Leaders and activists of the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir are allegedly using a “get expelled strategy” to join the New JMB, a new faction of banned militant outfit Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, to carry out terror attacks across Bangladesh.

With very little scope to play a role in the country’s political arena nowadays, Jamaat and Shibir over the years had secretly expelled over various unclear reasons a number of its members who were later found to be involved with militancy.

Their goal is to create anarchy, native and international pressure on the Awami League-led government and ultimately oust it from power, police officials have said.

New JMB, looking for fresh members after its top leaders and activists were either killed or arrested in recent operations by security agencies, is also eager to recruit the expelled members of Jamaat and Shibir as they would serve its purpose willingly.

“Former Shibir members are the ones who are now leading New JMB,” Monirul Islam, chief of Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit, claimed recently after arresting one of the Gulshan restaurant attack masterminds, Aslam Hossain Rashed alias Rash.

Monirul said: “Rashed joined New JMB following the footsteps of Shibir leader Shariful Islam, who was involved in the killing of Rajshahi University teacher Rezaul Karim Siddiquee.”

Another CTTC official, requesting anonymity, told the Dhaka Tribune that New JMB was now being led by one Ayub Bachchu who is a former Shibir activist.

In the latest development, New JMB militant Saiful Islam, also a former Shibir member, blew himself up with mid-range explosives at a hotel room in the capital’s Panthapath, about 300 metre away from Bangabandhu Memorial Museum, during a police raid on Tuesday morning.

Later, Inspector General of Police AKM Shahidul Hoque told reporters: “The militant Saiful, also the son of a Jamaat leader from Khulna, had planned to launch a bomb attack on the processions heading to the museum at Dhanmondi 32 to pay tribute to Bangabandhu.”

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, in several instances, had claimed that Jamaat and Shibir were behind the militant outfits in the country.

Jamaat, the country’s largest religious political party, have always denied such claims, but some intelligence reports last year had found the allegations to be true.

According to the reports, many Jamaat and Shibir members were both directly and indirectly involved with different militant groups. Some organisations owned by Jamaat leaders were also found to be financing those outfits.

Several high officials at the Police Headquarters, CTTC and Rapid Action Battalion also admitted that there was a connection between Jamaat-Shibir and New JMB.

CTTC Additional Deputy Commissioner Abdul Mannan told the Dhaka Tribune: “We have found names of several persons, organisations and groups that are connected to New JMB. We are investigating them.”
 

Militant ties nothing new for Jamaat-Shibir

Connection with militancy, however, is not something new for the Jamaat and Shibir as many from these organisations were earlier found involved with different outfits including Ansar Al Islam, Shahid Hamza Brigade, Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami and Hizb-ut Tahrir, police claimed.

Even though the security agencies and government claim that the Islamic State does not exist in Bangladesh, they say the expelled Jamaat and Shibir members follow the Syria-based terror group’s ideology to carry out attacks in Bangladesh.

Police also recently claimed to have found direct links between Jamaat-Shibir and recent terror attacks.

Former Shibir member Marzan, who was an Arabic department student at Chittagong University, was the chief coordinator of the Gulshan attack that killed 22 people in July 2016.

New JMB chief Tamim Chowdhury, killed in a police raid last year, and Ansarullah Bangla Team (later rebranded as Ansar Al Islam) chief Ziaul Haque, who is still on the run, had recruited many former Jamaat-Shibir members in their organisations and had them take part in most of the attacks in the past few years, police said.

New JMB member Ershad alias Mamun, arrested in March 2015, is a former Shibir activist who had first revealed many plans of the new terror outfit during interrogations.

The law enforcement agencies, apparently, did not pay much attention to his claims at that time. But a number of attacks, including the one at Holey Artisan Bakery, several murders and bomb blast at a naval base in Chittagong, since then had had them shocked and forced them to take New JMB more seriously.
Since 2015, police have arrested many Islamist militants who were originally with Jamaat and Shibir, but later joined different terror groups, including the New JMB, directly or indirectly.

After the nationwide simultaneous bomb attacks in August 2005, security agencies had arrested seven members of the original Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, all of whom were former members of Jamaat or Shibir.

In October the same year, the courts and judges in different districts were targeted in another series bombings. The next month, a suicide bombing carried out by the JMB had killed two senior assistant judges and wounded three others in Jhalakathi.

