Jamat-e-Islam

Jamati onslaught of secular Intellectuals in 2001-04 (click here for 1971)

Stats of bombings carried out by the Jamati/Jihadi terrorists
List of secular Bangalees killed by Jamati/Jihadi terrorists since 2001
List of secular intellectuals killed by Jamati goons in 1971
Jamat-e-Islami of Bangladesh and the Regional Jihadi Networks: an article by Shahriar Kabir (human right activist)

THE RETURN OF JAMAT-E-ISLAM

The idea that the Muslim-dominated parts of British India should become a separate country was articulated for the first time in a short essay written in 1933 by an Indian Muslim student at Cambridge, Rahmat Ali. He even proposed a name for the new state - Pakistan - which was an acronym based on the nations that would compose it: the Punjab, Afghan (the Northwest Frontier), Kashmir, Indus (or Sindh) and BaluchiSTAN. The new name also meant "the Land of the Pure."

However, the acronym did not include India's most populous Muslim province, East Bengal, and, at first, most Islamic groups opposed the idea of religious nationalism. The most prestigious Islamic university in the subcontinent, the Darul Uloom, was located at Deoband in Saharanpur district of what now is Uttar Pradesh in India, and its leaders strongly supported the Indian nationalist movement led by the Congress. The Jamat-e-Islami, which was founded in 1941 by Maulana Abul Ala Mauddudi and had grown out of the Deoband Madrassa (as the university became known) went to the extent of "alleging that the demand for a separate state based on modern selfish nationalism amounted to rebelling against the tenets of Islam."

Key Jamati leaders

Top Jamatis are all war criminals of 1971: Gholam Azam, Saidi, Shaikhul Hadis, Amini, SAKA, Nizami & Mojahid. Click here for their criminal past.

But gradually, the Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, won support for the Pakistan idea, and when India became independent in August 1947, two states were orn: the secular but Hindu-dominated Union of India - and the Islamic state of Pakistan, which consisted of two parts, one to the west of India and the other to the east. The Jamat became one of the strongest supporters of the Pakistan idea, and, somewhat ironically, the Deobandi movement through its network of religious schools, or madrassas, developed into a breeding ground for Pakistan-centered Islamic fundamentalism. Over the years, the Deobandi brand of Islam has become almost synonymous with religious extremism and fanaticism.

The Deobandis had actually arisen in British India not as a reactionary force but as a forward-looking movement to unite and reform Muslim society in the wake of oppression the community faced after the 1857 revolt, or "Mutiny" as the British called it. But in independent Pakistan - East and West - new Deobandi madrassas were set up everywhere, and they were run by semi-educated mullahs who, according to Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, "were far removed from the original reformist agenda of the Deobandi school."

Much later, it was from these madrassas Afghanistan's dreaded Talibans ("Islamic Students") were to emerge. The Jamat was from the beginning inspired by the Ikhwan ul-Muslimeen, or the Muslim Brotherhood, which was set up in Egypt in 1928 with the aim of bringing about an Islamic revolution and creating an Islamic state. When they had come to accept Pakistan as that Islamic state, Bengali nationalism was totally unacceptable. The Jamat's militants fought alongside the Pakistan army against the Bengali nationalists. Among the most notorious of the Jamat leaders was Abdul Kader Molla, who became known as "the Butcher of Mirpur," a Dhaka suburb which in 1971 was populated mainly by non-Bengali Muslim immigrants. Today, he is the publicity secretary of Bangladeshi Jamat, and, despite his background, was granted a US visa to visit New York in the last week of June, 2002. In 1971, he and other Jamat leaders were considered war criminals by the first government of independent Bangladesh, but they were never prosecuted as they had fled to Pakistan.

The leaders of the Jamat returned to Bangladesh during the rule of Zia and Ershad because they were invited to come back, and they also saw Ershad especially as a champion of their cause. This was somewhat ironic as Ershad was - and still is - known as a playboy and hardly a religiously-minded person. But he had introduced a string of Islamic reforms - and he needed the Jamat to counter the Awami League, and, like his predecessor Zia, he had to find ideological underpinnings for what was basically a military dictatorship. The problem was that the Jamat had been discredited by its role in the liberation war - but, as a new generation emerged, that could be "corrected." Jamat's Islamic ideals were taught in Bangladesh's madrassas, which multiplied at a tremendous pace. The madrassas fill an important function in an impoverished country such as Bangladesh, where basic education is available only to a few. Today, there are an estimated 64,000 madrassas in Bangladesh, divided into two kinds. The Aliya madrassas are run with government support and control, while the Dars-e-Nizami or Deoband-style madrassas are totally independent. Aliya students study for 15-16 years and are taught Arabic, religious theory and other Islamic subjects as well as English, mathematics, science and history. They prepare themselves for employment in government service, or for jobs in the private sector like any other college or university student. In 1999, there were 7,122 such registered madrassas in Bangladesh.

