Ominous utterances

By asserting that they have merely followed 'the in-structions of Allah' in killing the judges, these radicals, who claim to be Muslims, have exposed a dangerous mindset with which they have acted so long, and the level to which they have attempted to elevate themselves, since it is only the Prophet who had received direct instructions from Allah. Further, to invoke religion and Allah, for wanton killings of innocent people, is not only sacrilegious, it is also a patently anti-Islamic act. It is not difficult to fathom the level of degradation that these people have sunk into in nurturing such thoughts. There is all the possibility that such mindset has been inculcated into their followers who are yet to be nabbed. One hopes that those within the administration, who ought to be, are alive to the significance of these utterances, because these are dangerous portents, which are a cause for worry, if not addressed immediately.

For one thing these are the invocations that Shaikh Abdur Rahman, Siddiqul Islam and their cohorts must have used in motivating their large number of followers in undertaking the bombings, and later the suicide mis-sions, that we were victims of last year. And this is where the government must come down hard and effectively, not only to sensitize those that have been exposed to such teachings, but also to demotivate those that have fallen prey to their sinister machinations. The government must not sit pretty with the feeling that with the arrests of the top brasses of the two radical groups their activities have been ended once and for all. Without sounding alarmist we suggest that it is everything but that.

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It will also be pertinent to mention that, apart from the JMB and JMJB, there are other groups in Bangla-desh that are inclined to distort the teachings of Islam for achieving their narrow parochial ends. This also must not be allowed to continue.