Appeal for letting no house to terrorists

The Police Commissioner might have made the above urge in sheer desperation following the arrest of Ataur Rahman, brother of one of the masterminds Abdur Rahman, from a house at Goran in Dhaka city, with huge quantities of explosives and subversive documents in his possession.

In a notification dated Sept. 11 he said that the probe into the incident of bomb blasts across the country on August 17 has revealed that the terrorists have set up their dens in rented houses throughout the country including the capital. He has requested the tenants to inform the police of the suspected tenants together with their links with other suspects frequenting their houses.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

Let us now consider how far it is practicable for the landlords to verify the character and antecedents of the persons seeking the house on rent. Generally the factors that a landlord takes into consideration, in matter of renting out his house, are if the probable tenant has accepted his demanded rental charges, his apparent ability to sustain it in future, if he appears to be habituated to maintaining house without causing any damage or harm to it, if he will leave with his family, his profession, where he comes from, how he looks in manners and gestures at the first meet etc. It is not possible for the landlord to study his hidden intents and instincts. It appears that the object of the requests of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner may not be achieved for various reasons.

Firstly, the militant tenants are better disposed to meet the rental charges with periodic increments as demanded by the landlords.

Secondly, it is not anyway possible for the landlords to determine at the first appearance who is a militant and who is not. No stamp of militancy is put on a person's face and looks.

Thirdly, it is unjust to take bearded persons as suspects to be militants. There are many bearded faces much cleaner, in acts and thoughts, than many clean shaved persons. Taking men as good and bad by physical appearance and dress tantamounts to committing a sin. The other day MP Delwar Hossain Saeedi accused the government of harassing men bearing beard and wearing cap that the State Minister for Home refuted as baseless.

Fourthly, religious militants are masters of taking guise and pretension. They can shave off beard, put off cap and pose to be westernised in dress and demeanour as per need of the time to outwit the enquiring, skeptical landlords. The result may be that the disguised militants may successfully go through the probe of the landlords while the true religious Muslims unwilling to part with their beard and cap may be screened out in the instant test.

Fifthly, Bangladesh is vastly a Muslim-majority country. Here a great portion of the Muslim populace are traditionally religious taking to Islamic customs and dress. Practising a negative look at beard, cap, long punjabi may have adverse effect on social stability and cohesion. What the western institutions and people are accused of in their attitude to the Muslims wearing beard and cap, it is not desirable that a similar syndrome creeps over our society in Bangladesh. Branding bearded and cap-clad men as disturbing tenants is no healthy philosophy.

Sixthly, even if a militant sneaks into taking possession of a house as a tenant and starts his operational business, the landlord may consider it quite risky to dislodge the militant tenant in fear of reprisal. Many bomb factories, ammunition manufacturing depots being accommodated in rented houses have been recently unearthed by the intelligence men in Dhaka as well as in other districts of the country. It may not be that neither the landlords of those houses nor men around those depots could not have any smell of the activities of the terrorists. But they refrained from opening month in fear of life.

Seventhly, to speak the truth, until the bomb blasts on August 17, the government remained, most probably, intentionally unconcerned about the subversive activities of the religious militants. True, the law enforcers have recently sprung into action nabbing scores of militants and raiding their dens allegedly under pressure from the US and donor countries. But the government have to do a lot more to inspire people's faith in the sincerity of the government. The landlords may closely watch if the government can justify, by continued actions on the religious extremists, the Police Commissioner's urge as made to the landlords.

Lastly, the religious fundamentalists have their own real estates. They have built up this establishment, inter alia, in quest of installing, besides getting fat foreign funds, own sources of revenue within the country. The militants will have safe lodging there. If need be, the programme of extending the real estates may be taken in hand by the promoters of the religious militants.

However, only future will say how far will the appeal of the Police Commissioner to the landlords not to let their house to the militants be complied with. This is a small appeal made by an official of mid level directed toward the landlords that constitute a very small section of the people.

Remember, what vast appeals containing wake-up calls time and again were made by the nation to the main ruling party the BNP to refrain from hobnobbing with the religious fundamentalists.

Following the landslide victory in the national polls of 2001, the BNP inducted in the cabinet two members of the Jamaat-e-Islami who opposed tooth and nail the Liberation War of 1971. The nation was mortified and appealed to the BNP not to defile the sacred spirit of the Liberation War. But in vain.

Some of the BNP leaders and activists took to corrupt practices evoking loud criticism and condemnation. Away from the scramble and scuffle, the Jamaat ministers steadily infiltrated into the higher echelon of administration capturing some important ministries. The opposition political parties, the civil society members pointed at this extension of the fundamentalists but the BNP remained heedless.

Over the years bombs, grenades were exploded throughout the country at the cinema halls, cultural functions, gatherings of the opposition parties, shrines etc causing destruction and death that included the Awami League leaders like Ahsanullah Master and internationally reputed economist Shah AMS Kibria but even proper investigations, let alone capturing the real culprits, were not conducted. The dangerous game snowballed first into the August 21 fierce grenade attacks targeting at the Leader of the Opposition Sheikh Hasina and then the astonishing incident of August 17 branded as a dress rehearsal for an incoming bigger drama of capturing the state power.

All calls made to the BNP from different quarters of the people to contain the fundamentalists went unheeded. The BNP made alliance with the Jamaat-e-Islami to cover its vote deficit and to resist the Awami League. But the BNP could not read properly that the Jamaat-e-Islami is a party that could act as a support base of international religious militancy that does not believe in democracy and aims at establishing theocratic state. The BNP could not study that vote battle with the Awami League could go this way or that way through a process of democracy but the political agenda of a theocratic party converge on usurping the state authority.

Had the BNP responded responsibly to the calls of the nation the Police Commissioner would have no need to urge upon the landlords not to let houses to the militants.

AR Shamsul Islam is retired Principal, Govt Mohila College, Pabna.