Police investigations later found that the bomber, Hasan Al Mamun, and his family members had close ties to Jamaat. Hasan was also a Shibir member.

In October 2003, Bangladesh Bank had ordered all commercial banks and financial institutions to freeze the accounts of several Malaysian nationals associated with the Jamaat for their suspected involvement in financing terrorism.

Militant activities had come into the spotlight again in February 2013 after the gruesome killing of blogger and civil rights activist Ahmed Rajib Haider, who had helped coordinate the Shahbagh movement, allegedly by Shibir members.

The Jamaat and its affiliated organisations earlier had accused Rajib of mocking Islam in his blog posts.

However, a month later, police’s Detective Branch (DB) arrested five North South University students in connection with Rajib’s murder.

CTTC Unit chief Monirul Islam, who was the DB spokesperson at that time, had said that these five murdered Rajib following direct orders from a Shibir leader named Rana.

Expulsions of Jamaat and Shibir members over reasons such as violation of party rules and ties to various crimes have become more of a trick move that grants them the right to officially claim that they do not endorse militancy, police officials said.

Dhaka Tribune’s attempts to contact top Jamaat and Shibir leaders over phone, text messages and emails for comments on the issue yielded no response.

Courtesy: Dhaka Tribune
 

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ISIS publication Dabiq says base in Bangladesh will launch guerilla attacks in India to "avenge the persecution on Muslims."

Hailing the July 1 Gulshan terror attack, international terrorist group Islamic State has now released a video calling for jihad in Bangladesh and threatening more attacks on “crusaders” and “crusader nations.”

The video message believed to be issued from Raqqa in Bangla was first found in an IS-affiliate website and then released on YouTube early Wednesday.

It comes as a follow-up to the dreadful attack on a Gulshan eatery in Dhaka last Friday that killed at least 22 people including 17 foreigners. The five others include two police officers. Police say six of the attackers were killed in “Operation Thunderbolt” carried out the next morning to end a 12-hour hostage crisis at O' Kitchen.

IS' Amaq news agency released the photos of five of their members several hours after the attack broke claiming responsibilities. Police, however, claim that most of the attackers were linked to local outlawed militant groups.

In the video, three of the speakers are of Bangladesh origin, but they could not be identified immediately.

One of them said they would not stop until establishing Shariah law all over the world. “The Jihad that has come to Bangladesh now has been promised by Prophet Mohammed,” he said.

“We will not stop killing the crusaders till then; we will win or die for our religion as martyrs and achieve shahadaat [martyrdom] … we don't have anything to lose.”

He termed the current form of democracy a shirk [deification or worship of anyone or anything other than Allah] or unforgivable crime.

“I want to ask you a question: how do you support this 'Shirk' notion of democracy? Don’t you know that it gives power to people to enforce law and have power whereas the power belongs to Alllah only? [according to the Qur'an]”

The second speaker labelled the government as kafir [non-believer].

“Since the govt has changed Allah’s law and has implied man-made law they are all 'kafirs' now. It is our religious duty to fight against it. Crusaders are killing innocents Muslims globally with planes and bomb attacks.

“So the Holey Artisan incident is our revenge to the lost blood of the hundreds and hundreds of Muslims who were killed,” he said.

The other speaker urged Muslim brothers and sisters to join the jihad saying it was what they had been dreaming of. “InshaAllah, Allah will accept our jihad.”

They all want Islamic rule

In its 14th edition of Dabiq magazine published on April 13, IS claimed that they have organisational base in Bangladesh (they term it Bengal), from where they have plans to attack on India and Myanmar to "avenge the persecution on Muslims."

“We believe the Shariah in Bengal won’t be achieved until the local Hindus are targeted in mass numbers,” said Sheikh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif, the man leading the operations in Bangladesh, in an interview.

Bangladesh is referred to as “Bengal” throughout the interview and its members as “Soldiers of the Khalifah in Bengal.”

Abu Ibrahim said Bangladesh was important for global jihad because of its geographic position and proximity to India.

“Having a strong jihad base in Bengal will facilitate guerilla attacks inside India simultaneously from both sides [east and west],” he said in the interview.

