Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald provides some background on the expanding jihad in Bangladesh:
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 pleasingly exotic, Bangla Desh. The massacres of millions of insufficiently loyal, or insufficiently Muslim, Bangladeshis by the army of West Pakistan seems to have left little impression. One might, under the circumstances, have thought that that little display of murderous aggression, with the stated aim of restoring the right rule of Allah to a wavering Bengali population, might have had long-term effects of fervor. Nope, 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.