Thu 31 Aug 2006
Islam took centuries to travel all the way to our part of the world and farther east. I hope the recent discussion about re-analyzing and reliving the teachings of Islam that also has started in Arabian peninsula will not take that long time to spread to Bangladesh. Here is video clip (via Rezwan) of Arab psychhologist Wafa Sultana debating different Islamic clerics.
This is heartening to see that Arab society and Arab TV are now accepting this sort of open remarks and discussion about Islam.
But our Bangladesh society still far from that open. It is incomprehensible that this sort of debate can go on in any Bangladesh TV channel.
I don’t understand why someone has to feel so insecure about Islam. Islam is a great philosophy and a major religion. Definitely it is very powerfully embedded in people’s mind and heart. What one poet/ author says, what question he/she asks should not be able to put a dent on people’s belief in Islam. The threats of fundamentalists to gag forcibly or kill everyone who tries to question some decree of Islam, only demean the power of Islam as a religion. The God’s religion, which has a strong follower should not fear one human being. Let people raise their questions, let them talk.
Despite being stabbed at the age of 82, Nobel lauret Naguib Mahfuz lived till the age of 94 before passing away yesterday. He was stabbed because his questions and frank approach while discussing religion Islam was not liked by Islamic fundamentalist.
This same fundamentalists recently threatened Writer Hasan Azizul haq to death. I hope he doesn’t have to endure what Naguib Mahfouz had to go through. I hope Hasan azizul Haq lives a productive literally life without fear.
September 1st, 2006 at 5:16 am
The Jamaat-e-Islami, like its counterpart in Pakistan, seeks to establish sharia rule over Bangladesh, and therefore had a lot in common with the Islamist terrorist group Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). All seven leaders of the JMB’s ruling council had links with the Islami Chhatra Shabir and/or Jamaat-e-Islami. On May 29, five members of JMB’s ruling council were sentenced for death for killing two judges in a bomb attack in November last year.
We discussed the links between the JMB and the government on August 17, anniversary of the nationwide serial bombings carried out by JMB and its partner Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) whose leader Bangla Bhai was also a member of JMB’s ruling council.
The government seems oblivious to the excesses of Jamaat-e-Islami and its vicious student wing, and makes no effort to condemn the violence done in its name.
And again, the fanatics of Islami Chhatra Shabir are making headlines again, this time for threatening the life of a nationally renowned author and man of letters, Hasan Azizul Haq. This man is also a professor at Rajshahi University. What makes the threat so serious is that Islami Chhatra Shabir members already murdered a professor at the same university. Professor S. Taher Ahmed of the Geology & Mining Department had been murdered on February 3. One of the three arrested in the killing claimed that another lecturer at the University, Mahbubul Alam Salehi, had been named as one of those who gave the order for Professor Ahmed to be killed.
Salehi had fled after the murder, but was later arrested. He had been released from bail at the start of this month, and had gone back to the university, guarded by police, to hold a rally. Salehi is head of the local Islami Chhatra Shabir faction at Rajshahi. It was in response to protests against his visit that a homemade bomb was thrown by ICS students, a device which injured two fine arts students.
We also mentioned how on December 24, 2004, another professor from the same Rajshahi University, 65-year old Dr Mohammad Younus (Yunus) of the Department of Economics was brutally murdered by three members of Islami Chhatra Shabir. After being gagged with a towel, Professor Yunus was stabbed in the chest, stomach, head and torso by his assailants. Though carried out by ICS activists, the killing had been ordered by Abdur Rahman, the head of JMB, who is now awaiting a death sentence.
And on Friday November 16, 2003, a Hindu professor at Chittagong in the southeast of Bangladesh was attacked by six members of Islami Chhatra Shabir at his home. Professor Muhuri, principal of the Nazirhat College, was shot through the head, causing his skull to explode (a href = “http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/images/Munir.jpg”>pictured -graphically). The killer who shot him was allowed to escape punishment because of his connections to the government.
