“Soldiers of the Caliphate in Bangladesh” claimed that they had planted the bombs among the “polytheists in the city of Dhaka, during the holding of their polytheist rituals.” However, Quamrul Islam, Bangladeshi’s food minister, insists that “there is no existence of Islamic State in Bangladesh.” Quamrul Islam may just be trying to minimize the problem, after the fashion of his Western counterparts, or he may be right. If he is right, however, there is nonetheless no doubt that these bombings were carried out by some Sunni faction or another, out of hatred for Shi’ites. No one, however, seems concerned about Sunni-Shi’ite violence, even though it claims far more lives than “Islamophobia” (which has killed no one, yet is a central concern of international organizations) ever did.
“ISIS Claims Responsibility for Attack in Bangladesh,” by Ellen Barry, New York Times, October 24, 2015 (thanks to Lookmann):
DHAKA, Bangladesh — Three bombs exploded early Saturday morning during a giant procession here in the Bangladesh capital honoring the Shiite Muslim holiday of Ashura, killing at least one person, wounding dozens more and further fraying nerves in a city already on edge over reports of extremist threats.
A social-media account believed to be operated by the Islamic State group issued a statement online claiming responsibility for the bombing, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist messages and propaganda.
The statement said “soldiers of the Caliphate in Bangladesh” were able to detonate explosives in a temple of “polytheists in the city of Dhaka, during the holding of their polytheist rituals.”
It was the third act of violence in Bangladesh that an Islamic State account has claimed in the past month, after the murders of two foreigners, an Italian man and a Japanese man.
The Ashura procession, organizers say, has proceeded uneventfully for 400 years, drawing throngs of Sunni Muslims who wind through the narrow streets of Old Dhaka alongside their Shia neighbors.
There is virtually no history of sectarian tension between Bangladesh’s Sunnis and its tiny minority of Shiite Muslims.
Shiite Muslims who proceeded to march later in the day said they were still grappling with the notion that terrorists might attack Bangladeshis based on their sect.
“Earlier, Pakistan was the country where the Shia were under attack,” said Syed Ibrahim Khalil Razavi, who was walking barefoot down a major thoroughfare at the head of a procession that numbered in the thousands.
“Now they target Shias in other countries, like Syria and Iraq,” he said. “I suppose we cannot rule out the possibility that this could happen in Bangladesh.”
The attack came as a new jolt to a city already anxious over Islamist violence.
After years of relative dormancy, militant groups have become more visible over the past several years, killing Bangladeshi activists and writers who were openly critical of fundamentalist Islam, and releasing “hit lists” of others.
Late last month, several foreign governments reported that they had gathered intelligence suggesting that an international terrorist organization was planning an attack on foreigners in Bangladesh. That announcement was followed, ominously, by the shootings of two foreigners, each of which was claimed by social media accounts linked to the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
Bangladeshi authorities have questioned that claim, saying that they had traced the crimes to activists from a banned pro-Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, and the opposition Bangladeshi National Party. On Saturday, the governing Awami League issued a statement blaming the Bangladeshi National Party and Jamaat-e-Islami for the attack in Dhaka.
“There is no existence of Islamic State in Bangladesh,” said Quamrul Islam, Bangladeshi’s food minister, who visited the site of the bombing on Saturday….