BETWEEN 2012 and now, four bloggers in Bangladesh have fallen victim to the wrath of extremists who choose violence to articulate their differences. It is only very recently that in Bangladesh the word ‘blog’, or for that matter ‘bloggers’, has come to be seen in pejorative terms by some quarters. Bloggers in general are being portrayed as sinister people involved in vilification, defamation and disparagement of religion, particularly Islam. And some of these bloggers who used social media to vent their feelings about religion have become the targets of extremists.

Not surprisingly, their murders have sullied Bangladesh’s secular and liberal credentials. It is unfortunate that the acts of a few are being made to appear representative of the majority. In this Muslim-majority country, which the West anoints with the honorific ‘liberal Muslim’ label, those predisposed to extremism represent a minuscule number. However, the worrisome aspect is that these elements are well-organised, well-funded and, it now appears, have organic links with international terrorist groups.

The killings have brought into sharp focus the underlying conflict between liberal thought and extremist reaction, between freedom of expression and how far that freedom extends without offending the sentiments of others, and between the right to feel offended and how that right should be expressed. They also expose the fault lines in the nation’s social fabric. Internal dynamics compelled by poor governance and failure to strengthen state institutions have thrown up several challenges — one of them being the rise of religious extremism.

The murders have sullied Bangladesh’s liberal credentials.

Religious extremism, or for that matter terrorism, to which Bangladesh’s exposure is more recent than most South Asian countries, has been caused more by external dynamics. However, political flux has provided the space for the germination of extremism and religious radicalism coupled with the fact that external dynamics, such as the US occupation of Iraq, the global war on terrorism, and the West’s double standards in the Middle East have been internalised by extremists to propagate their charter. The current Islamist phenomenon is also partly a fallout of the Afghan war in which jihad was as exalted a term as it is a maligned one now.

The founding members of extremist groups, most of which have been banned since, were part of the anti-Soviet coalition in Afghanistan who were hoping to replicate an Afghanistan in Bangladesh without realising that the socio-political conditions in the two countries were so vastly different as to make such an attempt impossible. But they continue to try. Their actions are directed against the people’s ethos — one that is enriched doubly by both its Bengali as well as Islamic influences with their long tradition of religious tolerance.

These radicals are also opposed to the basic principles that motivated our war of liberation in 1971, pitting the people’s ethnic identity against Islam, as if they were mutually exclusive. The killings are a part of their sporadic effort to publicise their existence.

Regrettably, in spite of Bangladesh’s stated secular leanings, religion has come to influence politics here and secularism may be losing out to majoritarianism. If the military dictators found it an easy expedient for political gains — and in the process rehabilitated the anti-liberation forces — that has continued even under the democratic dispensations since the resurrection of democracy in 1991. It greatly modulates the reactions of the government and the political parties not only in dealing with this particular issue, but also with extremism and terrorism in general.

The government has been blamed for pussyfooting on the issue; its predicament is exposed by the statement of an advisor to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that the government is very circumspect about speaking openly for those dead bloggers, they being atheists. This is a classic example of discretion being the better part of valour, and exposes the contradictions within, which play into the hands of the extremists. One cannot find a more contradictory situation than when the state claims to be secular yet retains Islam as the state religion. And this is where the courage of conviction and politics come in.

The issue of extremism has been used politically by the two main political parties to the country’s detriment. Soft-pedalling on the issue on the one hand while overplaying it on the other has resulted in a lack of a coherent counter-extremist strategy. If the state has been unable to deal effectively with religious extremism it is also because at times some of these groups have received ruling party patronage.

While on the anti-terror front we have been able to arrest many of the leaders and pre-empt their operations, the state has not yet been able to come up with a potent counter narrative to offset the extremists’ propaganda.

The writer is editor, op-ed and defence & strategic affairs at The Daily Star, Dhaka.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2015

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