Professor Hasan Azizul Haq is only the latest professor to be threatened by Islami Chhatra Shabir, and so far, the Jamaat-e-Islami has failed to say anything about the matter, no arrests have been made, and it is doubtful if any arrests will be made until Haq becomes the victim of a killing.
And what was the lecturer and award-winning author’s crime? He had made a speech promoting secularism in education. He made the speech at a seminar on August 21, and on August 24, a rally was held by ICS at the campus of Rajshahi University, in which speakers claimed that the author should either leave the country like Taslima Nasrin, or to die like Professor Humayun Azad.
Professor Azad, the author of 50 books and a supporter of women’s rights was brutally attacked by three men armed with butcher’s knives outside the Bangla Academy in Dhaka, on February 27, 2004. The attempted murder was ordered by Abdur Rahman, head of JMB, on account of Professor Azad’s “blasphemy”. The attack did not kill the author and academic, but on August 14 that year, he died in an apartment in Munich.
The students who were calling for the death of Professor Hasan Azizul Haq were fired up two newspaper reports which had been published in pro-Jamaat dailies, Natun Probhat and Naya Diganta, describing and condemning his calls for secularism to be respected. At the rally, activists disseminated copies of the articles.
Professor Haq claimed that the articles were total concoctions, and bore no resemblance to the actual comments he had made at the August 21 seminar.
The rally had been convened by Zulfikar Nayeem, and those who spoke there included Mahbubur Rahman, Mokhlesur Rahman, Abul Alim and Nomani. They called Professor Haq “Nastik and enemy of Islam”, and said he was not welcome on the canvas, and burned an effigy of the renowned author and educationalist.
His most ennerving comment in his speech had been a criticism of the way the government recognised Qawami madrassa degrees, calling such a move “a communal step that demeans the constitution….The state and religion are separate things. The fusion of religion with the mainstream national education and state system can never be accepted. It will be very dangerous for countrymen irrespective of religion.”
Shabir said at first that he was not intimidated, and said his speech had concerned education, the state, and secularism, not religion. However, on Sunday August 27 he filed a report with the police at Rajshahi, requesting that he and his family should receive protection.
But Professor Haq was not the only academic and thinker to be threatened by the Islami Chhatra Shabir - also attacked and threatened was Muhammad Zafar Iqbal, head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology in Sylhet, northeast Bangladesh. Zafar Iqbal is also an award-winning science fiction writer, who also holds to the secular model of education in Bangladesh.
Zafar Iqbal studied in Dhaka University and completed his Ph.D. from University of Washington. Later he worked as a scientist at California Institute of Technology and Bell Communication Research. His research area revolves around physics, computer, electronics and fibre optic communication. He designed one of the first Bangla word processors in 1984.
His books are aimed mainly at the young, children and adolescents, and aim to inspire in them an interest in science. His books are popular, and he was won awards for these. He spent 18 years living in the United States before taking up his professorship at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology.
Read more at Westernresistence on this..
September 1st, 2006 at 7:45 am
Asif, thanks for the recap.
We should not allow these incidents fall off our radar.
Z
September 1st, 2006 at 9:08 am
I agree with Rumi bhai - someone ought to go out and debate these fundamentalists. Watch them fumble because they really are standing on thin ice.
Ask them one example of a succesful Islamic state in the world. Ask them why in a great Islamic country like Saudi Arabia ( in their view) women cannot drive? Why a woman needs 4 male witnesses to prove her rape? These are all made up rules by these nonsensical clerics and Jamaat types.
Here’s a good debate between Dr. Hasan in Canada and publicity secretary Kamruzzaman of Jamaat.
September 1st, 2006 at 3:13 pm
I’m of the humble opinion that Islam is detrimental to the Bengali intellect. Historically, it’s all alien to one’s intellectual sensibilities.
