Ethnic Cleansing & Rise of Islamic Militancy in Bangladesh Bertil Lintner IMAGINE how it would be like when 25 million people vanish from a projected population of 39 million. Imagine how it would be like when two and a half million acres of prime land is grabbed from a country smaller in size than the State of Wisconsin. Imagine how it would be like when one is subjected to rape, unending torture, forced conversion, discrimination in education and employment, intimidation to practice one's own religious faith, loot, arson and other savageries of worst kind. This is the story of the Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and the ethnic minorities of Bangladesh -- a story of slow genocide, a story of violence and betrayal by their own government, a testament of hard-line Islamic politicking designed to minority cleansing, a continuing saga that has played out since 1947 to the present day Bangladesh. Bangladesh has been a fertile ground for bigoted Islamic idealism for a long time. Especially, since 1975 with the assassination of the country's founding father and altering of the constitution, the Islamic Radicalism has been thrust into the political landscape of the country. With enormous financial help from branded terrorists, outlawed regimes, and proponents of Wahabism such as Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iraq, Iran and other renegade terrorist networks. Bangladesh has built hundreds of thousands of Mosques and madrassahs that constantly foment violence against non-Muslims and country's progressive groups and cultural institutions. There are 64,000 madrassahs or so called religious schools where the unsuspecting Muslim youths are recruited and trained to be the foot soldiers for a Taliban style Bangladesh. They espouse hate and bigotry against anyone that does not conform to their brand of militant Islam. The infamous American Taliban, John Walker Lindh, was a graduate from one such Madrassah in Pakistan. Persecution of minorities in Bangladesh has been a lingering issue for past sixty years with some intermittent reprieves that came along with the changing hands of power. But the aura of minority cleansing never fully subsided. October 2001, when the coalition of Islamic hard-liners swept into power trumpeting their goal to make Bangladesh a pure Islamic Country as their election themes-- brought a new momentum to their hostility towards minorities. They marked their victory with unprecedented and unprovoked attacks on innocent men, women and children belonging to the minority communities. The government not only shamelessly failed to provide the country's 15 million ethno-religious minorities any protection against these attacks, but also showed its utter indifference to human life by cowardly aiding in the history's worst savagery. Since then, hundreds of thousands of young girls and women have been abducted and raped, tens of thousands of minority owned homes and businesses have been looted and razed, hundreds of places of worship have been burnt down all across Bangladesh. Women as old as seventy and girls as young seven have not even been spared of their brunt of rape and terror. Abduction of young girls from homes at gunpoint, gang rape, and forced conversions to Islam have been endemic in Bangladesh. Prime Minister Khaleda Zia is responsible for this latest cycle of crimes against humanity. She has personally orchestrated each and every recent dreadful terror against the minorities with a clear and unambiguous purpose of cleansing the country's minorities to transform it into a Pure Muslim Country. She has used every resource of the government at her disposal to intimidate, terrorize and torture people into either leaving the country or submitting to convert to Islamic extremism. Today, forced conversion to Islam has become a corrosive fodder to the fundamentalists, courtesy of Begum Khaleda Zia. It may recall the massacre that took place back in April 1992. The then Prime Minister of the country, Begum Khaleda Zia used her army to systematically murder 600 tribal residents of Logang in Chittagong Hill Tracts, and burned the entire village to the ground. Seven months later, she orchestrated another wave of minority persecution in which 15 minorities were killed, 2,600 women raped, 10,000 injured, 40,000 dwelling houses destroyed, 3, 600 temples damaged/razed and 200,000 rendered homeless. Begum Zia, like her Islamic fundamentalist predecessors has been a mortal danger to pluralistic democracy and the rule of law. Recently, while she has deployed armies on the streets to curtail the rights of citizens, to take prisoner of political rivals and human rights activists, to stifle the voices of progressive thinkers and journalists on vital national issues such as human rights, freedom of religion. she has allowed Bangladesh to become a cocoon of terror, a hub for international terrorism.It is an established fact that Bangladesh now harbors and supports international terrorist grou

