Taj Hashmi argues that Recent reports in the media and from think-tanks have indicated a startling level of support for suicide terrorism in Bangaldesh. Yet this is at odds with the relatively low rate of suicide terrorist incidents in Bangladesh, raising many questions about the validity of the research methods used to determine the support for sucide terrorism
Shakib Chowdhury, the lead vocal of a Bangladeshi progressive rock band argues that being a Muslim is about doing good, having faith in God, and believing in the message and the Messenger. ISIS and groups like it take the easy path – the path of self-righteous killing – but the harder path is to build something, show tolerance, and keep the faith.
In recent times, the Muslim majority Bangladesh has witnessed a rising spate in cases of unsolved rape, murder, kidnapping, enforced disappearances of political opponents, extrajudicial killings, plunder of national assets etc. etc. Against this backdrop, Adil Khan argues that, most have resigned to fatalism and believe that they have no option but to wait for Allah’s ‘bichar’ (judgement) on the ‘Roj Hashorer Din’ or ‘Yawm al-Qiyāmah’, the Final Day of Judgement when Allah will punish the guilty and reward the righteous.
Based on a field study conducted in 2013, a Bangladeshi journalist Shafiqul Alam explains how the business of a traditional form of Bengali folk drama known as “Jatra” is dying against the backdrop of the rising popularity of a localised version of “striptease” among a section of rural Bangladeshis.
Professor Adil Khan argues in favour of democracy to sustain Bangladesh’s economic gains and development which are challenged by a number of social and political deprivations. In his view, rising Islamist/Nationalist militancy threatening the security of not only the country but the region as a whole. The way to defeat fundamentalism is neither through repression nor ‘development’ but through unadulterated democracy. The sooner the government and those that care about regional security and stability understand this, better it is.
Dr. Nayanika Mookherjee summarises her new book exclusively for Alochonaa readers: “In this ethnography of sexual violence during the 1971 Bangladesh War for Independence, I show how the public celebration of women raped during the war and called ‘birangonas’ by the state – works to homogenize the experiences of these women. I demonstrate that while this celebration of birangonas as heroes keeps them in the public memory, they exist in the public consciousness as what I call a spectral wound. Dominant representations of birangonas as dehumanized victims with dishevelled hair, a vacant look, and rejected by their communities create this wound and flatten the diversity of their experiences.”
Alochonaa (Dialogue) 