The oppressed Bengalis exchanging one set of value judgements, namely, the vile caste system, for the value judgements of oppressive Arab cultural colonialists, makes no sense to me whatsoever.
This is like you saying you’ll abstain from imbibing wine but you are happy smoke more than one packet of ciggies a day. How intelligent would you say that is?
Did I ever tell about a Pakistani physicist from University College London saying that he was a firm believer in Jinns?
September 2nd, 2006 at 2:16 pm
One man called mo said..
“I’m of the humble opinion that Islam is detrimental to the Bengali intellect. Historically, it’s all alien to one’s intellectual sensibilities.”
i dont think thats a very humble opinion, but thats by the way. Judging from your comment, i suppose the major characteristic of bangali intellects are that they are petty and parochial?!? Lets not trap ourselves.
Nurturing a community of well informed knowledge actors in bangladesh would be a start to move towards what i think the article is hoping for.
Cant all parties debate how to solve common problems intelligentsly without getting sidetracked into dark talk that leads nowhere. Bring what philosophy you have to the table and lets get to work liek grown ups.
The tone of some comments seem sadly confrontational. Not everyone in Islamic movements are what you say they are, why not seed dialogue with those within them with half a brain, why always look to humiliate a simple person? what does that acheive?
Simple, daft and sometimes vindictive people do need to be restrained. Overlooking chattra dal and league excesses seems intellectually dishonest. Do you want to solve the general problem of political violence, patronage and foolishness… or score some cheap points by joining in the TWAT (war or terror) attack?
September 4th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
Hi, Asif, Zafa, Muhamad, Salam and so all, I’m not an intellectual and hate to
be so called intellectuals who even don’t know what they know and what they
don’t know! They even can’t think how the indivdual’s wisdom is so limited
compared to world of wisdom.
Just learning something they brag they are all-knowing and become arrogants.
You guys are either hypocrites or don’t know what the heck you talk about
secularism. You guys always say secularism means not anti-relgionism or
atheism. I can’t concieve what you say and what you do!
You guys, have beautiful muslim names, even observe mulsim festivals like Eids
and others and sometimes, some of you even go to mosques wearing collidar
Panjabi and bahari cap on. But when you talk in the forums you completely
oppose the core concept of Islam.
Do you think you became bankrupt being born in the family of Islamic faith as
you say as for example, I quote from Muhamad, “Islam is detrimental to Bengali
intellectuals.” Do you equate being Bengalism as anti-Islamism? And a Bangalee
can never be a muslim!
Folks, you think, people who can overtly/covertly antagonize Islam are the
sole intellectuals and seculars and the rest are fundamentalists and
communals. And none of them who strictly follow Islam have comparable
intellect like you. With your prolific judgement, all are just dums! This is
again a kind of, in my language the secular fundamentalism. A true secularism
would be to neutral to people of all faiths.
You never talk of other religions. Do you think other religions like Hinduism,
Buddism, Jewism, Mormonism, Christinity, so on are superior to Islam? You
never speak of or cynical about other religions. So, how come you are secular!
Methink, consciously or subconsciously you guys are working for other
religions or atheism.
As students of secularism you became the prey of those mischievist scholars
who don’t renounce their own religions like late Ahmed Sharif, Humayun Azad or
Taslima Nasrin, rather under the umbrella of muslims they constantly preach
against religions especially Islam. As your beloved Prof. Hasan Haque said,
” One can be religious without beleiving in God.” How absurd thinking!
It’s kind of redifining religion or recognizing atheism as the largest religion
or relligion of Godlessliness as Taslima Nasrin claims. If so, you are again a
communal cadre of atheism.
Don’t you think that kind of statement is anti-religion or anti-Islam? When
you talk against Sharia Law or law of Islamic inheritance or law of punishment
of adultery, they are all extractd and elaborated from the Holy Quran. They
are whether we can understand or not, are divine and for the greater good of
mankind. We can’t question the catalogue of the All-encompassing Creator,
Almighty Allah.
