Fears of radicalization loom

Bangladesh’s main religious party was banned from weekend elections and many of its leaders are in custody or face execution, but moves to marginalize Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) will ultimately backfire, analysts say.
While 90 percent of its population is Muslim, Bangladesh has been officially secular since its 1971 split from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan after a brutal independence war.
Secularism is a pillar of the constitution and religious groups failed to make much impact in the four decades after independence. JI, the only religious party to make electoral inroads, has never seen its support move beyond single digits at elections, although it has been in government on several occasions in coalitions with the center-right Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
But analysts and politicians say a decision to bar JI from Sunday’s election and a subsequent crackdown on its leaders, most of whom are in detention or have gone underground, has played into its hands.
“As the government has been using excessive force to crack down on JI over the past year, we have seen them become more powerful, more organized and winning more support,” said Nur Khan Liton, head of Dhaka-based Ain O Salish Kendra rights group.
“Instead of using force, the government should have taken them on politically.”
The election, a walkover for the ruling Awami League (AL) after it was boycotted by the BNP, was plagued by violence in the build-up and on polling day. A.N.M. Muniruzzaman, head of the Institute of Peace and Security Studies, said Bangladesh was becoming more radicalized. “It is a recipe for the growth of extremism and a conducive playground for non-state actors,” says the retired general.
“It’s a bad sign for democratic and major political parties.”
Bangladesh has experienced its deadliest year of political violence since independence with some of the worst unrest erupting after a tribunal set up by the government began sentencing senior JI figures for crimes committed during the 1971 war.When Abdul Quader Mollah was hanged last month for his alleged role in a wartime massacre, thousands of supporters took to the streets and many of the protests turned violent.
There were similar scenes in May after a crackdown on another group, Hefajat-e-Islam, with around 40 people killed in running street battles.Previously, protests by radicals had rarely attracted much of a crowd and the outpouring of anger took authorities by surprise.
Three other JI leaders have been sentenced to death by the war crimes tribunal; a court that lacks international oversight and that JI says is designed to silence it. A High Court ruling to bar JI from the election, which judges said was due to its failure to respect the constitution’s secular nature, was also widely seen as having been government-influenced.
Other religious movements, such as Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, have bounced back from similar bans to win power at elections.
But one of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s top advisers said judges had no choice. Authorities could not “allow them to undermine the very constitution that the people have set up, allow them to change the very character of the state.”
It is an accusation fiercely rejected by one of the few leading JI members to have evaded arrest during mass pre-election detentions.
In an interview at a Dhaka hideout, former lawmaker Syed Abdullah Taher said the party made no secret of its ideology but wanted to convert people “gradually to the cause of Islam” through democratic means. Asked about the future of the party, he says it will concentrate on its social welfare program, which have mushroomed in recent years and drawn in followers in one of Asia’s poorest nations.
If JI does grow in strength, many observers believe the main opposition BNP, which is in an alliance with the religious groups, will see its support decline.While emphasizing the alliance was “an arithmetical electoral arrangement, not an ideological one”, BNP vice- chairman Shamsher Chowdhury acknowledged the violent political climate risked radicalizing a country known for its religious moderation.