Days after a mass murder of foreign hostages in Dhaka, one more terror attack news is coming from Bangladesh. No one knows who they are and what their intention is? Why these people are carrying out attacks on various auspicious occasions irrespective of religions? Who are sponsoring them to create instability and fear among citizens? Agencies and media conclude by saying suspected Islamists had carried out deadly attack. Here in recent attack, four people including two policemen were killed in explosions and gunfire near a prayer ground in Kishoreganj district as at least 2,50,000 people joined a post-Ramadan gathering. A group of three attackers had hurled hand grenades at the police checkpoint just outside the main prayer ground, which is around 150 km north of Dhaka. Nearly 1,000 police were on duty in Kishoreganj at the time of the attack.
Recently, there was an order from the terror group to its militants that to kill senior officers of institutions and administrative departments that get (people to) start these riots. Target IPS and IAS officers and cause them financial losses.
Indian Muslims too were asked to target senior officers from Indian Police Service (IPS) and Indian Administrative Service (IAS) by Maulana Asim Umar, the chief of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). Umar, who has been the AQIS chief since September 2014, in a statement indicted the state and its departments for the incidents against Muslims in India. May be, this is the reason that Bangladesh Police are on the target. These attackers want to deter administration and service men.
Anyhow, two attackers were arrested in Bangladesh in the recent attack, including one who was shot and injured, while a pistol and machete were recovered from the scene. Officials put the number of people at the service between 2,50,000 and 3,00,000. It is by far the biggest such congregation in Bangladesh, home to around 160 million people. While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, it came less than a week after terrorists killed 20 hostages and two policemen in an overnight siege at a Western-style cafe in Dhaka. All the victims, including 18 foreigners, were hacked to death with machetes. Many of those who attended services in Dhaka could be seen weeping as clerics led prayers for a more peaceful and prosperous Bangladesh.
Bangladesh has been reeling from a growing wave of attacks since the turn of the year, many of which have been claimed by the self-styled Islamic State group or an offshoot of the al-Qaeda network.
However, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government has consistently denied that international jihadist networks have gained a foothold and have said the weekend attack in Dhaka was carried out by a local banned terrorist group. Whosoever they might be, but one thing is sure, they are anti-Islamic, anti-religion and anti-government organisation. They have a political as well as a religious agenda. In spite of several attacks, Hasina’s administration is in denial about the nature of the threat posed by extremists and accuses her of trying to exploit the attacks to demonise her domestic political opponents.
Last month, authorities launched a crackdown on local terrorists, arresting more than 11,000 people, but critics allege the arrests were arbitrary or designed to silence political opponents. Bangladesh’s main Islamist party has been banned from contesting polls and most of its leaders have been arrested or else executed after recent trials over their role in the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
Bangladesh’s Jamaat-e-Islami, previously known as Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, or Jamaat for short, was largest Islamist political party in that country. In August 2013, the Bangladesh Supreme Court declared the registration of the Jamaat-e-Islami illegal, ruling that the party is unfit to contest national polls. It was founded on 26 August 1941, but after the division of Pakistan, it has run their activities as Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami. It is said that the predecessor of the party (Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan) strongly opposed the independence of Bangladesh and break-up of Pakistan. In 1971, it collaborated with the Pakistani Army in its operations against Bengali nationalists and pro-liberation intellectuals. In 1971, then the new government banned Jamaat-e-Islami from political participation and its leaders went into exile in Pakistan.
Following the assassination of the first president and the military coup that brought Maj. Gen. Zia-ur-Rahman to power in Bangladesh in 1975, the ban on the Jamaat was lifted and the new party Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh was formed. Its leaders were allowed to return. Abbas Ali Khan was the first Amir of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh. The Jamaat agenda is the creation of an “Islamic state” with the Sha’ria legal system, and outlawing “un-Islamic” practices and laws.
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