Bangladesh releases chief of jihad terror outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team and lifts ban on jihad group Jamaat e Islami

Thinking that Bangladesh’s political crisis was initiated by a mere student protest expressing outrage against a random policy introduced by the Hasina government would be naïve and unwise. The uprising was fueled by Islamic organizations with the goal of making Bangladesh the new cradle of jihad in South Asia. Bangladesh’s interim government has placed Muhammed Yunus in the role of leader as a sham to camouflage their jihadist and supremacist ambitions; the ruling group already has pro-jihad ministers, introduced as advisors who play vital roles in influencing the administrative machinery.

In one of their first steps towards extending a warm embrace to Islamic jihad, the newly-formed government released the Ansarullah Bangla Team chief, Mufti Jashimuddin Rahmani, on bail from a Kashimur jail on Wednesday, August 18. The Ansarullah Bangla Team is an Al-Qaeda-inspired jihad group now known as Ansar al Islam. Its chief was convicted of the murder of architect and blogger Rajib Haider in 2013. Haider was hacked to death in front of his house in February 2013, and Rahmani was arrested in connection to this killing six months later. He was also accused of four other cases under the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act and Anti-Terrorism Act in Bangladesh. On Sunday, Rahmani was granted bail in an Anti-Terrorism Act case, and all other cases against him were also withdrawn.

The release of Mufti Jashimuddin gave us a sneak peek into the future Bangladesh has chosen for itself. And so it did not come as a surprise when the current ruling group went further on its jihadi path and officially lifted the ban on another jihad group, Jamaat-e-Islami, and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir. The home ministry also issued a notification stating that there was no evidence of Jamaat-e-Islami, Islami Chhatra Shibir, or their associate bodies being involved in violence, thus acquitting these organizations of all accusations and charges without any conclusive investigation or judicial proceedings.

Sheikh Hasina banned both these organizations at the peak of the students’ movement on August 1; four days later, her government was toppled, and she was forced to flee to India. The following day, over 2200 members of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami were granted bail by Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Courts. But this was not the first time the Islamic outfit courted controversy. Once the country’s largest Islamic party, the Jamaat was taken out of running in elections after a Bangladesh court in 2013 declared it illegal. The ruling came in after it was observed that the Jamaat’s charter breached the “secular spirit” of Bangladesh’s constitution.

Jamaat-e-Islami was founded by Muslim Brotherhood prodigy Sayyid Abul A’la Maududi with the agenda of “bringing the world under the flag of Islam,” and was an active cohort of Pakistani forces during Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971. It had a crucial role in forming several of the Pakistani army’s auxiliary forces, such as Razakar, Al-Shams Al-Badr, and the Peace Committee, that committed heinous atrocities against Hindu freedom fighters during the Liberation movement. They massacred Hindu men and children and raped Hindu women and girls in the hundreds of thousands.

The citizenship of prominent JeI leader and war criminal Ghulam Azam was canceled by the first president of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Azam fled to Pakistan and tried to win the patronage of Saudi Arabia, asserting that Muslims in Bangladesh were in danger as the Hindu minority were killing them and burning their properties. He collected large donations from the Middle East to defend “endangered Islam” in Bangladesh. The JeI returned to Bangladesh in its full strength after the assassination of Mujibur in 1975. Soon after the end of the military rule in Bangladesh in 1990, Azam’s Bangladeshi passport was reinstated, and the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, during pro-JeI, BNP matriarch Khaleda Zia’s tenure, granted him the freedom to resume his political career.

While the JeI is recognized as a terror organization and is banned in Russia and India, it is known for maintaining close links with many Islamic jihad groups, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Muslim Brotherhood. It built its presence in parts of Europe since the 1960s and has gradually gained prominence in the United States. The Islamic Circle of North America, which seeks to propagate Islam and promote the Islamic way of life among American Muslims, has strong links with the JeI.

The Islamic group has been wreaking havoc on the streets of Bangladesh since the fall of the Hasina government, and terrorizing minority communities, particularly the Hindus. Speaking to Indian media, the Hindus in Bangladesh stated that Jamaat-e-Islami members were listing the names of Hindu businesses and houses and blocking roads so that the Hindus couldn’t escape.