Agony For Women In Bangladesh: Islamists Threaten To Lead Country Backwards – OpEd
Anarchists say that borders are scratches on a map. But is the fanaticism of Islamists a scratch on the souls of people? Unfortunately, there is no deeper opiate than the one fanaticism can soak a person with. The eyes of the international community are currently leaning towards Bangladesh, which since Sheikh Hasina left power and was succeeded by the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, has been experiencing a period of political instability with episodes of violence following one another.
Women and religious minorities of Hindus are at the eye of the storm. Mohammed Yunus had promised poverty reduction through the empowerment of the primary sector and the inclusion of women in society through education and work, but the current reality in the country proves the opposite as incidents of gender-based violence follow one another. The issue is for these incidents to come to light and not be sidelined as normal occurrences in a country undergoing political change.
In late January, a women’s football friendly match in the northwestern town of Joypurhat had to be canceled due to violent protests by students of religious seminaries. The students joined Islamist radical activists who ransacked the venue and chased away ticketed spectators who had come to watch the matches. Another similar match involving two women’s teams was postponed in the nearby town of Dinajpur a day earlier, following a similar protest by angry demonstrators armed with sticks.
Abu Bakr Siddiq, the director of a local religious school in Joypurhat, participated in the protests with his students and teachers and those from several other religious schools. “Girls’ football is unholy, and it is our religious duty to stop anything that goes against our beliefs,” Siddiq told Al Jazeera.
The Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) wanted to staunchly defend women’s football, with media officer Sandman Shakib saying, “Football is for everyone, and women have full rights to participate in it.” Other football organizers in Bangladesh cited as positive examples women’s football teams in other Muslim-majority countries, including conservative Saudi Arabia and Turkey, as well as Morocco, which reached the final of the African Cup and lost to South Africa.
Unfortunately, no matter how much the government of Muhammad Yunus wants to portray itself as being on the path of progress, according to a United Nations survey, 54% of women in Bangladesh have experienced physical and sexual abuse at least once in their lives. According to a recent study by the University of Dhaka and UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund), the preference for sons is still widespread among parents in Bangladesh, with some choosing to undergo sex-selective abortion.
More than 99 percent of people in Bangladesh have at least one bias against women, with 69 percent believing that men are better political leaders and 88 percent considering men to be more capable business executives and deserving of more job opportunities. Even more concerning is that over 99 percent of women have biases against their own gender, perpetuating the same rules that hold them back.
Throughout the centuries, intellectuals have been the ones fighting against tyranny and fascism. It is worth noting what the writer-activist of the famous novella Laila, Taslima Nasrin, said, expressing concern that Bangladesh might follow the path of Afghanistan. According to the author, who has been living in India for the past twenty years, at this moment in Bangladesh, Islamist radicals are brainwashing the youth to make them “anti-Hindu and pro-Pakistan.” Ms. Nasrin said that “she and others initially supported the student movement in Bangladesh against Sheikh Hasina’s government. However, recent actions such as violence against Hindus, targeting journalists, and the release of terrorists from prisons showed that it was not a student movement but was designed and funded by Islamist jihadists.”
The author added that “when the students protested against the quota system in July, we supported them… people who believe in women’s rights, human rights, and freedom of expression. We had hoped that fair elections would be held to democratically form a new government. But then we realized that it was not a student movement. It was designed and funded by Islamist jihadists and a banned terrorist organization,” said the author, who was forced to leave Bangladesh in 1994 after death threats from Islamist fundamentalists and faced a ban on her books.
While the author fights for freedom of expression and human rights in Bangladesh, her books, which radiate her liberal ideas, provoke a storm of reactions. As she shared a video of an attack by jihadists on the bookstore that hosted her books, Nasrin wrote on X on 10 of February 2025: “Today, religious extremist jihadists attacked the booth of publisher Shambhaji at the Bangladesh Book Fair.” Their ‘crime’ was the publication of my book.”
Certainly, in the reality of the 21st century, we must judge each state autonomously based on its own history and collective unconscious, meaning it is inappropriate to judge Bangladesh based on the social norms of Western countries. However, what currently appears as a common denominator between Bangladesh and its neighboring countries Pakistan and Afghanistan, in the degradation of the role of women, are the extremist Muslim organizations that, while initially operating clandestinely, have now openly emerged, with the results of their actions visible in the fight against their fundamental rights.
In Pakistan, according to a BBC survey in September 2024, women working in hospitals reported that they regularly face sexual harassment, violence, and verbal abuse from male colleagues, patients, and their families. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the Taliban suspended the operations of the only nationwide radio station for women in Afghanistan after a raid on its facilities on Tuesday, February 7, 2025, according to a BBC report, deepening the exclusion of women from public life and society since the group took power in 2021.
From late October 2024, Afghan women will be prohibited from praying aloud or reciting the Quran in front of other women, according to a Taliban government minister. This is the latest restriction on women following moral laws that forbid them from raising their voices and revealing their faces outside the home. They are already barred from education after the sixth grade, many public spaces, and most jobs.
The common point that serves as a catalyst for the incidents of violence occurring in these countries is the Muslim association Jamaat-e-Islami, which Muhammad Yunus has not been able to curb. So far, this association in Bangladesh has been causing repeated persecutions of women and Hindus (as a religious minority).
While most women in Bangladesh have been forced to go around hidden under the Hijab, the question that haunts the minds of people like the writer Taslima Nasrin is what is the financial source that operates hidden and fuels the extremist Muslim organizations so strong in Bangladesh, that they escape the control of Prime Minister Mohammed Yunus. How is it possible for a state that is trying to progress economically to succeed when half the population is banned from production due to gender? Thus, we come to the conclusion that these organizations, which have Islam and the financial resources that fuel it as a shield of patriotism, are ultimately anti-patriotic because they put their common religious blinders above the good of their country, which naturally includes the protection of individual and political rights for women and minorities. The hope that remains in the end is that the Yunus government will manage to control the jihadist groups that plague the country so that Bangladesh can manage to emerge from darkness into light.
