NEW DELHI: Bangladeshi secular intellectuals had seen the carnage coming. They believe it was evident from Bangladesh's contribution to global terror network, the killings of atheist and secular bloggers and the complacency of societal and political leadership in the country.
Taslima Nasreen, living in exile since 1994 following Islamist death threats, stayed up all night tweeting and acerbically bashing the media, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the terrorists. Criticizing Hasina for denying the presence of the IS in Bangladesh, the highly acclaimed writer told the TOI that she had been warning everyone about this. “But the Hasina government did not take any action when atheists and secular bloggers and other minorities were hacked to death. She protected the killers. Hopefully, she will now respond effectively under international pressure. If she doesn’t, Bangladesh will be Dar-ul-Islam (house of Islam) one day,” Nasreen said tersely.
On Twitter, Nasreen who is an atheist, lashed out at religion: "Media calls them 'gunmen'. But they shout allahu akbar (sic), while killing & terrorizing people. Shouldn't they be called 'Islamic terrorists'?” After the siege ended, she remarked, “Those who could recite a Quranic verse were spared. The others were tortured & murdered. Terrorists have nothing but religion.” This was in sharp contrast to Hasina who in a statement had said that the terrorists “don't have any religion, their only religion is terrorism.”
Nasreen told the TOI that Hasina was talking like her mother and many other Muslims who believe that Islam is a religion of peace, equality and justice. “But Islam is practised differently by different people. Unlike my mother and Hasina, there are many who have been reading Koran literally and practising it violently since the seventh century.” Incidentally, a Malayalam Facebook page ‘The Khalifah: The Shield of Ummah ‘Ansarul Khilafa- Kerala’ issued death threats against her while the hostage crisis in Dhaka was unfolding.
Freedom fighter Akku Chowdhury who runs Liberation War Museum in Dhaka told the TOI that the attack brought back the horrors of the 1971 war. “We have gone through this before and it is shattering to be back in this situation. It was so brutal! They slaughtered young men and women in the name of what?” he said in anguish. Chowdhury regretted that the Bangladeshi society had ignored the signs of Islamist radicalism despite prophetic warnings by the intelligentsia. “Our social, political and economic leadership failed to pay attention to this socio-cultural change that was brewing up all these years,” he lamented.
Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), active in Bangladesh since 2014, has recruits mostly drawn from Jamat-e-Islami (JeI) and reportedly responsible for the killings of many atheist bloggers. In December 2015, the IS threatened to expand its area of operation to Bangladesh and since then, has been claiming to have hacked various Hindu priests and other minority members to death. Bangladeshi militant group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) has reportedly allied with the IS.
Journalist Saleem Samad said that the attack was “no surprise” because Bangladesh has been a major contributor to global terror networks. “From Taliban to Kashmir terror groups and from Indoensia to Chechnya, Bangladeshis have participated in the global terror for long. Our men have joined terror outfits in 36 countries. So what happened last night was nothing new,” he said.
IS mouthpiece, Dabiq, an online magazine in its 14th edition released recently, said, “Bengal is an important region for the Khilafah and the global jihad due to its strategic geographic position. Having a strong jihad base in Bengal will facilitate guerilla attacks inside India.”
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