DHAKA: Bombs detonated again in the court premises reportedly by fundamentalists, claimed nine innocent lives in Bangladesh on Tuesday, giving a clear message that the jihadis, out to set up a theocratic state in the country, will continue such violent attacks on state institutions in defiance of all government warnings and measures against terrorism.

Tuesday’s blasts in Chittagong and Gazipur marked the third attack on courts of law since October 3, when three people were killed in three districts. Later, two senior assistant judges were killed in Jhalakati district on Nov 14 in bomb attacks.

The government of Khaleda Zia seems to have been trying to contain the horrible situation only legally, ignoring completely the most important dimensions of the violent attacks — the political, economic and ideological drives behind the continued terror strikes by fanatics.

Khaleda’s administration has banned a few extremist organisations like Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh and Harkat-ul-Jihad; launched a police drive to nab suspected bombers belonging to these organisations; and has announced bounty for helping law-enforcers arrest JMB supremo Shaiakh Abdur Rahman and JMJB chief Siddiqur Rahman alias Bangla Bhai. These are legal and administrative measures that, although important, cannot effectively address the menace.

The rise of fundamentalism is purely a political phenomenon, primarily arising out of decades of failure of subsequent governments to address poverty and deliver democratic education and justice to the people.

Bangladesh’s fundamentalists have been loudly proclaiming that they want to set up of a theocratic state in ‘Muslim majority Bangladesh’.

Many in Dhaka, therefore, assert that the struggle for building and sustaining a democratic state, primarily, is a struggle against the political forces that reject sovereignty of the people, impose scriptures on earthly affairs of the state, discriminate against citizens because of faith that most of the people inherit by birth and punish human beings for dissenting views, etc.

But the government of Khaleda Zia has its limitations, particularly with Jamaat-i-Islami as a partner of the coalition that she leads, to wage such a democratic and political struggle against extremists.

Notably, the Jamaat shares, and propagates, the same obscurantist political ideology that the JMB, the JMJB and Harkat-ul-Jihad preach.

However, the opposition Awami League, which has consistently been criticising the government for the latter’s tolerance towards Muslim fundamentalists, has so far also not shown any significant commitment to wage any effective fight against religious fundamentalism, particularly in terms of clearly denouncing the use of religion in politics.

The party has rather been seen desperately trying to prove that it is no less an Islam-lover than its power contending counterpart BNP. Besides, the League is almost equally responsible, as the BNP and the Jatiya Party of Gen Ershad, for contributing a social, political and economic order that helps breed politics of religious fundamentalism.

A sizable section of the country’s poor these days find fundamentalism a political solution to all problems they have been facing for decades now. None can deny that the political parties ruling the state since 1971 have perpetually pursued and practiced a politics of exclusion – exclusion of there poor masses from the rulers’ development paradigms that were, and still are – insensitive to basic needs of the majority of the people.

The result is obvious: the marginalized sections of the poor find themselves alien to existing socio-political setup that serves only to the rich. So youths from the poor communities easily respond to the call of jihad for a theocratic state.

Besides, the obscurantist madrassah education that the rulers have carefully crafted and nurtured for years for the poor, regularly provides the young mullahs with inadequate knowledge to replace a modern state with a theocratic one, which, they believe, will not only solve their material problems in the present world, but also promises a rosy future in the life after death.

Under such circumstances, political analysts believe, if major political parties continue to compromise with religious forces just for the sake of an easy win at elections, if they do not change their discriminatory economic policies and remain insensitive to needs of the poor, and fail to radically reform the obscurantist madrassah education, the constituency for religious fundamentalism will continue to grow in the days to come. And in that case, there will be more bombs, more suicide attacks and more casualties.

The analysts suggest that democratic forces of the country, at present divided into different parties and groups, need to fight religious terrorism on all possible fronts, and that too simultaneously, if not unitedly. But there is no sign of any collective effort to stop this menace in near future.