Once again giving the lie to those who see the conflict in Bangladesh, and other conflicts involving jihadists, as primarily nationalistic. From Indo Asian News Service, with thanks to DFS:
Dhaka, April 2 (IANS) Visiting members of foreign Islamic organisations, including from India, provided Bangladeshi Islamist militants with financial and logistical support to create a 'war-like situation' in Bangladesh, investigators here have alleged. According to investigators, most of these Islamic delegates were from Pakistan, India, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Sudan, Yemen, Baharain and 'a few other Muslim-dominated countries', The Daily Star reported.Important among the foreign Islamic delegates who visited Bangladesh on different occasions are Abdul Matin Salafi of India, Moulana Fazlur Rahman, Malik Mohammad Khan Sherani, Allama Osaya and Monjur Ahmed Chiniutee of Pakistan, Abdullah Abdut Tawat al Madani of Nepal, Sajlee Rifat Osman Mahmud, Abbas Bao, Kamal Hossain and Mohammed Ahmed al Sheikh of Sudan, Zafar Musa Abu Moaz of Iraq, Abdur Rahman of Yemen, Moulana Sheikh Abdullah Nasser al Rahmani.
Fazlur Rahman, president of Pakistan's Jamiat-e-Ulama-e-Islam who also heads Muttahida Majlish-e-Amal, a coalition of six Pakistani Islamic organisations, addressed a meeting in Sylhet in March last year.
'They asked people to join the movement to save Islam, saying the religion is in danger across the globe,' the paper said.
The Khaleda Zia government is a coalition of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and a combine of four Islamist parties. Looking at the political aspects of the case, the paper said: 'The government has also remained inactive regarding the ruling party leaders, police officials and local administration whose links to the militants have long been revealed by the media as well as the arrested militant leaders themselves.'
'It has been reiterating that all involved with the militants will be punished, but no action has been taken yet against these militant patrons,' it said....
An investigator said the aim behind the foreign assistance to the Bangladeshi militants is to initiate jihad for establishing Islamic rule.
'Many delegates of foreign Islamic organisations have visited Bangladesh, stayed for significant period of time on different occasions and met the militant leaders,' an investigator told The Daily Star on condition of anonymity.
The militants took all sorts of assistance from these delegates to create a war-like situation in Bangladesh, in the name of jihad, to pave the way for establishing Islamic rule in Taliban style, he said.
The financial support chiefly came through different ways, including hundi, in the name of funds for Islamic activities, Islamic NGOs, construction of mosques and madrasas and publication of Islamic books and booklets.
With Islamic parties in the ruling coalition, why is that a surprise? While the funding may come from abroad, all logistical support is local. Particularly in NW Bangladesh, where the government has backed Islamist guerillas in order to trump Marxist ones.
High time India sealed off that border (which makes the current (not the proposed) US-Mexico border look like the Berlin Wall), and forced Dhaka to take back its citizens who are in illegally.
Take out the "in" and replace it with an "a" and that would be an accurate statement.
Dear Robert
I'd really wish there could some way to stop reference to these bastards as Indians.
They show no respect for the constitution, misuse its provisions and claim "sympathy votes" from greedy short sighted politicians who wouldn't hesitate to bend over backwards to satisfy each and every one of their whims.
They get to go there to bangladesh, sponsor the genocide of the hindu minority, and come back here to india, and whine about how muslims are "persecuted" and how they do not get enough benefits for their community.
I may not like the RSS or the Bajrang Dal, but my votes are firmly for them because they are the only ones with the guts to call islam's bluffs. For Hindus, and for Indians it seems like our last hope.
For a free world.
At least, it should specifically say "Indian Muslims" Granted the story was taken directly out of IANS, but the way it's phrased, one would think that either the Indian government, or a majority of Indians, Hindus included, are actively involved in the further Islamization of Bangladesh.
typical B'Deshi,
one of the most insolent chumps i've seen. as infidel pride said with JeM & BNP in power where is the need for additional external support. these days it has become a fashion in b'desh to blame everything on India.
New at the BBC:
India arrests bomb 'mastermind'
AND...
(India) Varanasi blasts: Six HuJI, JeM terrorists held
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1667194,001302170000.htm
Claiming to have cracked the Varanasi blasts case, police have arrested six terrorists of Bangladesh-based HuJi and JeM of Pakistan
This needs further investigation. If there is even one iota of truth in a "Abdul Matin Salafi" going to spread islam in B'desh, we need to keep an eye on him and his ilk.
Proud to be an atheist!
Vishnu (from the land of "gods", India)
typical B'Deshi, one of the most insolent chumps i've seen. as infidel pride said with JeM & BNP in power where is the need for additional external support. these days it has become a fashion in b'desh to blame everything on India.
