A 28-year long judicial fight of the secular activists in Bangladesh, calling for the removal of Islam as the state religion, has suddenly set off heated debate among the Islamists and secularists of the society. The long-standing legal battle finally came to an end on March 28 (2016) when the top court of Bangladesh rejected a petition demanding the removal of a constitutional provision recognizing Islam as the official religion.

Comment:

The sudden uproar over the call for dropping Islam as the country’s official religion by the secular elite and the subsequent court ruling in favor of keeping Islam as the state religion were nothing unprompted, rather these all were parts of the cunning Machiavellian moves of the Hasina government. On one hand, the government has exploited Ummah’s emotional attachment with Islam to further its political goals. On the other hand, it is trying to help the talk show-based secularists, who have no attachments with the people whatsoever, to create noise and make some space in the political arena as well.

Even though the neo-colonial surrogate rulers forcefully superimposed secularism over the people in 1971, Muslims in Bangladesh have always found themselves emotionally inclined towards Islam and Shari’ah law. With full of warmth and emotions for Islam, people in Bangladesh are concurrently given a corrupt thinking paradigm that has always kept them distanced from the correct Islamic thinking. Hence, people have never tolerated any anti-Islamic personality and/or movement (which is expressive of their Islamic emotion), whereas they are always being misguided by the secular regimes and establishments to accept democracy and nationalism which were presented before the people to be compatible with Islam. People’s emotions are always being exploited deceitfully by the secular regimes to advance their political motives. So every now and then, the secular governments of Bangladesh need some sentimental issues for the Ummah to keep them busy with while distracting them from adopting correct Islamic thinking on the bigger picture.

We thus see Hasina government has kept all the Islamic groups active against the seculars on this issue of state religion. That having been said, the same Islamic groups never question the legitimacy of the Western nation-state concept upon which Bangladesh is established. Hasina’s political expediency played out well when the Islamic parties flashed victory signs after government controlled top court rejected the petition to remove Islam as the official religion. Thus, Western powers and their proxy Hasina would be happy to let the people fight over emotional issues to maintain the status quo unless they start using their intellects and raising their voices against anti-Islamic concepts like nation-state and democracy to be replaced with Khilafah and Shari’ah.

It is no wonder for the thinking Muslims in Bangladesh that all the uproar on state religion are being orchestrated by the Hasina government as an eye-wash to reap benefits out of Ummah’s sentiment for Islam and also to portray to the world Muslims that her government is an Islam-friendly one. Fact of the matter is that even though Islam remained as a state religion, but there is no function of Shari’ah in state mechanism. Our judiciary and socio-economic policies will not be run by Islamic jurisprudence. Essentially the country has always been and will remain secular under the puppet regimes of the West. By promoting and sustaining all kinds of anti-Islamic activities in all parts of the society, it was absolutely a cunning move by Hasina to have the Islamists exhausted their energy over something nominal. Whereas all the demonstrations and efforts by the Islamic parties should have been for the re-establishment of the promised Khilafah to bring an end to the secular tyranny in Bangladesh. We pray to Allah سبحانه وتعالى that He guides all of the Islamic parties towards working for the second righteous Khilafah (Caliphate) upon the method of the Prophethood and gives victory to the Muslims under the sincere leadership of Hizb ut Tahrir.

Imadul Amin

Member of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Bangladesh