the Islamization plan, apartheid and Islamic terrorism have dwindled the population of the minorities in Bangladesh from 30 percent in 1947 to 10 percent in 2002. The figures in regard to the Muslim majority population of Bangladesh speak that the population of the members of the Muslim majority community has risen from 57 percent in 1947 to 89 percent in 2002 http://www.banglarights.net/marginalised/marzinalized-6.htm Dude you got your figures now.And this is not what happened a 100 yrs ago but is taking place right now. 1947:30% outta 100 million=30 million 2002:10% outta 150 million=15 million Where have the goddam 15 million Hindus,Buddhists n Christians gone?They have been massacred u freak...In fact even more than 15 million cos considering the population growth,The 30 million should have been 45 million but there are just 15 million so its 30 million people chased out,killed or raped in their own homelands.Ya Ya long live Islam huh....The nazis were stopped before they went too far,but these guys are doing this not just in bangladesh but in the philippines,Malaysia,Indonesia,Thailand,Africa,The former Soviet States,Egypt,Pakistan..... The list goes on and on...And one day Europe and the Americas will follow suit...Guys,you think You are taking the war to their homes but u dnt realise that they have already nuzzled onto your couch....open your eyes and look around. The figures are approximations but serve the purpose well enough.

First, the vast majority of the muslim are peaceful persons, even if some of their way of thinking is not compatible with the western values such as rights and respect for the women, respect of the secular law above the coranic one... This last ponit, I would say that he epitomizes the whole problem. For the muslim, the political authority is inherent to the religious one. What makes the law is Coran, and nothing else. That means that, even embedded in host countries, these persons want to obey to the law of Allah, and keep their (bad) habits, unaware of tthe discrepancy with the host culture (example: "honor crimes": a Turk kill his "undecent" sister in Germany, a Pakistanese BURN a girl that refuses him her hand near Paris) Second point, the average Islam is still, from my point of view, a less deep belief than average Christianism or Judaïsm. There is no place for love, forgiveness and dialogue in Islam. There is just "Allah is the master, and the muslim must follow the rule of Allah". Last, the rise of Islamism epitomizes a certain frustration regarding the position of the Arab/muslim civilization on the influence and power scale since times. AraboMuslim civilization is naturally a civilization of domination and expansion. The rise of Islamism has nothing to do with poverty, or "white men evilness", as these silly ultra leftist think. So my politically uncorrect conclusion is that Islam is, globally, a primitive religion, for primitive peoples. Of course there is personnal exceptions, as well as some trends of the Islamic thinking are much more progressive. But minor.

"The tragedy of Islam is that current thinking demands that they take the entire Qur'an to be literal, unlike Jews or Christians who can interprate their holy scripts differently. Expect this to change as Islam matures as a religion. Remember that comparatively speaking Islam is quite young, at this stage in Christianity's development we were doing some awful things that would be absolutely unthinkable now by even the most radical of Christians, remember the Religious wars, the Reformation, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch-burnings, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum? " Religions don't follow a development course as you describe it. Cultures influence each other. Islm of today is not dangerous because "it is at a certain level of development, like the Christianity in the 15th century". Islam can be considered as dangerous, because of its loss of sovereignty towards the West. The same kind of frustration that make the Germans choose Adolf Hitler and its ideology in 1933. BTW, how these hypothetical progression pattern of the religious beliefs and actions could be the same for two cultures as different as the West and the araboMuslim world? Things are far more complex than that.

"Things are far more complex than that." Of course they are more complicated. I'm just pointing out some of the similarities between Christianity then and Islam now, not claiming that they have and will develop in the same way. But some people think that because Islam exhibits traits such as fundamentalism and intolerance it is inherantly evil, ignoring the fact that Christianity displayed those very traits back in the 15th century. Of course the two religions are different and the offspring of different cultures, but people here seem to jump on the existence of these undesirable traits as proof of Islam's wickedness as a religion, which given the existence at the same time of liberal, moderate Muslims is frankly absurd.