Vikrant, I am surprised by your generalization. I guess you are not aware of that there are also other parties and supporters in Bangladesh like Awami league who got more than 50% of total vote in the election but lost marginally in many constituencies. So in you one sentence you are negating the other 50% Bangladeshis and making all your enemy.
We have been long fighting against the right wing religious extremists but they are gaining strong because of the fundings from the middle east. Many less-educated people are barainwashed to extremists and are well paid by the kingpins with that funding to empower their political Islam.
And it is also suspected that Pakistani intelligence ISI is playing a role here to tackle India. Bangladeshis have enough problems at home frond like aleviating poverty, rebuild infrastructure destroyed regularly by floods etc. They cannot afford to go into enmity with a neighbour and for no good reason. Those religious rightwings have taken a strategy to tackle Awami League and other secular forces blaming them as pro-Indian and are carrying propaganda against India. These are political strategies, not what the general people feels or thinks. I hope you will get the idea better if you come to Dhaka and see for yourself.
Now what should India do? Act with the rightwings propaganda and make another frontier along Bangladesh Border? I think that will benefit no country other than Pakistan and probably that is what they want. Jamaate Islami has hot connection with Pakistan.
And please don't with your careless remarks discredit the fight of the other 50% of the people against these religios extremists and the parties who endorses them.
And I am also for the fencing. This will curb the illegal trade between India and Bangladesh (Twice as much the legal one) and Bangladesh government will earn revenue.
From a past article on Bangladesh at JW:
"In 1971 East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) rose in revolt against West Pakistan (now Pakistan). Under General Yahya the Bengalees were ruthlessly suppressed. At their side, working hand in bloody glove with the General’s men, were the so-called "razakars." These were local fanatical Muslims intent on keeping "Pakistan" together in the interests, not of the people of Bangladesh, but for the "idea of Islam" and an "Islamic Pakistan." All through the war for Bangladesh's independence from West Pakistan the Muslim razakars committed mass murder of those Bangladeshis fighting the forces of General Khan. This collaborationist element in East Pakistan murdered not only local Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians, but also Muslims who wanted independence. More on this can be found at such websites as www.faithfreedom.org and websites of Hindus and ex-Muslims that concentrate on Bangladesh.
The more fervent someone was a Muslim, the more likely it was that one would become a mass-murderer of one's neighbors. So many were convinced that as an Islamic State Pakistan had to be supported, no matter what that meant. It had to be supported for the Glory of Islam, the All for Islam, Islam, Islam. Millions managed to save themselves only because India offered them refuge.
These "razakars" were never punished. Some of them are in the Bangladeshi government today. The members and supporters of the opposing Awami League, per contra, are constantly under siege. Some of them have been murdered -- and those murdered include some of most distinguished Bengalis, including, this past January 27, Shah A. M. S. Kibria, killed by grenade thrown at him. The country is spiraling into complete Muslim fanaticism. One can see, at certain websites, pictures of a Hindu who, having made the mistake of walking near a mosque in Bangladesh recently as Friday Prayers were ending, was beaten by a Muslim mob -- a mob enthused, no doubt, by whatever stirring khutba it had just heard. It is not only those taking part so gleefully in the man's murder that strikes one -- but all the others standing about, enjoying the spectacle or casually ignoring it as if this sort of thing happens every day.
In 1947 38% of the population of what was then East Pakistan was non-Muslim. It is now down to 8%. Massacres of Hindus, of the few Buddhists who remained in post-Islamic India (in the Chittagong Hills area), and of Christians and other non-Muslims have been incessant. In recent times the pace of such persecution and murder seems to have picked up.
There are those Bangladeshis who nonetheless attempt to lessen the effect of Islamic fanaticism, which has recently come to infect more and more Muslims in east Asia, including not only Bangladesh, but also Malaysia and Indonesia, and Muslim minorities in southern Thailand and the southern Philippines. Things are getting worse -- that is, the ideology that Islam encourages, the Jihad-conquest, and the war against all Infidels, is not dying down but increasing. And so is the war against those who, through no fault of their own, were born into Islam and, not knowing much about it, continue to call themselves "Muslims" -- and yet, are, and will always be, the victims of other Muslims whose behavior is not an aberration but is, rather, based on the texts of Islam, of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira.
Finally, there is the case of Mr. Salah Uddin Shoaib Chaudhury, the editor of Blitz, who was arrested in November 2003 and held without trial until May 2005 for the crime of trying to establish better relations between Israel and Muslim countries. Chaudhury's case should have been the subject of intervention by the American government. That it was not is a scandal. As for the murder of Kibria and of many others, that too should be protested – for Islam, which is essentially a vehicle for Arab cultural imperialism, continues to further the destruction of non-Muslim minorities in Bangladesh, and of Bangladesh itself, in a razakar-orgy of violence.
