South Asia Citizens Web

The Muslim community is under attack. There have been increasing reports of attacks on mosques and shops owned by Muslims as part of a broader hate campaign against Muslims. The attack on the Dambulla Khairya Jummah mosque in April 2012 saw a decisive shift in the scale of these attacks. This act of violence was built on anti-Muslim rhetoric and a nascent campaign that had been simmering for years.

The binary of "with us or against us" is dangerous. In an environment of rising anger after the tragic murder of a Shahbagh blogger and the Friday anti-Shahbagh violence, another victim is the possibility of discourse within the movement. Now, anyone who opposes the death penalty in the context of war crimes is tagged by bloggers as chagu (slang for goat), the same term being used for those presumed to support the Jamaat. Any time a blogger tries to attempt a more complex analysis of events, he is dismissed as doing tyana pyachano (making things unnecessarily complicated). A movement built on slogans, without analysis of complexity, can become trapped in its own symbolism and outflanked by other forces — for example, the Awami League, that would like to appropriate this movement; or the Jamaat, that is fighting and lobbying overseas to sabotage the trials.

Pity the Catholic clergy, of whom are demanded forms of abstinence and self-denial, which were, in less enlightened times, widespread, but which have been superseded by the altered sensibility of our time. The modern world knows that sex is the mainspring of all human activity; that it is something to get, to have and to search for; a commodity a bit like money, in that no one can ever quite obtain enough of it.

Posted below are editorials and reports from Bangladesh newspapers in wake of huge wave of Islamist violence against the state and ordinary citizens and most notably violence against minorities.

The Hindu families having survived the onslaught from anti-liberation elements now wonder what protection they have in this country. As the religious minorities in some remote pockets of Chittagong and Noakhali try to come to terms with Thursday’s barbaric attacks on their homesteads and temples, there is no let-up in the assaults at other places including Barisal, Bagerhat and Gazipur.Bangladesh Hindu-Buddha-Christian Oikya Parishad has demanded the government act immediately to resist (…)