"You should also be aware of the difference between being a serf in Europe (tied to the land, some semblance of a stable family, apparently never sold), and a slave under the Muslims (a real slave market, with people and whole families being bought and sold, or split apart and being sold). This sort of thing died out from Europe with the fall of Rome, but started reappearing in the 1500s." Dead wrong Arbalest. Slavery contiuned under Byzantium (and possibly further afield in Europe) under the Inheretiors to the Roman Empire. This was not serfdom, but the enslavement, buying & selling of people. No doubt families were split up etc. Indeed, one early treaty between Byzantium & the new Muslim caliph of Damascus involved the Muslims paying a yearly triblute of...wait for it...slaves. Indeed, under Islam slaves were actually acknowledged as people, not simply property. By my calculation this putsa Islam aproximately 1300 years ahead of America. As for your modern examples, they are from one nation - Sudan. As I have already pointed out, slavery continues on a large, even industrial scale in Africa. In the Sudan it is in a Muslim society. In Other parts of Africa it is in Christian societies. If you think you are going to score points against Islam off slavery I think you are barking up the wrong tree. As for the rest, Some of your references are so oblique that I'm not even sure what you are talking about (Nigeria, for instance). Still no figures. Remember, I'm not the one making the case that Islam is the well of all evil, so I am not the one who has to produce the figures.

The enslavement and traffic of black peoples by Arabs have last much more than the Euro-American slavery triangle. That don't excuse the white men, but this fact is often ignore by the leftists bunches so fond of Islam... It just show that, as the West, the AraboMuslim world is a civilization of supremacy.

Forest, Thank you for your assistance. My comments were meant to be sarcastic. probably a mistake on an international notice board. For the record my reading suggests that the spread of Christianity throughout Africa & the Americas, as well as the various religious wars in Europe make the spread of Islam look like minor scuffle by comparison. Indeed, writer after writer on the subject points out that there were not forced mass conversions by the first wave of Muslim conquerers. They certainly encourages conversion with tax & social benefits, but they also respected existing religious traditions a great deal more than competing Christian traditions respected each other. Allow me to quote the Orthodox Partiarch of Antioch in the C17th: "God perpetuate the empire of the Turks for ever & ever! For they take their impost and enter into no account of religion, be their subjects Christians or Nazarenes, Jews or Samaritans: whereas these accursed Poles were not content with taxes & tithes fromthe bretheren of Christ..."for" thousands of martyrs were killed by theose wretches..." Whether in areas conquered by Islam, or in other areas (parts of India, sub-Saharan Africa & the whole of Sth East Asia), Islam won converts largely by missionary work.

"The tragedy of Islam is that current thinking demands that they take the entire Qur'an to be literal, unlike Jews or Christians who can interprate their holy scripts differently." Norvicension. I agree with a lot of your post, but this bit needs to be examined. Some versions of Islam do indeed demand literal interpretaion of the Koran, but they only apply it to the bits they want to use. This is true of all fundamentalims. Every religious tradition & holy book contains within it enoug contraditctions that literal interpretation is impossible. This is the great lie of fundamentalism, be it Christian, Muslim or otherwise. They pick & choose as much as the most liberal practicioner. The difference is that they begin the very process with the lie that they are not actually doing it. It is this sort of willful blindness that makes them so dangerous.

Spread of Islam minor scuffle??? Yuuuuuup That's BS. Don't compare everything to christianity. At certain period, Islam had been far more powerful than christianity. It is a culture of domination which have known a big decline. Don't forget what the Arabs conquered in few decades, that they have reach Poitiers, that until the 15th century, Spain and Portugal were ruled by Arabs. check that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_slavery#Slavery_in_the_Islamic_World