Hefazat-e-Islam | The return of hardliners

Hefazat-e-Islam has held a number of demonstrations in Bangladesh, together with a protest towards Narendra Modi’s go to in 2021. | Photograph credit score: AFP

Within the absence of the “begums” within the Bangladesh authorities, Islamists have as soon as once more claimed management of the nation’s politics. Like former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina who tried to placate the hardline group Hefazat-e-Islam, the chief of the interim authorities, Muhammad Yunus, has additionally adopted the same method by appointing the deputy head of the extremist group, Professor AFM Khalid Hossain, as an advisor on spiritual affairs within the interim authorities.

Hefazat-e-Islam, which interprets as “Protectors of Islam,” was fashioned in 2010 to oppose the Sheikh Hasina authorities’s girls’s improvement coverage, which promised equal property rights for girls. Hefazat, which is made up of primarily Sunni clerics who head a community of 19,199 Quami madrasas and their college students in Bangladesh, rose to prominence once they took to the streets towards the Ladies’s Act. The group additionally protested towards the repeal of the Fifth Modification, which had altered the secular and socialist character of the Structure throughout navy rule. The demonstrations, through which dozens of individuals had been injured in clashes with police, finally led to the passage of a watered-down Ladies’s Act.

Based by Islamic scholar Shah Ahmad Shafi, the group initially began as a “purely spiritual” group with the purpose of restoring an Islamic administration in Bangladesh. Its present amir (chief) is Muhibbullah Babunagari, who heads the central committee comprising a number of Maulanas. Many of the committee members had been jailed in 2021 for organising violent protests towards Narendra Modi’s go to to Dhaka. In keeping with a 2017 Economist report, Hefazat madarasas are funded by Salafi-Wahhabi Islamists from Saudi Arabia.

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Hasina’s gentle stance and anti-Modi protests

Emboldened by their preliminary present of energy on the road, Hefazat launched a “lengthy march” to Dhaka in 2013 demanding capital punishment for “atheist” bloggers concerned within the Shahbag protests who had allegedly “insulted Islam” of their posts. Via a collection of mass demonstrations in Dhaka, the extremist group introduced its 13-point agenda demanding a stricter costume code in accordance with Islam, a ban on statues, candlelight vigils, a girls’s improvement coverage, public mixing of women and men, and the declaration of Ahmadiyahs as “non-Muslims.” Violent clashes broke out between Islamist protesters and safety forces when Hefazat tried to “lay siege to Dhaka,” killing a minimum of fifty folks.

Regardless of its extremist insurance policies and involvement within the clashes, Sheikh Hasina’s authorities determined to please Hefazat. Hasina’s determination to take away the statue of the Greek goddess Themis from the Supreme Court docket premises in 2017, recognise Dawra-e-Hadith (a grasp’s diploma provided by Quami madrasas) in 2018 and alter historical past texts are proof of her option to appease the fundamentalists in order that they proceed to assist them. The explanation, maybe, was the truth that Hefazat, which is a much less militant model of Jamaat-e-Islami, basically differs from Jamaat in its assist for Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan and its opposition to the 1975 bloodbath of Hasina’s household.

Following its successes, Hefazat launched its largest protest in 2021 when Modi visited Dhaka to mark the nation’s fiftieth Independence Day. After accusing Modi of anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002, Hefazat, together with different Islamist teams, launched protests towards Modi that noticed them conflict with police and left a minimum of 13 folks useless. A number of Hindu temples had been additionally attacked and a prepare was attacked in Brahmanbaria.

Following Modi’s departure from Dhaka, Sheikh Hasina’s authorities clamped down on Hefazat, arresting a whole lot of its members, together with 23 of its high leaders, akin to Mamunul Haque, Harunur Rashid and Monir Hossain Qasemi. As Hefazat started to reorganize and reform, Hasina once more accommodated the group by promising to “think about their most cheap calls for” in 2022. Many of the jailed leaders, besides Haque and Qasemi, had been granted bail in 2023.

A much bigger ally

Following Hasina’s olive department to Hefazat and her abrupt departure, the Islamists have discovered a good greater ally in Bangladesh’s high adviser, Muhammad Yunus.

Yunus’ authorities has lifted the ban on Jamaat-e-Islami and granted bail to Jashimuddin Rahmani, chief of the al-Qaeda-inspired Ansarullah Bangla terror group. Yunus additionally met Haque, who led the Hefazat protests towards Modi in 2021, setting off alarm bells in India. Amid studies of a number of assaults on Hindus and vandalism at temples and homes, Yunus has downplayed the assaults, saying they weren’t communal however a consequence of political unrest over the group’s alleged assist for Hasina’s authorities, marking Bangladesh’s darkish return to hardline Islamist rule.