Going Deeper
Can a political party be banned?
THE definition of a political party from the time of Edmund Burke as "an organised assembly of men united for working together for the national interest" has changed over time to one that may not accept members from a minority community and insists on establishing khilafat. Indeed, the head of the Hizb ut Tahrir (Bangladesh) publicly announced: "We always want to oust all governments in all Muslim countries in the world to establish khilafat states."
The world is already mired in the militant activities of al-Qaeda operatives, their latest act being the carnage at the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad. The conflict is not only inter-religious or intra-religious. The hydra-headed Medusa has used under-development, poverty, tribal and cultural differences, etc among people to unleash its poisoned fangs.
Bangladesh will have to construct its own brand of democracy, keeping in view its social, historical and cultural traditions. One, however, becomes apprehensive when religion is advocated to be one of the pillars of our socio-political construct. Undeniably, Bangladesh is a Muslim majority country and most of the people are devout Muslims.
But the absence of the separation of religious and the political authority in unambiguous terms opens up the possibility of strengthening the alleged presence of those committed to revolution and reordering the world in a way that would undo modernism and take countries like ours to sixth century Saudi Arabia. Our denials notwithstanding, the question, however, remains whether sub-state actors living in a shadowy world received political patronage from some of the leaders of the erstwhile government.
Madrasas continue to flourish and the degrees awarded by these institutions continue to be recognised as equivalent to the degrees given by colleges and universities, making religious education equal to secular education. Though the Bangladesh government is not beholden to Islamist political groups, one may consider establishment of a single madrasa regulatory authority under parliamentary oversight with powers to bring the madrasas in line with mainstream education; and to derecognise madrasa certificates as equivalent to degrees issued by boards of education and universities.
Ordinarily, one would have thought that almost all of the 150 million Bangladeshis, speaking the same language, belonging to the same race, and for most part practicing the same religion, should have a coherent, cogent and non-dissonant society, free from the risk of the contagion of chaos. But the opposite appears to be the case.
Intolerance of opposing views, sclerosis of thought, mono-centric locus of power, and rapacity of the rich and the powerful are the present afflictions of Bangladesh society. The erstwhile Orwellian tyranny of the majority was further compounded by increasing activism of Islamists who wish to recreate their vision of an Islamic society, not simply by imposing the sharia, but by establishing an Islamic state where religious edicts would be integrated into all aspects of society.
What happened in 1971 was a war of liberation and not a civil war, as claimed by a follower of Jamaat. To quote a report on Bangladesh by the International Crisis Group: "Islamists, especially the Jamaat-e-Islami Party, are often accused of siding with Pakistanis, joining in genocide and allegedly actively assisting massacres, especially targeted killing of intellectuals in Dhaka in the last weeks."
The same report states that, as early as April 1971, US officials protested their government's support for West Pakistan and argued that "the overworked term genocide is applicable." Perhaps, one of the most telling accounts of Jammat's collaboration during our war of liberation has been given in a book Witness to Surrender by Pakistani Major Siddiq Salim about the anti-liberation role played by Jamaat, Muslim League, and Nizam-I-Islam.
The emergence of religious intolerance in Bangladesh has been documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the US State Department, among others. If the Muslims are to prove historian Bernard Lewis wrong that "Islam was never prepared, either in theory or in practice, to accord full equality to those who held other forms of worship, and that the centuries-old rivalry between Christianity and Islam is no less than a clash of civilisations, the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both," then the Islamic world will have to adorn itself with all the traits of modernity. Globalisation is no longer a choice; it is a reality. In this game, the West has a decided advantage over the Muslim world.
If the concern of the international community is to safeguard its values and its way of life against the onslaught by Islamic fundamentalists' inflexible and nihilistic war of attrition then care should be taken of Jamaat's politics in Bangladesh. Jamaat's argument that its representation in the parliament has been through democratic elections should not detract the world of the so-called Islamic Free Election Trap in which the fundamentalists use democratic means to get to power only to abolish democratic practices through legislation.
The problem with Islamic political parties like Jamaat in Bangladesh is "the persistence of ambiguity" suffered by Islamists almost everywhere. Jamaat's spiritual guru, Maulana Maududi, described the movement's purpose: "To initiate the deen in the form of a movement so that religiosity does not become static in our personal lives, but we struggle to implement this deen and also try to crush those forces that are against its implementation." This partly explains Jamaat's opposition to the Bangladesh liberation movement as dismemberment of a Muslim state caused by the machination of a Hindu India.
An inconclusive debate remains about the incompatibility of democracy with monotheistic religions. Robert Dahl, in his classic book Polyarchy emphasised that democracy must have a constitution that by itself is democratic in that it respects fundamental liberties and offers protection to minorities. Additionally, democratically elected governments must rule within the confines of their constitutions, be bound by law and be accountable.
From historical observations it has been found that religions place obstacles in the way of democracy. John Rawls found it particularly difficult in a pluralistic society in which citizens hold a variety of socially embedded, reasonable yet deeply opposed comprehensive doctrines to arrive at an overlapping consensus.
There is, however, no denying the fact that religion-based politics generates fear among the minority community, the protection of whom has been pledged by all civilised countries both in their domestic law and in international commitment.
In Bangladesh, for example, the events involving terrorist activities perpetrated by Islamic extremists have strengthened the demands of the secularists to put a ban on religion-based political activities. The 1972 constitution did provide for such a ban. The post-1975 conservative establishments amended the constitution, once in 1977 and again in 1988, by passing the 8th amendment, making Islam the state religion.
In sum, now that the elections are knocking at the door, a tough question has to be answered. Capitulate, or keep it pending for the "next government" to decide?
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