Since September last year, IS has claimed responsibilities for at least 25 attacks killing foreigners, non-Muslim and non-Sunni preachers and police. They also launched bomb and gun attacks on Shia and Ahmadiyya mosques.

Meanwhile, Ansar Al Islam (believed to be outlawed group Ansarullah Bangla Team) which is representing al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) in Bangladesh has claimed credit for 13 attacks since 2013 killing a dozen of war crimes trial campaigners, secular bloggers, writers, publishers and LGBT rights activists. 

Police say another banned group Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh or JMB is also responsible for some recent murders and bomb attacks across the country. The outfit has been working in concert with other banned groups and IS with a view to establishing Islamic rule in the country by 2020 incorporating some parts of Myanmar and India, according to detectives. JMB joined the international jihadist platform in 2012.

On the other hand, two intelligence reports recently mentioned the name of banned international group Hizb ut-Tahrir for their involvement in the series of targeted killings, saying over 450 of its leaders and activists have remaind absconding after getting bail.

One of its members Ghulam Faizullah Fahim was caught by the locals last month while fleeing after hacking a Hindu college teacher in Madaripur. He was later killed in an alleged gunfight between his cohorts and the police.

The group, banned in 2009 for anti-state activities, called for the army to take over power and put them at the helm to establish Caliphate from an online political conference on September 4 last year.

In a video message on June 17, only two weeks before the Gulshan terror attack, Hizb ut-Tahrir urged the Muslims to join their Islamic revolution by uprooting the government terming it tyrant, corrupt and anti-Islam.

Republished with permission from Dhaka Tribune.
 

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To combat growing terrorism in Bangladesh the PM's lament over, 'What kind of Muslims are these people?' is not enough. 

The heinous massacre of innocent men and women peacefully eating their dinner at an up-market café in Dhaka this weekend has at last woken up Sheikh Hasina Wajed to the continuing reign of terror – in Allah’s name – in the country of which she has been prime minister (for the second time) since 2009. Or so we hope.

Eyewitness survivors have said the killers stormed the popular Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka’s posh Gulshan area on Friday evening shouting “Allah-o-Akbar”. “What kind of Muslims are these people? They don’t have any religion… terrorism is their religion,” the prime minister is reported to have stated while announcing the end of the siege which claimed 20 lives.

Begum Hasina would do better to ask herself the question that millions of Bangladeshi citizens have been asking in their own manner for many months now: What kind of Prime Minister are you, Begum Hasina? What kind of Islam do you profess and what does it demand of you?

For the past year-and-a-half her government and police have been mute witness as terrorists have picked their targets at will, one at a time, killing Hindu priests, Shias, Ahmeddiyas, Sufis, Pirs, secular activists, atheists, bloggers, writers, professors, students… One of them was a young student named Nazimuddin Samad. His crime? Organising campaigns for secularism on Facebook.

In an article published on this platform less than two months ago, Bangladesh’s feminist activist Khushi Kabir had pointed to her country’s dangerous drift towards extremist Islam: “The message that there is only one form, a form alien to this land, of belief and practice, that of the Wahabi/Salafis who are not part of the four Mazhabs of the Islamic Sunni belief is now being pushed with full force as the current agenda. Many killed in brutal manner have been believers, Pirs, Shias, Ahmedias, followers of the Sufi tradition, priests from other religions, writers who were not necessarily atheists”.

Kabir had lamented the Hasina government’s myopia over the dark clouds gathering over Bangladesh and the state’s callous naming of the victims as the accused: “Those feeling outraged at this [ongoing] barbarism are asked that one should be careful not to hurt the sentiment of the believers? Whose sentiment are we talking about? Which believers? The misogynists, communalists who preach and breed obscurantism, a group financially strong, having the backing of the powers that be, misrepresenting and misquoting for their own vested interests?”

Kabir had concluded her article with the words: “1971 has taught us that killing cannot stop freedom. It did not then, it will not now”. Her brave words, sadly, have not stopped the Islamists from their murderous misdeeds.

Social activists like Kabir are not the only ones concerned over the cancerous growth of extremism in the country’s body polity. The Dhaka Tribune reported on June 6 (2016) that over 1,00,000 ulema from Bangladesh had issued a joint fatwa against terrorism.