Many things in the first thought may look like irrational, harsh and inhumane
but if we think deeply we can understand the purpose of God, not guaranteed
always, though. As an aligory, operating on your kid for some disease, is no
way happy thing for your child, his freinds or to you, rather so painful, very
harsh/cruel, yet you need to do it for your child’s longer disease free happy
life.
You blatantly oppose the Quran yet, you claim you are not against Islam and
you’re just secular, it’s really ridiculous.
I respect intellectuals like late Ahmed Safa who used to be so called secular
like your all gurus and when he found he was wrong in his thinking ‘Islam or
any religion is the main stumbling block for development of any society’ he
corrected his views. He at one point in final years of life just questioned
“if religion is against the developement how come, the jews who are one of the
minority religions can reign/rule the whole world including super-power
America”. The Jews are more conservatives, and rather have more
fundamentalists’ values than muslim, yet they control and confront the world.
The fact is, the more sincere religious you are, the more it makes you
disciplined and pave your way of development here in this word and
hereafter[if you believe in]. Our problem is we are religious by name or
family sake. We are not practicing muslim in Bangladesh or elsewhere.
One thing, I remind you as a muslim we have the obligation to protect our
religion and our children from to be victims of covert/overt anti-Islamic
propaganda.
Rumi argues, Islam is not anything weak. It’s a great philosophy/religion.
It’s powerful religion. We as a muslim should not worry about. Well, you are
not fully right. Our wisdom is no way greater than that of Allah if we believe
in. Allah mandates our responsibility to guard against our enemies. Allah so
many times in his Holy Book,commands faithfuls to fight agaisnt the evils of
religion, evils of humanity, evils of anarchy and so on.
A muslim can’t remain passive giving back the responsibility to Allah and stay
in false complacent that He will do everything for us. We must use our
conscience/wisdom/aaqal to guide ourselves. We must also guard ourselves not
to be tyrants and oppressors to the people of other faiths either.
Secularsim as I believe, is the principle of practicing own religion and
allowing others to practice his/her religion without harboring animosity to
others for being just followers of other faith. And fighting your manifest
enemies who spread malice to your religion is not against the priciple of
secularism.
The other important thing we should bear in the back of our mind is, if one
wants to preach new religion or new idealism against the established ones,
then s/he is a reformer or a new prophet. In that situation s/he has to
face all kind of threats/odds/obstacles as one can imagine. He has to endure
them. This happened to all prophets of God or social reformers.
Just having a department chairmanship or chairwomanship without mountains of
montstrous threats you can’t do that. So, posing and opposing the stand of Mr.
Hasan is very natural development.
Nothing is easily earned. Should people like Mr. Hasan think it’s a easy way
of being celebrity, it’s actually not.
We should think before we say or do something and think again after the
action, then we have the chance to rectify ourselves.
Thanks.
September 12th, 2006 at 4:27 am
Fine, you can brag as much as you want to about being a follower of islam, and against whatever other religions. But, why do you feel it necessary to attack atheism or secularism for that purpose? do you not feel that all these schools of thought can coexist peacefully in a civilised society?
