The road to democracy: Islam and Bangladesh
Zafar Sobhan
Islam and Bangladeshi identity
Islam and democracy in Bangladesh have always had an uneasy relationship. This uneasiness stems from the circumstances of Bangladesh’s original incarnation as East Pakistan based on its Muslim majority status, the failure of Pakistan as a state and the subsequent liberation war which laid to rest any notions of pan-Islamic brotherhood amongst the peoples of East and West Pakistan, and the still contested issue of how to construct Bangladeshi identity.
The 1972 constitution enshrined secularism as one of the four pillars of independent Bangladesh and in the aftermath of independence, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), the only Islamist party of note, was discredited in the eyes of the general public due to its opposition to independence and collaboration with the Pakistani occupation army.
Bangladeshi identity in the initial post-independence years was constructed largely on Bengali linguistic and cultural grounds, minimizing its Islamic component, due in part to an acknowledgement that at independence fully 20 per cent of the country were non-Muslim and that it was the identification of East Pakistan as a Muslim space that had led to its ill-conceived inclusion in the nation of Pakistan, created as an explicitly Muslim nation.
The failure and break up of Pakistan would seem to suggest that Islam as a unifying and pre-eminent determinant of identity for Bangladeshi Muslims was an untenable construct. The failure of pre-1971 Pakistan and the anti-liberation stance taken by prominent Islamists during the war of independence, together with the liberal and moderate brand of Islam practiced in Bangladesh for hundreds of years, perhaps accounts for the continuing failure of political Islam to gain a strong foot-hold in Bangladeshi politics.
However, due to both internal and external pressures and constraints, the space for Islam, political Islam, and Islamism continued to exist within the body politic and the society at large. In 1975, following the assassination of the independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the eventual ascension to power following a series of military coups of Gen. Ziaur Rahman, the political and ideological landscape of the country shifted dramatically.
In a bid to create a new political platform to challenge that of Mujib’s Awami League (AL), Zia cobbled together a coalition (that would eventually become the BNP) that included, for the first time since 1971, those politicians (for instance from the old Muslim League) who had opposed independence. In the process, the Islamist parties were politically rehabilitated. The constitution was amended to remove secularism as a founding principle, and the JI, which had been banned due to active support for Pakistan occupation forces and formation of death squads during the liberation war, was permitted to re-enter politics. Indeed, their rehabilitation was central to Zia’s political and socio-cultural mission.
Gen. Zia made the Islamicization of Bangladesh a corner-stone of his political philosophy and of Bangladesh’s identity both internally and externally. Article 25(2) was added to the constitution, providing that: “The state shall endeavor to consolidate, preserve and strengthen fraternal relations among Muslim countries based on Islamic solidarity.”
Thus gained ground a movement that identified Bangladesh as a Muslim country and sought to put Islam at the center, both of the nation’s identity and that of the individual’s construction of his or her Bangladeshi identity. The marginalization and dispossession of non-Muslim ethnic and religious minorities necessarily grew exponentially as a result and the space for the positing of a non-Muslim Bangladeshi identity shrank significantly.
In 1988, a constitutional amendment was pushed through by then military ruler Gen. Ershad, declaring Islam as the state religion. This contributed to the worsening of the persecution of minority communities, which had, in any event, been in free fall since 1975. Especially during the time of BNP/JI government, the position of Bangladesh’s ethnic and religious minorities has become extremely precarious. In October 2001, after they came to power, BNP and JI cadres went on a well-documented and reported campaign of looting, land grabbing, murder, rape, arson, and assault against the Hindu community with virtual impunity. Theoretically, all religions are equal under the law. In practice, under the BNP/JI, minorities had no rights that a well-connected Muslim needed to respect. Many Hindus have voted with their feet, and the non-Muslim population — 20 per cent in 1971 — today stands at 10 per cent.
