A defiant yet brutal face of
Islamic fascism: a Third World scenario
Most of the authoritarian doctrines have one
thing in common. That is, the end justifies the means. Thus,
fascism, Nazism, and communism are the "non-divinely" inspired
doctrines where humanistic and moralistic values are halted to
attain the assumed larger objective. In such totalitarian predicaments,
process of extinction of nonconformists may be conducted with extreme
prejudice.
Genocide of a great magnitude is thought to be
justifiable because the "others" seemed to be a threat to
the expansion of dogma. Nazi superiority complex led to the hatred to
the Jews and the dogma cherished the need to annihilate an entire
people. In such a totalitarian dogma, average citizens unknowingly
fall prey to brainwashing where the sense of right and wrong get
blurred.
Islamic fascism is not a new development in the contemporary world. The
totalitarian nature of this political idea is indebted to the
Wahhabistic idea in the Arabian Peninsula that culminated only a few
centuries ago. In a traditionalist political Islamism, fascistic nature
is inherent. In governance of a society, the line between secular
and sacred is almost nonexistent. The total subjugation to a powerful
elite, who claims to be arbiters of god's wish, is the common scenario.
Millions of people like dumb and driven cattle lose the sense of
morality and humanity to appease god's gatekeepers or the
protagonists of Islamic fascism.
Islamic fascism in the Indian subcontinent was basically a localized
political development. Deobandi students and Abul A'la Maududi were
the pioneers of a movement where interpretation of Islamic norms and
jurisprudence was made in the line of existing Wahhabism borrowed from
the Arab land. Today's greatest threat to human civilization, the
al-Qaeda, and the Talibans got their main inspiration from
Wahhabite philosophy.
In Bangladesh and Pakistan, Jamaat-i-Islami had been historically a
leading prot�g� of Saudi-sponsored Wahhabism. The Saudi monarch
was satisfied with the contribution of this fundamentalist party in
enhancing the Wahhabist agenda. Although the Jamaatis are the blood brothers
of the Talibans or al-Qaeda, they have not turned into as ambitious as
the latter. On the surface, it seems they have not resorted to
undermining western interest globally. Not everybody would agree to
such notion. Khalid Duran has extensively written about Jamaatis'
sympathetic ties to the Talibans in the Pakistani theater. The
Jamaatis, though surprisingly, refrained from committing violent
acts against USA and western nations. This does not make them to be
innocentlambs. Maybe, this could be their tactical maneuver.
Nonetheless, some disturbing events need more vigorous scrutiny.
The presently ruling BNP-Jamaat-i-Islami alliance is helping the cause
of Islamism in Bangladesh. The new regime that won a landslide victory
in a controversial election held in October of last year is putting
its favorites in different sectors of the country's governing body.
A newly elected cleric, the Khatib of the grand mosque of Bangladesh
recently urged his fellow countrymen to confront USA and US
President George Bush. This, he uttered in an Eid-ul-Fitr congregation
where Bangladeshi President and quite a few state ministers were even present.
If the tragedy of September 11 did not occur, the free world would not
have been bogged down to confront the global menace of Wahhabism
inspired al-Qaeda. Today, the battle line is drawn where the victory of
west's military action is helping the ideological battle against an evil philosophy.
Globally, the victory against Talibans still leaves some questions
unanswered. That is, if Islamic fascists of indigenous variety do
not show any global agenda, how to deal with them when they espouse
brutal and fascist acts within the confines of nation states? This
question has more significance as countries like Bangladesh and
Pakistan are facing the danger of falling preys to the
Jamaati-i-Islami's evil design. Pakistan, due to immense pressure from
her Superpower ally has cornered the fundamentalist party to a
great length. Even then, the danger remains. This party has enough
sympathizers not only in the rank and file but also in the army
hierarchy. In Bangladesh, the right of the center Bangladesh
Nationalist Party (BNP) draws its power from the fundamentalists
who are blessed with having two ministers in the national government.
The painful reality is, these Islamic fascists, leaders of the
Jamaat-i-Islami of Bangladesh were directly involved in the genocide
in the country during its war of liberation in 1971.
At one time while the Soviet army was engaged in Afghan soil, the
Talibans were friends of the West. So were the Jamaatis. During
1971, in a bipolar world, USA was involved in a turf war with the
Soviets when Pakistani army juntas allied with the Islamic fascists
conducted a dirty war against the people of Bangladesh. After the
war, a number of the ringleaders of the Islamic fascists fled the
country to Arabian Peninsula. Ironically, some of them ended up in the
western nations. The Bangladeshi war criminals settled in UK and
USA are test cases where the western nations ignore their presence
as they are assumed to be not directly tied to Osama bin Laden or his terrorist
al-Qaeda network. They have bloodied their hands to uphold the cause of
Islamic fascism, but the killings were done in a Third World
hinterland like Bangladesh. Today, it can safely be said that the
perpetrators of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon attack and the fundamentalist
killers of 1971's Bangladesh are graduates from the same school. They
are the torchbearers of an inhuman dogma where dignity of human
lives has no value. For readers' attention, let us have a brief
overview of two notorious Bangladeshi war criminals who will always be
remembered by the victims as forces of evil.
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