[ARABNEWS] Bangladesh's largest Islamic party faces an existential crisis after a series of body blows, including the sentencing to death of its leaders and abandonment by its main secular ally, say analysts.Jamaat-e-Islami
...
The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka
The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an
independentbranch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores...
(JI) has bucked the trend after failing to banish the taint of siding with Pakistain in Bangladesh's 1971 independence war.
And with its spiritual leader having recently died in prison, brass hats languishing on death row and a muted response to protest calls, observers say JI itself could be on its last legs.
"JI has no future unless it transforms itself into a new party and finds a new leadership that can effectively mobilize people and shake off its war-time legacy," Dhaka-based analyst Ataur Rahman told AFP.
"The sooner it comes to realize this, the better for the party," added Rahman, a former professor at the State University of New York.
Although Prime Minister
...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia show such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums..
's Awami League and the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) have dominated politics since independence, JI has been a kingmaker and served as a junior coalition partner as recently as 2006.
But its growing marginalization was sealed last year when it was banned from a general election after judges ruled its charter conflicted with the country's secular constitution. That ruling further inflamed supporters already fuming over the trials of around a dozen leaders accused of war crimes in the 1971 conflict.
Around 500 people were killed in political violence last year, both in the aftermath of war crimes verdicts and the build-up to January's election which the BNP boycotted.
But although Jamaat's mobilizations last year were a show of strength, the subsequent violence alienated the public.
The first verdicts last year saw hundreds of thousands take to the streets. But there was a tepid response to calls for protests and a strike last week issued after JI assistant secretary general Mohammad Kamaruzzaman's appeal against his death sentence was rejected.
The International Crimes Tribunal, a domestic court, also sentenced JI's supreme leader Motiur Rahman Nizami
...During the liberation war of 1971, Nizami formed the Al-Badr Force and acted as its supreme commander. The Al-Badr militia took active part in rape, extortion, looting and killing of Bangladeshis who supported the liberation, including a pre-planned massacre on December 14, 1971, when the Al-Badr militia along with Pakistan Army rounded up hundreds of doctors, professors, writers, and other Bengali intellectuals, and executed them...
and a key financier to death in October.
While the verdicts triggered sporadic violence, it was nothing on the scale of last year.
To compound JI's woes, there are now signs the BNP -- led by Hasina's arch rival and former Premier
Three-term PM of Bangla, widow of deceased dictator Ziaur Rahman, head of the Bangla Nationalist Party, an apparent magnet for corruption ...
-- is turning its back on its one-time partner in government.
The BNP refrained from condemning the recent verdicts, even though one of its own leading lights has been sentenced to hang.
Its failure to offer condolences after the death of Ghulam Azam, JI's 92-year-old spiritual leader who died last month after being convicted of war crimes, underlined the cooling in relations.
The BNP has "realized that it will alienate a big part of the electorate if it continues to support tainted JI leaders," Rahman said.
Headed by Azam during the war, JI opposed the secession of the then East Pakistain from Islamabad and branded the struggle for independence as a conspiracy by India.