Why Was Hefazat-e-Islam Silent on ‘Blasphemous’ Remarks by BJP Officials? – The Diplomat

Hundreds of Bangladeshis marched on the streets of Dhaka on June 10 to protest derogatory feedback made by two officers of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP) about Prophet Muhammad. Then on June 16, they marched once more in an try and blockade the Indian embassy in Dhaka.

Islamist events and organizations in different nations have protested the anti-Islamic remarks as effectively. Nonetheless, the Hefazat-e-Islam (HeI) had solely minimal participation within the latest avenue protests.

That is in distinction to the previous when the HeI spearheaded protests on the blasphemy subject. In November 2020, as an example, it protested strongly towards French President Emmanuel Macron’s allegedly anti-Islam remarks in assist of the blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Muhammad. HeI activists marched towards the French embassy in Dhaka to press for the shutting down of the embassy inside 24 hours.

Its low profile through the latest protests in Dhaka signifies a shift within the HeI’s methods.

Hefazat-e-Islam (actually, protector of Islam) was fashioned in 2010 to protest towards the Awami League authorities’s Nari Unnayan Niti or ladies’s growth coverage, which proposed to confer equal rights of inheritance on ladies. The HeI was against this coverage because it contradicts Sharia legislation.

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An alliance of dozens of Islamist events, HeI, which receives assist from over 25,000 Qawmi madrassas, acts as a political strain group to implement “spiritual rights.”

It got here to prominence in 2013 when it put ahead a 13-point constitution of calls for, which included, amongst different issues, restrictions on the free mixing of men and women and the introduction of the blasphemy legislation in Bangladesh to prosecute atheists. These calls for are much like what the Taliban is imposing in Afghanistan.

HeI’s relations with the Awami League authorities have gone by a number of ups and downs since 2013. The federal government used power to quell the HeI’s Shapla Sq. protests in 2013. Many thought that this may fracture the connection between the federal government and HeI.

Nonetheless, the federal government reached out to the HeI. Dwelling Minister, Asadujjaman Khan Kamal met HeI leaders a number of instances. The conferences culminated in compromise; the federal government conceded eight of the HeI’s 13 calls for, together with conferring Grasp’s diploma standing on Qawmi Dawrah levels, enacting the Digital Safety Act to prosecute those that harm spiritual sentiments, and withdrawing a sculpture of a girl (Woman Justice) from the Supreme Courtroom premises. In return for these concessions, HeI didn’t publicly oppose the AL authorities.

Nonetheless, this strategic relationship started to unravel in December 2020, when HeI leaders spoke out towards sculptures of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s founding father, and deteriorated additional through the go to of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the nation’s fiftieth independence anniversary celebrations. HeI protested violently towards Modi’s anti-Muslim insurance policies in India. The protests prompted the loss of life of not less than 12 folks. Since then, the Awami League authorities has intensified its crackdown on the HeI.

Authorities have discovered proof of HeI’s hyperlinks with militant outfits. A number of HeI leaders have been arrested; almost 100 instances have been filed towards its leaders and activists. The federal government has additionally publicized HeI leaders’ personal lives to tarnish their picture.

Following the BJP officers’ remarks insulting the Prophet, the Bangladesh authorities, not like governments in different Muslim majority nations, didn’t condemn the incident. Info and Broadcasting Minister Hasan Mahmud dismissed the controversy as India’s “inside subject.”

The AL authorities’s cautious response seems to have been pushed by its strategic relations with India. “Sheikh Hasina’s authorities stays in energy with out folks’s mandate and a big part of individuals in Bangladesh consider India has a job behind it. So naturally, the Hasina administration wouldn’t do something that might earn the ire of the Modi authorities,” a number one Bangladeshi political analyst, Asif Nazrul, stated, including that the AL authorities doesn’t wish to “antagonize India at any price, even when it includes the consideration of Islam’s prophet.”

So what lies behind the HeI’s reluctance to protest strongly towards the defamatory feedback made by the BJP officers?

It’s probably that the HeI is prioritizing the discharge of its leaders from jail over protesting on the streets on points that the federal government doesn’t need them to protest. It doesn’t wish to antagonize the federal government.

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Apart from, there may be the difficulty of the HeI’s capability to construct strain on the federal government. It’s affected by a management disaster as a result of demise of two successive ameers –Ahmed Shafi and Junaed Babunagari. Moreover, its management is now fractured and dozens of activists are in jail.

Since its foundational assist from the Qawmi madrassas stays intact, its manpower is robust. As soon as its leaders are launched, the HeI shall be again on the streets to protest well-liked spiritual points.