
Bangladeshi political observers agree, noting that the two parties immediately accused each other after the Aug. 17 attacks, instead of uniting to condemn it, as many had hoped.
Its frightening how extremism is striking root, even in nations and people considered unlikely in the past. I have 2 friends who are doctors here in the USA, and doing quite well. They are Muslims (from Pakistan and B’desh), and exhibit a schizophrenic attitude to this form of extremism, either looking for a foreign hand or trying to justify these events. I was shocked one day when they commented (if one muslim kills another, that is terrorism) which implied that killing people of other faiths might somehow be justified! If middle class Muslims can be persuaded to think in these terms, the so-called war of civilisations is not far away.
islam is a necessary precondition of islamism. a nation that is 80-90% muslim will have a subset of nutcases. as it is right now it seems clear to me that the central tendency of islam, ie; moderate muslims, is far more tolerant of violent extremists than most broad minded people are willing to credit.
it use an illustration from an analogy that people often make, most of the violent abortion radicals come out of the far right-wing of the christian religion, often reconstructionist calvinism. reconstructionist calvinism is probably the best analogy to islamism in the united states in the christian religion as it wishes to reorient our polity based on god’s law and biblically based statutes. though some of their thinkers, like rj rushdoony, are known outside reconstructionist circles their numbers are probably no greater than tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds) in the united states out of a population of 240 million christians (80% * 300 million).
in contrast, though islamist parties rarely win even plural majorities in muslim names, they often get between 5-15% of the vote. if one considers the analogy with christian reconstructionists than one can understand how the numerical strength of this necessary condition (legalist religious dominionism) can result in the transition of an x number of non-violent islamists toward violent islamism….
islamism isn’t necessarily implied by islam, but islam is a necessary condition for islamism. so it isn’t surprising when you have millions of nuts (assume less than 10% of the 100 million bangladeshi musims) than they have a lot of pull and can organize.
i am explicit with my analogies below. i specified which denominations are equivalent so you can normalize the distributions that way. my use of the spectrum below, and placing certain groups closer to violent terrorists (christian or muslim) is not meant to imply that those groups are involved in a smaller degree of violence, rather, it is to impart the fact that the expectation of a unitarian-univeralist or a congregationalist of becoming a radical anti-abortion terrorist is far lower than that of a nazarene or reconstructionist reformed christian, even though the expectation in both of the latter cases is also rather low.
antibortion radicals* : violent islamists christian reconstructionists** : non-violent islamists fundamentalist christians* : conservative muslims evangelical christians** : moderate muslims moderate christians***** : liberal muslims liberal christians****** : ?
Fundies building a state within Bangladesh is alarming as it is, but on top of that, they are also turning hostile to its neighbour India.
Recently there was heavy firing between India and BDesh forces over fencing project which I think might have started after 2001 incident of clashes
Razib,
That is a very good analysis. Maybe, I could argue on fine points where to place southern baptists, methodists, etc. Overall, it is correct.
My feeling is that Islamic society is under seige, more so than it has been in last 40-50 years.
The Economist has some real telling comparison between anarchists of 19th-20th century to fundamentalism in Islam today a few weeks ago. The only violent Islamists can be defeated is one makes “their cause” unattractive to the masses, it eventually loses all its luster.
Kush
The Economist has some real telling comparison between anarchists of 19th-20th century to fundamentalism in Islam today a few weeks ago. The only violent Islamists can be defeated is one makes “their cause” unattractive to the masses, it eventually loses all its luster.
i’ve toyed with the anarchist analogy myself. i think the key in any case is to shift the “center of gravity” of islam so that the perception of conservative-moderate-liberal changes. i don’t think moderates or even non-violent islamists are happy about islamic terrorism, but they are also not as proactively hostile as they should be.
I think India does a good enough job of antagonising the countries surrounding with the help of islamic fudys.
There are some in the British Muslim Community who are attempting to tackle this mentality but all too few Kishwer Falkner: Where now for the Muslim community? If we are to tackle extremism in our midst, we need to answer some difficult questions
Someone recently interviewed on the BBC news here in the UK stated that the basic problem with the jihadists is “we’re dealing with individuals who have a 7th Century mindset but have access to 21st Century technology”.
My own viewpoint, especially with regards to the rabidly anti-Western/anti-modern/anti-all-non-Muslims “clerics” who whip up so much trouble worldwide (and their like-minded followers), is that we’re essentially dealing with people who are (metaphorically) deaf, blind, suffering from Tourette’s syndrome, and have unfortunately been handed a loaded gun in the form of Islam.
Think about it.
