Question of image or existence?

Let me deal with the question of image of the country first. The 2005 UNDP Human Development Report documented our position in the world. We rank at the bottom in terms of the human development indices. We even trail the small countries like Bhutan and Maldives. Since many positive factors of development such as the resilience of our people in the face of natural disasters and our aspiration to prosper as a democratic country cannot be quantified, numerous questions can be raised about the measurement used to measure development in the report. Nonetheless, the bottom line is we are a poor democratic country which has been making progress albeit slowly.

Through my education in two North American universities I have painfully learned that people in the western world do not care much about Third World countries like Bangladesh. Bangladesh becomes news in the West when big disasters such as floods, cyclones, etc occur or mishaps like a huge fire in a garment factory happen. Therefore, to say that those who want to tarnish the image of the country to the outside world carried out the bomb attack is to create a smoke-screen to hide the identity of the perpetrators. Many people may take it as a government attempt to conceal the webs religious extremists have been spinning throughout the country.

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Though it is not wise to accuse anyone for the bomb attack until the police finish investigation, the extrapolation of preliminary evidence suggest that it is the religious extremists organised under the name Jamaatul Mujahideen who staged the attack. The police have already recovered leaflets of this organisation from the crime scenes and detained some suspected bombers. Some suspects have reportedly confessed that they have carried out the attack under the leadership of Jamaatul Mujahideen.

If the government provides full support to law enforcement agencies, I believe they would be able to nab all the criminals and unearth their hideouts and dismantle their networks. Law enforcement agencies have already shown some success in this regard.

The present government has failed to complete the investigations of every bomb/grenade attack that happened during the last few years. It has been unsuccessful in protecting Ahmadia Muslims and the shrines of Muslim saints from being bombed by religious extremists. In the past it made lacklustre efforts to restrain religious extremists by detaining a few of their leaders and outlawing a couple of radical Islamic outfits, but made no serious attempt to root out these evil forces from the society. The government has always been spooked to take action against religious extremists because it involves such elements within it. Extremist elements in the government always presented smoke and mirrors to protect their cohorts and keep the intelligence agencies at bay. If the same thing happens this time, we have to be ready to embrace something devastating.

The invocation of Pakistan as an example seems to be relevant here. Hamza Alavi, an eminent Pakistani scholar in the West in an article titled "The Rise of Religious Fundamentalism in Pakistan" writes: "Religious fundamentalism has become a powerful and dangerous force in Pakistan, due mainly to the opportunism of successive political leadership that has pandered to it. Militant sectarian religious groups and parties, led by half-educated and bigoted Mullahs, many of them armed to the teeth, are holding our civil society and the state to ransom. They threaten the very fabric of Pakistan society."

In the article, Alavi explains how General Zia-ul-Haque established religious extremists by proliferating deeni madaris (religious schools) throughout Pakistan with Middle Eastern money and creating Shariat Courts (which decree in the name of Islam) in Pakistan to sustain his illegal regime. According to Alavi, General Zia also received US support by organising and training Islamic extremists to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. The successive governments in Pakistan to Zia failed to take any step to pacify religious extremists. Pakistani society now bears the fallout of religious extremism.

Alavi writes: "The armed groups, many of them with battle-hardened Taliban, are in the vanguard of sectarian killings throughout Pakistan, which are on the increase; killings of members of rival sects, Sunnis against the Shi'a, Deobandi Sunnis against Barelvi Sunnis and so on. They have also begun to issue threats against the state itself and the society in Pakistan."

(Alavi's article can be accessed at http://ourworld.compuserve. com/homepages/sangat/fundamen.htm)

Bangladeshi situation seems to be redolent of the Pakistan described by Alavi. In Bangladesh, General Ershad attempted to secure the support of religious extremists by declaring Islam as the state religion to sustain his illegal regime. BNP has formed government involving religious extremists. Many Bangladeshi religious extremists have strong connections with their Pakistani counterparts and receive money from Middle Eastern Sources; some of them have participated in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. I will not be surprised if they plan to do something similar to Pakistan in Bangladesh. The bomb attack gives us a strong message that it is a possibility.

When religious extremists attack US and British targets, some people justify the action saying that it's a reprisal for the occupation of Iraq. But when they attack people in Muslim dominated countries like Bangladesh, Egypt, and Indonesia, can anyone absolve them in any way? No, not really. Religious extremists want to occupy state power in the name of religion otherwise Bangladesh would not be a target. We Bangladeshis are secular Muslims. We are peaceful and practice religion in our private life. I don't know what un-Islamic or anti-Islamic activities Bangladeshi people are doing. Is our secular tradition a problem? Is our rejection of the extreme interpretation of Quranic verses irritating to religious extremists? If so, it is scary. It's a symptom of their appetite for power to control people's way of life.

We need to fight religious extremism together. As the ruling party, BNP, particularly the secular forces inside BNP, have to take initiatives to create a popular front against religious extremists. They need to reach out to the Awami League and other secular forces. They also have to take moderate Islamic scholars on board to counter religious extremism.

In other countries political parties unitedly face national mishaps. After 9/11 the Republicans and Democrats, who usually don't see eye to eye, cooperated to make America safe. After the London bombing rival British political parties, the Labour Party and Conservative Party, made a concerted effort to uproot the evils of religious extremism from England. Americans have been successful in thwarting further attacks on them. The speed, intensity, and extensity of the British hunt for the masterminds of the London bombing suggest that Britain will be successful in protecting itself from further attacks too.

The August 17 attack on Bangladesh is a symptom of something more serious than 9/11 or London bombing. If our government falters in carrying out the hunt for religious extremists, our nascent democracy will be at a serious risk. We would have to be ready to live in a theocratic state. It is time to root out religious bigotry from our society.

The writer is a faculty (on leave) at the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism, University of Dhaka and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Communication at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.