Islamization of Bangladesh

By: Sunita Paul

In recent years, Al Qaeda linked notorious Islamist group named Hizb Ut Tahrir is continuing to strengthen its network within Bangladesh and even during the present State of Emergency (SOE), this international terror group is allowed by the authorities

Led by one Mohiuddin Ahmed, a profession with Dhaka University, Hizb Ut Tahrir hols regular orientation and recruitment courses inside the premises of a private school in Dhaka almost openly. Intelligence agencies are aware of this fact, but there is possibly instructions from the high ups in the government of not interfering activities of this notorious militant group for reason unknown.

Terrorism analysts in South Asia believe that, Dhaka is giving chance to Hizb Ut Tahrir to grow, as it may use such forces during October this year to create an excuse of not holding the much promise general election by December 2008. "Hizb Ut Tahrir is the next tram card for the present military backed government in Dhaka, which will become operative with offensives, in order to give the opportunity to leaders of today's government in Dhaka to urge to international community in according time to 'combat' Islamist militancy by postponing the general election", analysts said.

For years, Hizb Ut Tahrir's close links with Al Qaeda is exposed to various intelligence groups in the world, and finally Ossama Bin Laden's notoriety
has entered South Asian nations through this suspicious Islamist group.

Hizb Ut Tahrir preaches for cleansing Jews and Christians in the world and opposes democratic system, thus propagating Caliphate rule in most of the countries in the world, especially in Moslem dominated nations. It may be recalled here that, Bangladesh is the home of some 120 million Moslems, and is the second largest Moslem country in the world.

While the growth and operation of terrorist cells in the UK remain largely unknown, the growth of extreme Islamist organizations in Britain has been obvious. After the bombings in London on 7 July, the *New Statesman* made contact with a former member of the radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Walid - not his real name: he did not want to be identified - recently quit the party. During the past five years, he has worked as a recruiter across the north of England, including work in the Leeds area. Like many recruits to Hizb ut-Tahrir (Hizb for short), he is highly educated. Recruited while still at university, he soon began running workshops and distributing leaflets. Walid says that on a number of occasions he leafleted the Leeds Grand Mosque, the same mosque where it is likely that one of the Londonbombers would have prayed. "The manner in which recruitment is done is pretty aggressive," he says. Hizb has also begun using new methods in its push to recruit the young. "There is a kind of reinvigoration of the idea that it's the youth who really need to be targeted."

Hizb is banned in countries throughout the world including Germany and Holland, but in Britain, where the group's world communications hub is located, it operates with impunity. Officially Hizb denounces violence, and there is no evidence to suggest this stance would ever change. Walid says that if you approached the group saying you wanted to carry out a suicide bombing "they would dissuade you". However, there is reason to believe that Hizb acts as a conveyor belt for terrorism: in other words, members of Hizb take their intellectual indoctrination with them and graduate to other, even more extreme UK groups that do condone violence, such as al-Muhajiroun, which was supposedly dissolved last September, but is still active.

Walid says that the UK contains "enough radical preachers who offer a violent vision", and makes the point that the British would-be bomber Omar Sharif, the 27-year-old from Derby who tried to help blow up a pub in Tel Aviv in 2003, graduated from reading Hizb literature to joining al-Muhajiroun, and then attempted his suicide mission. Hizb is the largest extreme Islamist group in Britain, but exact numbers have been hard to obtain. Walid says that, as far as he is aware, the organisation has between 2,000 and 3,000 members in the UK.

Hizb's actions and recruitment methods give a telling insight into how the four most recent British-born suicide bombers might have also come to be recruited. There is no typical recruit to Hizb, says Walid. The profiling of those who commit terrorist acts as middle class and well educated does not match up to his experience as a recruiter in the north. That is just a "media red herring". "The majority of members in Leeds and Bradford, for example, were not professional: it was mainly guys who were either unemployed or never received a university education, and who probably hadn't even done A-levels," he says.

Walid finds it "shocking and scary" that the London bombers lived in the Pakistani community in Britain. So why do young British Muslims join such groups? The former recruitment man cites a number of factors. First is the way in which Muslim clerics in this country, who are mostly foreign-born, fail to engage with British Muslims. These imams are, as he put it, "disconnected from the challenges of growing up in modern British society". "They were brought up to parrot-learn the Koran. And they discuss things like the correct manner to perfect your prayer. It doesn't resonate with the youth."

Radical Islamist parties are far more in touch with the issues that affect second- and third-generation British Muslims. It's an open goal, one into which radical groups have been scoring time and time again. They don't enforce "orthodoxy", such as dress codes, long beards and prayer five times a day. "They can talk to you on your own terms and in your own lingo," Walid says. "It offers an alternative to the mosques, which are, as I say, disconnected." Such groups also generally have a women's wing, which also adds to their image of being modern and inclusive.

He says the solution that they offer - a return to a wider political Islamic state known as the caliphate - is another attraction, holding promise and acting as a "tangible goal", which members are always made to believe is "on the horizon". They also play upon the idea that the worldwide Muslim community or Umma is a whole; thus, by joining Hizb, members will be directly helping to solve the problems of the Muslim world.

"Groups like Hizb have really cultivated this idea of the Muslims being one body, this idea of the Umma. I think that dynamic is very, very, important.It feeds the groups by allowing them to make you feel as though you are taking active, individual involvement . . . to alleviate the suffering of Muslims.

"The rhetoric of these groups is loaded and is very militant sometimes . . . They will say, 'Work for the caliphate. The caliphate is the one that will restore honor to your mothers and your sisters.' Or 'it's the caliphate that will bring the criminals' - as in Bush and Blair - 'to account'," Walid says.

Recently, Hizb Ut Tahrir circulated thousands of posters and leaflets in Bangladesh with anti-American and anti-West slogans. Authorities in Dhakawere maintaining absolute silence on such activities of this militant Islamist group. "Dhaka's silence on combating this ally of Al Qaeda unfortunately tells the global community that this country is no more a partner in war on terror", said Peter Kingberg, an expert on Asian affairs.

It may be recalled here that an advisor to the present interim government in Bangladesh, Barrister Moinul Hussain told local and international press that, his country is no more in war on terror, as he believes; war on terror is not any agenda for Bangladesh. Barrister Hussain's remarks came right after the assassination of Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto in December last year. There had been no reaction to the statement of Moinul, which also stands in favor of the argument that, Dhaka is no more aligned with global forces combating Islamist militancy and terrorism.