Political Islam
Since the rehabilitation of the JI and the re-entrance of Islamist parties into mainstream Bangladeshi politics, the Islamists have continued to be a formidable though far from dominant force both in the nation’s polity as well as in the socio-cultural sphere. Even taken together, the Islamist parties have never risen above 10 per cent of the popular vote or gained much above five per cent of the seats in parliament. Indeed, in the last elections that the JI contested without allies in 1996, it received less than 5 per cent of the vote and a paltry 2 seats in the 300-seat parliament.
The results of every election we have had in Bangladesh, stretching back to Pakistan and British times, suggest that the Islamist parties are unable to make much of an impression at the polls by themselves.
However, in coalition with other right of center parties, they can provide the margin of victory in scores of seats around the country due to the first-past-the-post electoral system. Running independently in 1996, BNP received 116 seats and the Jamaat received 2 seats, and the left of center AL came to power.
However, in 2001, when they formed an alliance, the result was very different, although the relative popular vote percentages of the main parties were similar to that in 1996. Thus, by combining their vote, the 4 party alliance (BNP, JI, IOJ, and JP(NF)) garnered a total of 216 seats in the 2001 elections. The reward for the JI was 17 seats in parliament and 2 seats in the cabinet, even though its share of the popular vote remained more or less constant at slightly below 5 per cent. Thus we can see that the power wielded by JI as part of the 4 party alliance is disproportionate to its popular support.
In addition to JI, there is one other mainstream Islamist party, the Islami Oikya Jote, that garnered 2 seats in the 2001 elections (as part of the 4 party alliance) as well as any number of smaller outfits who have not registered any electoral success. In the run up to the aborted 2007 elections, the AL, thought to be the vanguard of secularism in Bangladesh, in its own effort to co-opt the Islamist vote bank and split the right of center vote, entered into a much criticized electoral alliance with one of these marginal groups, the Khelafat-e-Majlis.
There exist non-political religious organizations operating as charities and non-governmental organizations. Interestingly, although NGOs are by law barred from political activity, many of the religious NGOs do maintain an affinity with one or the other Islamist political parties.
To the best of my knowledge, the most prominent Islamic NGOs and charities, to the extent that they espouse political views, like almost all Islamist parties, do not reject democracy as a system of government. The only prominent organization I know of that openly questions democracy as un-Islamic is Hizb-ut-Tahrir, although this is the creed of almost all of the underground, militant organizations. Support for a non-democratic state based on Sharia law is more or less non-existent in Bangladesh as of today.
Current situation
Bangladesh is currently being ruled by an army-backed interim government which has pledged to hold national elections by the end of this year and which is also conducting a high-profile anti-crime and anti-corruption drive which is aimed at removing the corrupt and the criminal from politics and to decimate the power of the two existing top political parties, the BNP and AL.
JI (as well as the other Islamist parties) has been conspicuously absent from the anti-crime and corruption drives, and although some of its leaders have been caught up in the dragnet, it has managed to largely remain free of close scrutiny. It is clear that the party and Islamists in general are receiving preferential and protective treatment at the hands of the current authorities, who seem hesitant to move against them with the energy expended on the top two parties or other secular opposition.
In a troubling show of strength, the JI and other Islamists have been allowed to create mayhem with impunity in the streets, even during the on-going state of emergency, on more than one occasion. The current government appears to be either unwilling or unable to crack down on the Islamist opposition in the same way it has against the AL and BNP.
This is nothing new. From time immemorial, non-elected regimes in the Muslim world have chosen to target secular opposition only.
Time and again, it is the Islamists who are left untouched and use the opportunity to strengthen and consolidate. Time and again it is the Islamists, who, by remaining untouched, rise to the fore-front of the democratic opposition. Time and again, it is they, promising social justice and equality and freedom from corruption, who step authoritatively into the void created by non-democratic rule.
This could be the moment that the Islamists have been waiting for these past thirty-seven years. They have never risen to 10 per cent in the polls, but with their secular rivals discredited and their leadership and party apparatus more or less unscathed, they could emerge as serious players in the next elections.
If the main political parties are decimated and the Islamists are left intact then there will be a massive power vacuum that they will sweep in to fill. This is elementary history. It has happened again and again the length and breadth of the Muslim world.