Will the real Unitarian Universalists Mussalmans please stand up? Please stand up. Uhh, anyway… for a cinematic treatment of Islamization of a community check out Silent Waters starring Kiron Kher. Set in a Punjabi village in Pakistan, idyllic village life is interrupted by the introduction of radicals from Karachi (set during Zia’s reign) at the same time Sikh pilgrims have come over across the border to worship. I glibly say Pinjar without the filmi stuff. Beautiful cinematography. Well wriiten. Some real meticulous performances by the actors who played the townsfolk. On Netflix.
Abhi: On B’desh as a success story, someone emailed me this piece today (not sure where it’s from) which also notes the country’s success in reducuing female mortality (at a better rate than other sub-continental countries):
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 7: Among the 177 countries covered by the annual UN Human Development Report, Pakistan ranks at 135 while India ranks 127th and Bangladesh 139th.
The report, released on Wednesday, says that China has climbed 20 places in the human development ranking since 1990 to number 85. It notes modest economic growth in South Asia as against sub-Saharan Africa.
However, according to the report, economic boom and rising incomes in China and India have not helped in cutting child mortality rates in China and among the poor Indian girls.
On the other hand, the report says that poorer countries such as Bangladesh have managed to cut child mortality rates at a faster rate than China and India, showing that higher income alone is not the key to better health and education.
Annual UNDP Human Development Report ranks countries by measuring life expectancy, literacy rates, school enrolment and average income.
The latest report notes that South Asia has less poverty and higher average incomes than Sub-Saharan Africa, but South AsiaÂ’s percentage of underweight women is four times higher and its child malnutrition rate 20 per cent higher.
In India, preferential treatment of boys is undermining the potential for converting growth into human development, the report says.
It says one in every 11 children in India dies before the age of five, and girls between the ages of one and five are 50 per cent more likely to die than boys.
“Girls, less valued than their brothers, especially in India’s northern states, are often brought to health facilities in more advanced stages of illness, taken to less qualified doctors and have less money spent on their health care,”’ the report says.
Pointing out further gender inequality, it says PakistanÂ’s girls account for only 41 per cent of the primary school population. Gender equality will put another two million girls in the country in school, it adds.
In Indonesia, women in the poorest 20 per cent of the population are four times more likely to die during pregnancy than women in the richest 20 per cent, it says. Women who die during pregnancy are twice as likely to be uneducated and 50 per cent less likely to have access to clean water.
“(Economic) growth is not going to be sufficient to deliver human development…. The reason countries are stagnating on further progress in human development is that they are not focusing enough on inequality,” said Arunabha Ghosh, an author of the report.
Governments should focus on ending inequality – between rich and poor, men and women and various regions within a country – to improve human development, he said.
The report cites increased immunizations and better healthcare and education for women as factors behind BangladeshÂ’s success in scaling back child mortality and maternal malnutrition rates and boosting primary school enrolment.
“In China, child mortality rate in urban areas such as Shanghai and Beijing is eight deaths per 1,000 live births – comparable to the United States.
“But in the poorest province of Guizhou, there are 60 deaths per 1,000 live births, which is comparable to Namibia,” it says.
The gap is aggravated by a policy shift that transferred the burden of healthcare from public providers to households, it says.
Uh, on the subject of the Jama’at-i-Islami, here’s a link to an excerpt (from a book) about the North American “representatives” of that organization…the ICNA…
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RisingIndia/message/3607
if you really want to know what the hell is going on in Bangladesh and the Indian borders…
just read up on Arun Shourie ‘s impeccably sharp words…
India under threat India’s national security is gravely threatened and we are being governed by a wilfully blind government. Tough laws are being scrapped at a time when borders are becoming outrageously porous. And, because of the compulsions of vote-banks and Left-wing ideology, the government brands anyone who spells out this truth as ‘communalÂ’, says BJP MP Arun Shourie in a four-part series.
PART-I Listening to Sufi music as thousands are murdered PART-II The rich, invisible and sinister enemy within PART-III The ticking bomb inside mosque and madrasa PART-IV The forces of insecurity
it was interesting to come across this post. i once conducted a psychological profile of the rural south asian muslims who often find themselves involved with fundamentalism. you can find a link to it on my blog.
JMB is a dead cow now…we hanged all of those bastards……so u can call it a success story…if u want..if u dont want..its up to u…and yea…India and paksitan have far more extremist then that of Bangladesh…India pls dont tell me u dont have any terrorist n ur country. n ur muslim ppl are not are not peacefull..and now dont tell me they r not indian.they came from mars…lol
let me remind u…Bnagladesh is a secular country..ppl here bengali more then muslim….Awami league here ..almost dont believe religion..but they are the most popular party here…at next election ..M sure they r going to win..