ISIS and the Al Qaeda are currently engaged in a fierce competition across our sub-continent aiming to outdo each other in spreading their terror tentacles. That’s now. But the malignant growth of Islamist extremism in Bangladesh can be easily traced back to the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEB) and its militant student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir.

The Islamic State which has claimed “credit” for the latest mass murder at Holey Artisa Bakery has also boasted of targeting others in recent months. It and the Al Qaeda are currently engaged in a fierce competition across our sub-continent aiming to outdo each other in spreading their terror tentacles. That’s now. But the malignant growth of Islamist extremism in Bangladesh can be easily traced back to the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEB) and its militant student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir.

The official website of the JEB continues to protest its innocence, claiming that “Islamists are the most principled, pious, god-fearing and kind people on the earth”. Facts on the ground tell a different tale.

• In March 2013, Amnesty International issued a press statement on the countrywide attack on Hindus in which more than 40 temples were vanadalised and scores of shops and homes were burnt down. Survivors told Amnesty International that the attackers were participants in rallies organised by the opposition Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami (JIB) and its student group Chhatra Shibir.
• In April the same month, an entire galaxy of maulanas affiliated to the Imam Ulema Somonnoy Oikyo Parishad, Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (Bangladesh) and other religious bodies in Bangladesh publicly denounced the Jamaat-Shibir for their link with terrorist Islamist organisations. “People who believe in Wahabism and Moududism (Maulana Abul Ala Maududi was the founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami) are enemies of Islam as they misinterpret Quran and Sunnah”, the Ahle Sunnat (Bangladesh) secretary general Syed Muhammad Masiuddoula had thundered at a Sunni Ulema-Mashayekh Conference on March 17.   
• In December 2013, the well-known human rights organisation Ain O Salish Kendra (AIN) documented 276 major incidents of attack by the Jamaat-Shibir extremists during the year in which a total of 492 people including 15 police members were killed and around 2,200 others were injured.

The demands of the terrorists in the latest carnage included the release of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) activists who were sentenced to a 10-year jail term in January this year for their role in a string of bomb attacks in the country in 2005. The JMB which is now a local ISIS affiliate is committed to converting Bangladesh into an Islamic state through armed struggle. On August 17, 2005 it had detonated some 500 bombs, simultaneously across 300 locations in 50 Bangladeshi cities.

While the origin of the JMB in the late 1990s is shrouded in some mystery, the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh (JIB) has been accused of patronising the former while it was part of the coalition government headed by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). In November 2005, a BNP MP, Abu Hena alleged that the JEB was directly involved in the emergence of the JMB. He even named two JEB ministers in the BNP-led coalition who he claimed "are doing everything for the militants". Hena’s expulsion from the party did not stop BNP’s former minister Oli Ahmed and BNP whip Ashraf Hossain from speaking out and implicating the Jamaat-e-Islami in the rise of extremism in the country.

Recall the vibrant ‘Shahbag movement’ of 2013 (many at the time drew parallels to the ‘Arab Uprising’) which started as a vehement rejection of the International Crime Tribunal’s (ICT) verdict to condemn Abdul Quader Mollah, assistant general secretary of Jamaat-e-Islami, to life in prison. Protestors wanted Mollah, who was convicted for killing hundreds of people and raping a young girl, to be put to death. But the movement soon took the form of a mass civil society awakening which demanded an end to all religion-based politics.

Sheikh Hasina Wajed, Prime Minister of Bangladesh (since 2009) has been leader since 1981 of the Awami Party which spearheaded the country’s 1971 breakaway from Pakistan, rejected the two-nations theory and espoused the ideal of a secular nation and state. Even in this dark moment it should be clear that there are millions of Bangladeshis – from students, professors and activists to a wide spectrum of maulanas wedded to a tolerant Islam – who are staunchly opposed to the Wahhabis/Salafi and the Maududian “enemies of Islam” determined to push the country towards a totalitarian Islamic state. In 2013, the Supreme Court declared the JEB as “illegal” and barred the party from contesting polls. In the past it had never managed more than 4 per cent of the votes in any election in Bangladesh.  

So, to return to where this article began, before the terrorists claim their next victim(s), Sheikh Hasina would do well to ask herself: What kind of a Prime Minister am I? What does my Islam demand of me?           
 

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