And today? Today in Bangladesh Hindus are beaten to death, Christians murdered, and the few remaining Buddhists in the Chittagong Hills fear for their lives. And the Awami League holdovers, the people with civic courage, like Kibria, whose Islam is tempered by their innate humanity and good sense, are murdered by those whose Islam is not.
And that is Bangladesh.
It will be interesting to see if Irene Khan, herself of Muslim Bangladeshi descent and the Secretary-General of that now heavily politicized organization, Amnesty International, (which is normally so exercised about the “war crimes” of the United States and, bien sur, Israel), will forthrightly take the lead in denouncing, again and again, the massacres of Christians and especially of Hindus in Bangladesh. She was recently there, and what seemed to exercise her the most was the declaration that Ahmadiyyas were not legitimate Muslims.
One would like Irene Khan to discuss what it was about the redefinition of the status of Ahmadiyyas was so worrying. Why would it matter, if they are called "Muslims" or not, if Islam itself is the religion of peace and tolerance we hear that it is? Why would being declared "not-Muslim" affect the wellbeing, in Bangladesh, of Ahmaddiyyas? Irene Khan knows the answer. But she persists in refusing to join Ali Sina, Ibn Warraq, and others. Instead she pretends that the problem is not Islam, not the words of Qur'an and hadith -- no, no, that will never do -- but the "cultural" or "civilizational" attitudes that, for some reason, are remarkably coincident in time and space with Islam.
Meanwhile, let's keep a bead on Bangladesh. Make no mistake: it is an unpleasant place, made unpleasant by the aggressions of Islam. No Tales of a Bengal Lancer, and no verses by the once-celebrated Rabindranath Tagore (not a Muslim, so disliked very much in Bangladesh), are part of present-day Bangladesh, or to make it more satisfyingly exotic, Bangla Desh. The massacres of millions of insufficiently loyal, that is insufficiently Muslim, Bangladeshis by the army of West Pakistan seems to have left less of an impression on Bangladeshi loyalty to Islam. One might, under the circumstances, have thought that that display of murderous aggression, in the name of Islam, Pakistan as an Islamic state, and with the stated aim of restoring the right rule of Allah to a wavering Bengali population, might have had long-term effects on dampening Muslim fervor. That does not seem to have happened -- always excepting the handful of skeptical freedom-lovers who, through the Internet, are learning the disastrous effects Islam has had on the intellect, and on human potential, everywhere it has imposed its will.
Posted on December 20, 2005 06:36 AM
For more at JW, google "Bangladesh" and "Posted by Hugh."
Rezwan
For a country that owes its very existance to India, Bangladesh has some gall acting against India's interests over the last 25 years, and expecting India to play nice. Whether it was objections over the Farraka waters dam, or the New Moore Island that they had no role in recovering, and were just plain greedy, or more recently, the objections over a gas pipeline from Myanmar to India, the ingratitude of Dhaka has been remarkable, but typical of the average Mohammedan. For a country that was founded on Bengali nationalism, Bangladesh has increasingly become more and more Islamic, even though under Sheikh Mujib, they started off secular.
The 1971 war was supposed to have ended the floods of refugees from Bangladesh to India. That hasn't happened. Not only has the non-Muslim percentage gone down from 38% to 8%, as Hugh points out above; there has been a steady flow of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants - mainly Muslim - to India, to the point that in northern districts of W Bengal, such as Murshidabad, the Muslim population is now 40%. The last of course is the fault of both the Indian government, for not enforcing immigration laws (although the NDA government did finally force Bangladesh to take back some, and started a fence), and the Left front government in West Bengal, which kept encouraging this influx in order to inflate their voter rolls.
As somebody originally from Calcutta, I strongly believe that the 1971 war was a mistake. Either India should have just conquered and annexed East Pakistan, a la Goa or Sikkim style, or they should have simply banned any refugees from crossing over. All this talk about Sheikh Hasina being a moderate is tripe - we didn't see it when she was in power. Had India annexed Bangladesh, they would have had full linguistic freedom - which was the basis of the 1971 uprising - without the ugly company of Islam, and there wouldn't have been a Hindu exodus from that place. Nor would there have been a persecution of Buddhists in Arakan (aka Chittagong Hill Tracks). Over time, such Muslims would have either become less Islamic, since Bengal never had a strong Islamic tradition, or they would have in the worst case been in the same boat as Muslims in the rest of India, which would still have been better than what Bangladesh is today. As Hugh notes above, none of the linguistic persecution of Bengalis (which would probably have resulted in Bengali being written in Arabic on that side of the Padma) seems to have dampened the Islamic fervor.
