Ahnaf Kalam, a Middle East Forum writer, researcher, and producer of its podcast series, spoke to an April 21 Middle East Forum Podcast (video). The following summarizes his comments:
With a population of 170 million people, Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, is the third largest Muslim majority nation in the world. Prior to Bangladesh’s independence—secured by India in 1971—Bengalis in East Pakistan “faced immense systemic discrimination from West Pakistan.” This sparked a “major Bengali nationalist movement led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,” leader of the Awami League party and “considered the father of Bangladesh today.” India intervened as a result of the Liberation War waged by the Bengali population against West Pakistan’s discrimination of Bengalis. Pakistan’s forces “also targeted Hindus, academics, liberal intellectuals and religious minorities.” Rahman’s nationalist movement endured West Pakistan’s 1971 genocidal Operation Searchlight, which massacred as many as three million Bengalis.
Rahman’s nationalist movement endured West Pakistan’s 1971 genocidal Operation Searchlight, which massacred as many as three million Bengalis.
Bangladesh’s 1972 constitution established Rahman’s “secular vision,” but his 1975 assassination ushered in “decades of instability” through the 1980s, during which military regimes declared “Islam as the state religion.” This set the stage for “the Islamist resurgence we see today in light of modern events.”
From 2009 to 2024, Rahman’s daughter, the recently ousted Sheikh Hasina, ruled Bangladesh as its prime minister. Initially praised for stimulating the economy and curbing anti-Hindu and anti-Indian insurgencies, her regime’s crackdown on Islamists led to accusations of authoritarianism, which mobilized opposition among conservative Muslim factions. Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the Islamist organizations her government targeted, was banned in 2013 because of its role in the 1971 genocide. Hasina’s security force, the Rapid Action Battalion, was implicated in the “enforced disappearances” of thousands in a secret prison facility where the Battalion “held a number of dissidents incommunicado.”
In 2024, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court reinstated a job quota system viewed as favoring “Awami League loyalists.” This was the “tipping point” that triggered student protests, during which the Rapid Action Battalion killed thousands in what has become known as the July Massacre. In turn, a coalition of students, secularists, liberals, and Islamists united in a July Revolution that ousted Hasina, who fled to India.
Parallels have been made to Iran’s 1979 revolution where, “like Sheikh Hasina, the Shah was seen as a Western-backed autocrat whose repression united students, academics, secularists and liberals” opposing the autocracy. In Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini “hijacked the movement” and led the Islamists to power, “completely sidelining and subjugating the moderates.” Bangladesh’s coalition “was similarly unprepared for the Islamist surge that followed—a miscalculation that is now tearing down the nation’s once secular fabric.”
The interim leader who succeeded Hasina’s ouster in 2024, Muhammad Yunus, a recipient of the Nobel Prize for pioneering micro financing, led the West to be optimistic. However, Yunus lifted the ban on “the genocidal Islamist group” Jamaat-e-Islami and reversed Sheikh Hasina’s crackdown on it. Founded in 1941, Jamaat-e-Islami opposed Bangladeshi independence in 1971, aiding in Pakistan’s genocide through its al-Badr militias. Despite Jamaat-e-Islami’s goal of “establishing a total Islamic state in Bangladesh,” it claims to be a “modern liberal party,” extending its operational reach to its Western front organization in the U.S., the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA).
Yunus lifted the ban on “the genocidal Islamist group” Jamaat-e-Islami and reversed Sheikh Hasina’s crackdown on it.
Jamaat-e-Islami’s claims belie the over two thousand Islamist attacks that have been waged against Hindus and other religious minorities in Bangladesh since August of 2024 involving looting, desecration of temples and shrines, and murders.
“Jamaat-e-Islami and other violent Islamist allies like Hefazat-e-Islam, whose goal is also to establish Sharia law across Bangladesh, have exploited the post-Sheikh Hasina vacuum and unleashed total chaos.“
Yunus has been dismissive of Islamist violence, attributing it to “propaganda” despite U.N. and Amnesty International reports to the contrary. The sidelining of secularists and continued violence against Hindus while Islamists are empowered has been met with Yunus’s “indifference.” Moreover, his attorneys general scrubbed the secular clause from the Bangladeshi constitution and authorized the release of convicted terrorists from prison.
The rise of Islamism in Bangladesh presents a national security threat “to Western interests in South Asia” and to regional allies. Hasina’s pro-India stance checked Beijing’s influence, but Yunus’s “pivot towards Pakistan and China” has shifted the balance against the West. Additionally, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and its ties to Jamaat-e-Islami “risk turning Bangladesh into an anti-Western hub.” Increased Islamist activity “could ultimately destabilize India’s northeast, which is a region that is absolutely vital to American allies.” Bangladesh has also exhibited “intensified hostility toward Israel.” Post October 7, Yunus “has doubled down on anti-Israel rhetoric and has aligned with Jamaat-e-Islami’s antisemitic narratives.”
In contrast to the Biden administration’s policy that continued USAID funding and failed to “deter extremism,” the Trump administration has condemned Islamist violence against the Hindus.
In contrast to the Biden administration’s policy that continued USAID funding and failed to “deter extremism,” the Trump administration has condemned Islamist violence against the Hindus. Imposing sanctions on “interim government officials” who lifted the Jamaat-e-Islami ban and empowered jihadists would further strengthen the administration’s policies. The use of “trade preferences and IMF (International Monetary Fund) loans as leverage” could successfully pressure Yunus to comply with demands “that Bangladesh hold elections by late 2025.”
Domestically, America’s intelligence agencies should investigate ICNA. While it operates within the law, ICNA propagates an ideology with the “potential to elevate problematic individuals and radicalize entire generations.”
Bangladesh’s “July revolution, like Iran’s 1979 revolution, was fueled by righteous anger, no doubt, but the risks of being hijacked by Islamists proved not to be worth the gamble.” An Islamist-dominated Bangladesh “would destabilize this region, empower China, and undermine decades of democratic progress,” with potentially far-reaching effects on the West and its allies.
