By Jeremy Seabrook - The Asian News - UK
Friday, November 24, 2006
A country torn by a low-intensity cultural civil war has seen at least 25 people die in this conflict in the last 10 days; its capital city is strewn with overturned cycle rickshaws, rocks and broken glass.
This is Bangladesh, the country of origin of about 300,000 British people, with the fourth-largest Muslim population in the world.
The disturbances at the end of October followed the end of the five-year mandate of the Bangladesh National party and its religious-party allies, Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Oikya Jote.
(...)
An upsurge in political violence by Islamist extremists was denied by the government. A campaign of bombings against opposition politicians, Sufi shrines, cinemas, theatres performing traditional jatra plays and the Ahmadi minority was blamed on opposition tactics to "tarnish the image" of Bangladesh.
With the government under pressure from western powers, leaders of these terrorist groups were arrested and tried after two judges were killed in a suicide bomb attack in August 2005. Six, found guilty in May 2006, are due to be executed.
Amnesty International has protested at the haste with which this is being carried out, since it suspects that the government wants to silence those it indulged until the recent past.
These groups represent a minority in Bangladesh, but they are resolved to regain for an austere, fundamentalist Islam today what Pakistan lost in 1971.
Bangladesh has occupied a particular place for the US in its war on terror, as it has been upheld as an example of "moderate Muslim democracy".
Extremists represent a small percentage of the people. Islam in Bangladesh was always tolerant, inflected by Sufism and coexistence with Hinduism.
The coming elections will determine whether the country remains democratic and tolerant, with its eclectic Bengali culture, or whether a more militaristic, nationalist administration will drive it further into the arms of militant Islam.
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