India made its mistake in 1971. There is no reason to compound that mistake now. Treat Bangladesh as a pariah state like Pakistan, and seal off the borders completely. However, as long as Left Bengal has the various flavors of Communists (Marxists, Maosits, Forward Bloc, Revolutionary Socialists) running things, and they are supporters of the current regime in New Delhi from outside, breathe easy - not much is going to change.
(Bangladesh) Islami Bank fined for hiding militant transactions
http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/04/06/d6040601011.htm
Bangladesh Bank (BB) fined Islami Bank Bangladesh for hiding suspicious transactions by militants violating the anti-money laundering act; orders action against 20 staff for assisting Islamists
Rezwan,
Dont get me wrong, i generalise out of Bangladeshi attitude towards India which i come across here in UK. Virtually every Bangladeshi i've grown up with believes it was Mukti Bahini who liberated East Pakistan or the Awami League is proppped up by the Indians. With Bangladesh continually refusing to accept the illegal immigrant problem, and 20 million B'Deshis changing the demographic makeup of 3 Indian states how can you expect us to have a charitable view towards Bangladeshis.
P.S I do read your blog occasionally, i also think you've posted before on Pickled Politics.
As Gertrude Stein (daughter of apes and pigs) would have said:
Jihad is a jihad is a jihad.
Borders (not the dhimmi store but the map coordinates) don't matter to Islam. Only the goal is vital : despotic dominination of humanity.
"dominination"?
One "in" too many should come out.
Thank you Vikrant for your comments.
With Bangladesh continually refusing to accept the illegal immigrant problem, and 20 million B'Deshis changing the demographic makeup of 3 Indian states how can you expect us to have a charitable view towards Bangladeshis.
I don't support Bangladeshis to migrate to India even for economic reasons. In fact the loophole is the lax border security in both the sides. The barbed wire fencing may be a deterrent (I am also for the fence). I don't support Bangladeshis to migrate to India even for economic reasons. You know actually many worthless people migrate who can't generate a decent income in Bangladesh because they have some limitations. Probably they can earn more in India. In fact the loophole is the lax border security in both the sides. The barbed wire fencing might be a deterrent, we will have to see its usefulness. The migrations still happening because a large no of population has some relatives in either part. Now, because of the economic disparities migrants are preferring to move to India. If the economic conditions are better in Bangladesh, we might expect a reversal of the situation. With this fluid population, you need to put a valve and proper filters to monitor the actual movement and deter the unwanted ones.
Its not so easy as you think. Your politicians crave for these people to be around when the election comes and then after the election cries wolf for their repatriation. They would be forced to hit the base whenever the politics with them are stopped. And for this it is imperative that Bangladesh develops in all aspects not being far behind of India. One of the reason behind Indira Gandhi's decision to help Bangladesh liberate is the migrant refugee issue.
If we compare this situation with the US-Mexico immigration issues you will see that the migrations are happening due to economic disparities. And is US blaming Mexican citizens for that? or are they making the borders more protected?
And btw the 20 million figure does not seem exaggerated? I have high regards for Indian border securities and immigration authorities. Surely they can't be that much worthless!
Infidel pride:
As somebody originally from Calcutta, I strongly believe that the 1971 war was a mistake. Either India should have just conquered and annexed East Pakistan, a la Goa or Sikkim style, or they should have simply banned any refugees from crossing over.
Hmm you truely sound colonial. Well you want to know my view? I think dividing India in 1947 was a mistake. The two nation theory is the biggest anomaly in the history. Sadly everywhere in the Indian sub-continent we confront these religious divisions within ourselves. Some Bangladeshi Muslims are shameless and unpatriotic enough to honour Pakistan after their genocide of Bengalis in 1971 becuase they are Muslims.
The Bangladeshis should not forget that between March 25 and December 16, 1971 estimated 3 million Bengalees were killed by Pakistani Army and their collaborators, 200000 women raped and 10 million were displaced. This was the worst genocide after the second world war.And we will not forget.
In the 21st century when the world is advancing in leaps and bounds and economy rules everything, it is worthless in clucthing to religion, and make it dominate people's lives. Religion is a culture and something very personal. And it all depends on persons, their upbringing, exposure and reasoning of how one defines one's faiths.
So I find it very wrong to generalize a mass of population just because they are born in some religion.
Reazwan,
The only politicians who want Bangladeshis are the West Bengali commies. And you really cant blame the underpaid border guards with the resources they have. It is nearly impossible to police certain stretches of border. Well 20 million figure seems alright to me. Last time i was in India, i saw huge Bangladeshi slum in Mumai. And that place is 1500 miles from Bangladesh border.