Bangladesh

The elimination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, in a joint US-Israeli military operation has triggered a predictable wave of outrage against the West across hardline Islamist networks.

In Bangladesh, however, the reaction has revealed something deeper and more consequential: the enduring ideological character of Jamaat-e-Islami, not yet designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States, and its strategic alignment with transnational Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

The morning before he died, Dipu Chandra Das left home at first light, stepping out of his tin-sheet house in Bangladesh’s Mymensingh city, overlooking a warren of lanes off the highway from Dhaka.

The 28-year-old woke up his father, said goodbye to his wife, cradled his 18-month-old daughter. Then he boarded a bus for the 60km (37-mile) journey to the garment factory where he worked as a junior quality inspector, checking sweaters bound for global high-street brands such as H&M and Next.

His family would not see him again.

On March 7, thousands of members of Bangladesh’s banned Islamist militant group, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, defying police barricades, marched through the streets of Dhaka to demand that the country’s secular democracy be replaced by an Islamic caliphate. Demonstrators chanting “Khilafat, Khilafat” – a direct call for Islamic rule — gathered for the “March for Khilafat” procession outside the Baitul Mukarram Mosque after Friday prayers. The mob at the march turned violent — complete with stone-throwers who clashed with police. The police, in turn, fired back with tear gas and stun grenades.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, which has been banned in Bangladesh since 2009 for posing a threat to national security, organized this rally in defiance of a government ban on public gatherings.

Days after Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee the country amidst protests led by Jamaat-e-Islami, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Hizb ut-Tahrir, Hefazat-e-Islam, and other Islamist forces, all charges against Mufti Jashimuddin Rahmani, the chief of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT)—later rebranded as Ansar Al Islam—were dropped. Rahmani, along with dozens of imprisoned Islamists and jihadists, was released. Shortly after his release, Rahmani appeared in a viral video, calling on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to “free Bengal from Modi’s rule and declare its independence.”