September 13th, 2006 at 1:14 am
In response to Mr. Muhammad:
To begin with I am not attempting to vindicate you or your opinion posted here but simply attempting to present a constructive argument. Mr. Muhammad, I humbly suggest that you expand your knowledge base and engage in deeper research to give you a proper understanding of the topic you brought up in your comment. You fail to define in your comment what you refer to as the Bengali intellect, a phrase which first all does not make sense and even if it did, it could have a VERY wide range of interpretations. Secondly, your knowledge of Islam and Islamic history is grossly inadequate as reflected by your comment suggesting Islam to be “Historically….alien to one’s intellectual sensibilities”. Judging from your knowledge of history reflected by your comment on why Bangalees accepted Islam in Bengal, I am assuming you are aware of the names of the great civilizations in the history of mankind such as the Roman, Egyptian, Greek, Inca etc. and therefore I am hoping have heard of the Islamic Civilization? Since the birth of Islam throughout the Islamic Civilization, the religion has inspired and created scientists, philosophers, mathematicians who (just as a crude comparison for your benefit) hold a place similar to the likes Socrates, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Plato from the Greek Civilization. Islamic intellectuals during the golden days of the civilization made unparalleled contribution to Algebra, Medicine, Astronomy, Art (yes ART!, Islamic Art is an entire genre studied by scholars from the field of Art History) and Architecture, Philosophy among all other fields. Just some interesting facts as examples, the first ever form of the modern concept of hospitals came into existence under the Islamic civilization, and as for the engagement of women in learning during those times, many of the scribes (who undertook documentation and recording) at the great centers of learning at that time were women! A good overall introduction to the history and achievements of the Islamic Civilization to you would be the PBS documentary whose DVD is widely available titled ‘Islam: Empire of Faith’. I hope these little facts and examples will inspire you to learn more about Islam and what Islam inspired.
Thank you.
September 16th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
In response to shawon:
Not all schools of thoughts or all entities are co-existable. You can’t say a society is civil society if it has evils or bad people in it. Bad and good are never coexistable. Water and fire can’t stay together. If water is more, fire will be extingushed and if fire is stronger, water will be evaporated.
Atheism is against all religions of faith. There are fights amongst the religions due to some misinterpretations though, all religions of faith can exist together. Atheism is not a recognized religion. If you want to see atheism as religion you have to struggle and endure all the heck of obstacles/threats as the prophets of established religions had to.
Other thing, apart from religious debate it’s immoral and punishable to cheat/defraud people taking the fake ID. Those who being under the shade of Islam and preach atheism or anti-islamism must renounce their faith first and then mustering the courage come out to preach thier new faith.
If anything is against your survival or existence you have the right to fight against your enemies, evils of faith but not any pre-emptive attack.
Thanks.
August 9th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Taslima attacked
HYDERABAD, India (Reuters) - Muslim protesters assaulted the exiled Bangladeshi author and feminist Taslima Nasreen at a book launch in Hyderabad on Thursday, incensed by her repeated criticism of Islam and religion in general.
Some radical Muslims hate Nasreen for saying Islam and other religions oppress women.
On Thursday, lawmakers and members of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party attacked her at the press club in Hyderabad at the launch of a Telugu translation of one of her novels.
An uneasy-looking Nasreen backed into a corner as several middle-aged men threw a leather case, bunches of flowers and other objects at her head and threatened her with a chair, according to a Reuters witness and television pictures.
Some of the mob shouted for her death.
Other men tried to shield her and catch the projectiles. She ended up with a bruised forehead, and described the attack as barbaric before being taken to safety by police.
Nasreen fled Bangladesh for the first time in 1994 when a court said she had “deliberately and maliciously” hurt Muslims’ religious feelings with her Bengali-language novel “Lajja”, or “Shame”, which is about riots between Muslims and Hindus.
At the time, thousands of radical Muslims protested against her, demanding that she be killed for blasphemy, and some have continued to threaten her life ever since.
Police said they have arrested three state lawmakers from the political party along with 15 party workers.
Nasreen - sometimes spelled “Nasrin” - was born into a Muslim family in Bangladesh, a conservative, predominantly Islamic country.
The author, who lives in Kolkata, now describes herself as a secular humanist, and criticises religion as an oppressive force.
In 2004, a Muslim cleric offered a $440 reward to anyone who was able to successfully humiliate Nasreen by blackening her face with shoe polish or ink or by garlanding her with shoes.
She worked as a doctor before turning to writing, and several of her books have been banned in India and Bangladesh because they upset hardline Muslims.
The European Parliament awarded her the Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought in 1994.