\n After years of repression, Bangladesh's Islamist groups are mobilising ahead of February 12 elections, determined to gain a foothold in government as they sense their biggest opportunity in decades.\n<\/p>\n
\n The South Asian nation -- home to 170 million people, the vast majority Sunni Muslims -- is preparing for its first polls since the mass uprising that toppled the autocratic government of Sheikh Hasina in 2024.\n<\/p>\n
\n At the centre of this formidable push is the Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest and best-organised Islamist party.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ideologically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, they are seeking a return to formal politics after years of bans and crackdowns.\n<\/p>\n
\n They have papered over divisions with several other Islamist groups for the election and put forward only male candidates.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Jamaat has also allied with the National Citizen Party (NCP), formed by student leaders who spearheaded the 2024 uprising -- prompting some aspiring female candidates to quit.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Troubled past -\n<\/p>\n
\n Hasina, who was blamed for extensive human rights abuses, took a tough stand against Islamist movements during her 15-year rule.\n<\/p>\n
\n Under her tenure, several top Islamist leaders were sentenced to death -- and several hanged -- for war crimes.\n<\/p>\n
\n They were accused of having supported Pakistan during Bangladesh's 1971 independence war, a role that still sparks anger against Islamists from many in Bangladesh today.\n<\/p>\n
\n Hasina, a onetime ally of the United States and close to the Hindu-nationalist government of neighbouring India, also launched crackdowns against Islamist militants, killing scores and arresting hundreds.\n<\/p>\n
\n Since 2013, extremist groups inspired by Al-Qaeda or the so-called Islamic State carried out a string of attacks, including targeting writers and publishers. A 2016 attack on a Dhaka cafe killed 22 people, including 17 foreigners.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mufti Abdul Hannan, the Afghanistan-trained leader of the Bangladesh chapter of the Harkat-ul-Jihad group, was executed with two associates in 2017 for an attempt to kill Britain's High Commissioner to Bangladesh.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Resurgence -\n<\/p>\n
\n Since Hasina fled to India, key Islamist leaders have been released from prison, and Islamist groups have grown increasingly assertive.\n<\/p>\n
\n They have demanded restrictions on cultural activities they consider \"anti-Islamic\", including music and theatre festivals, women's football matches and kite-flying celebrations.\n<\/p>\n
\n More violent elements have smashed Sufi shrines, and even exhumed a Sufi leader's body and set it on fire.\n<\/p>\n
\n Many are inspired by the Deobandi teachings, a conservative Sunni movement rooted in 19th-century India, and the ideological source of Afghanistan's Taliban.\n<\/p>\n
\n Hefazat-e-Islam, an influential coalition of thousands of Islamic schools and Muslim organisations, acts as a powerful grassroots pressure group in Bangladesh.\n<\/p>\n
\n Hefazat leaders travelled to Afghanistan last year, and Afghan Taliban officials visited Bangladesh in December.\n<\/p>\n
\n Other strands of Bangaldesh's Islamist movements follow the rigid Wahabi and Salafi schools of Islam, powerful in the Arabian Peninsula, and which reject centuries-old Bengali cultural rituals.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Sufi opposition -\n<\/p>\n
\n Home to the world's fourth-largest Muslim population, Bangladesh includes a wide range of beliefs.\n<\/p>\n
\n Bangladesh has a significant number of Sufi followers -- more than a quarter of Muslims, according to one estimate by the US Pew Research Center.\n<\/p>\n
\n The country's two traditional power brokers -- the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) and the now-banned Awami League of Hasina -- previously launched their election campaigns from a centuries-old Sufi shrine in the northern city of Sylhet.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sufi popularity poses a challenge to the Islamists, who condemn their mystical interpretation of the Koran as heretical. Bangladesh also has communities of the long-persecuted Ahmadiyya, as well as Shia Muslims.\n<\/p>\n
\n Around 10 percent of Bangladeshis are not Muslim -- the majority of those are Hindu and the country is also home to a small number of Christians.\n<\/p>\n
\n Jamaat-e-Islami has named a Hindu candidate -- but analysts are sceptical.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"These efforts are to deceive the public. The reform is not coming from within,\" political analyst Altaf Parvez told AFP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After years of repression, Bangladesh's Islamist groups are mobilising ahead of February 12 elections, determined to gain a foothold in government as they sense their biggest opportunity in decades. The South Asian nation -- home to 170 million people, the vast majority Sunni Muslims -- is preparing for its first polls since the mass uprising […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-154230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n