The much more numerous Deobandi madrassas are more "traditional"; Islamic studies dominate, and the students are taught Urdu (the national language of Pakistan), Persian and Arabic. After finishing their education, the students are incapable of taking up any mainstream profession, and the mosques and the madrassas are their main sources of employment. As Bangladeshi journalist Salahuddin Babar points out: "Passing out from the madrassas, poorly equipped to enter mainstream life and professions, the students are easily lured by motivated quarters who capitalize on religious sentiment to crate fanatics, rather than modern Muslims."

The consequences of this kind of madrassa education can be seen in the growth of the Jamat. It did not fare well in the 1996 election, capturing only three seats in the parliament and 8.61% of the votes.16 Its election manifesto was also quite carefully worded, perhaps taking into consideration the party's reputation and the fact that the vast majority of Bangladeshis remain opposed to Sharia law and other extreme Islamic practices. The 23-page document devoted 18 pages to lofty election promises, and only five to explaining Jamat's political stand. The party tried to reassure the public that it would not advocate chopping off thieves' hands, stoning of people committing adultery, or banning interest - at least not immediately. According to the NGO SEHD: The priority focus would be alleviation of poverty, stopping free mixing of sexes and thus awakening the people to the spirit of Islam and then eventually step by step the Islamic laws would be introduced.

It is impossible to determine how much support the Jamat actually had in the 2001 election as it was part of an alliance whose various members voted for each other against the Awami League, but its 17 seats in the new parliament - and two ministers in the government - suggest a dramatic increase. Its youth organization, Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS), is especially active. It is a member of the International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations as well as the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and has close contacts with other radical Muslim groups in Pakistan, the Middle East, Malaysia and Indonesia. One of its main strongholds is at the university in Chittagong, and it dominates the Deobandi madrassas all over the country, from where it draws most of its new members. It has been implicated in a number of bombings and politically and religiously motivated assassinations.

On April 7, 2001, two leaders of the Awami League's youth and student front were killed by ICS activists and on June 15, an estimated 21 people were killed and over 100 injured in a bomb blast at the Awami League party office in the town of Narayanganj. Two weeks later, the police arrested an ICS activist for his alleged involvement in the blast.18 A youngish Islamic militant, Nurul Islam Bulbul, is the ICS's current president, and Muhammad Nazrul Islam its general secretary.

For many years the mother party, the Jamat, was led by Gholam Azam, who had returned from Pakistan when Zia was still alive and in power. He resigned in December 2000, and Motiur Rahman Nizami took over as the new Amir of the party amid wide protests and demands that he be put on trial for war crimes he committed during the liberation war as the head of a notorious paramilitary force, the Al-Badar. In one particular incident on December 3, 1971, some members of that force seized the village of Bishalikkha at night in search of freedom fighters, beating many and killing eight people. When Nizami's appointment was made public, veterans of the liberation war burnt an effigy of him during a public rally. In October 2001, Nizami was appointed minister for agriculture, an important post in a mainly agricultural country such as Bangladesh. His deputy, Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mujahid, became minister for social welfare. The terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001, occurred during the election campaign in Bangladesh, when the country was ruled by a caretaker government. But the outgoing prime minister, the Awami League's Sheikh Hasina, and then opposition leader Khaleda Zia of the BNP, condemned the attacks and both, if they were elected, offered the United States use of Bangladesh's air space, ports and other facilities to launch military attacks against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Many Bangladeshis were moved by the loss of as many as 50 of their countrymen in the attacks on the World Trade Center. While some of them were immigrants working as computer analysts and engineers, most seem to have been waiters at the Window on the World restaurant who were working hard to send money back to poor relatives in Bangladesh. A Bangladeshi embassy official in Washington branded the attacks "an affront to Islam…an attack on humanity." Jamat's stand on the "war against terrorism," however, contrasts sharply to that of the more established parties. Shortly after the US attacks on Afghanistan began in October 2001, the Jamat created a fund purportedly for "helping the innocent victims of America's war." According to the Jamat's own announcements, 12 million Bangladeshi taka ($210,000) was raised before the effort was discontinued in March 2002. Any remaining funds, the Jamat then said, would go to Afghan refugees in camps in Pakistan.

Click here for a Bangla site on Jamat-e-Islam: Jamatepislami