Future of Islamism
I think that it would be a worthwhile exercise to look a little more closely at the religious impulse in Bangladesh, specifically among Muslims, instead of dismissing political Islam as the ideology of fanatics and fundamentalists that has no hope of gaining popularity among the general public.
The first thing to note is that right now, with Islam perceived to be under threat around the world, many Muslims are experiencing a resurgence of faith, and feel that they must publicly identify with and rally around their besieged religion. With the neo-colonial and neo-imperialist ambitions of the West apparently running rough-shod over the world in which their voice has been silenced to a whisper, many Muslims are going to be looking for an alternative view of the world to that espoused by the neo-cons and their supporters in the White House.
In the context of Bangladesh, you don’t have to be religious to believe that things have long been heading in the wrong direction, that public and private morality is at an all-time low, and that perhaps a complete cleansing of the system and a new start is the only solution. After all, what solutions do the mainstream parties have to the wrongs and injustices that we see entrenched all around us? The Islamists, at least, for what it is worth, have a solution. They have a prescription for what needs to be done. They have a vision for the future. They claim to be able to cleanse the system of its immorality. They profess an egalitarian vision which will offer hope and opportunity to all. They speak to and for the dispossessed. They have a strategy for Bangladesh to gain respect and recognition on the world stage.
In an ironic sense, the Islamists are the new communists. There is always going to be a strong anti-western constituency in the country that is implacably opposed to the rampant forces of neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism. It used to be the communists and leftists who spoke the language of these people, but who is speaking to this constituency today except the Islamists?
Thus there remain significant opportunities for Islamists in Bangladesh to continue to gain ground. With the leading secular parties in severe trouble due to the crack down on them as well as public disenchantment due to their record of corruption and ineffective governance, with the mainstream political parties’ inability to articulate anything even resembling a vision for the future of the country or policies that would address issues of poverty, marginalization, and dispossession of the country’s rural and urban poor, with the society becoming more overtly religiously observant as a result of both internal and external forces, and with opportunities for partnership available with both the armed forces and the mainstream political parties, the potential for Islamists to expand their sphere of influence is considerable.
Indeed, while it seems certain that prolonged army-backed rule or even direct army rule would help to consolidate the position of Islamists in the polity, the JI, at least, remains a significant player in the democratic political sphere as well. The 4 party alliance with the BNP (and 2 smaller parties) remains intact, and any resurgence of the right-wing political forces in Bangladesh would necessarily return them to their previous position of power and influence.
Conclusion
I do not believe that the absence or presence of democracy per se will necessarily affect the rise of Islamism in Bangladesh. Islamism’s rise is predicated primarily on the failure of successive government, both elected and unelected, to fail to provide decent governance and opportunities for the citizens of the country. To the extent that secular or military alternatives continue to come up short, we can expect the Islamists to continue to gain strength.
It is important to note, however, that thus far, Islamism has shown no real strength at the ballot box. Its influence is disproportionate to its actual popularity. But such is the first-past-the-post system and the opportunism of Bangladeshi politics that Islamists are able to retain such disproportionate power even during times of democracy.
Islamism in Bangladesh can thus be understood to be a top-down and not a bottom-up phenomena. Without support and sponsorship from the government of the day it has never flourished.
In addition, political Islam and the Islamization of society (by which I mean the increasing identification of Islam as a central component of individual and national identity) has received strong financial and organizational support from outside the country.
It is important to note that the Wahhabized Islam that is pushed by the Islamists is at odds with the more syncretic liberal strain of indigenous Islam that if followed by the majority of Bangladeshi Muslims. There is nothing authentic or indigenous about the values and behavioral codes that are enforced by political Islam.
Finally, no discussion of the rise of political Islam in Bangladesh (or elsewhere) is complete without an analysis of the impact of the foreign policy/security imperatives of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the US. As such, the continued rise of political Islam is at least as dependent on global politics as it is on events within our borders.
Zafar Sobhan is Op-Ed Editor, The Daily Star.
