JAMAAT-E-ISLAMI: The Perennial Betrayals of Bangladesh's Soul

Bangladesh’s birth in 1971 was not an ordinary episode of decolonization.

It was a bloody odyssey — forged in fire, consecrated with the blood of three million martyrs, and sanctified by the violated bodies of three hundred thousand mothers and sisters. The land that emerged was not merely a nation but a sacred covenant between its people and history itself. Yet even as the people of Bangladesh bled for freedom, a monstrous political entity called Jamaat-e-Islami stood in treacherous opposition, colluding with the barbaric Pakistani military junta in the wholesale slaughter of innocents.

The Al-Badr Butchers of 1971

Jamaat-e-Islami did not simply oppose the Liberation War; it weaponized religion as a cloak for its crimes. Its militant wing, Al-Badr, became the executioners of the Pakistani occupation. The testimonies of survivors are too harrowing to recount without trembling: fathers shot dead before their children’s eyes, women dragged from homes to be raped in torture camps, intellectuals abducted at midnight and slaughtered in the killing fields of Mirpur and Rayerbazar.

It was these men — self-proclaimed defenders of Islam — who transformed madrassas into barracks of death, who prostituted faith into a weapon of genocide. Their crimes were not acts of war, but acts of annihilation. They sought not to defeat an army but to exterminate a people.

"When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind." — Martin Luther King Jr.

But did we, as a nation, truly bind the wounds? Did we deliver justice to the beasts who bathed our land in blood in 1971? Only partially. Trials were delayed, evidence was suppressed, and political compromises allowed Jamaat to survive like a venomous serpent lurking in the shadows, waiting for its next strike.

The Coup of August 2024: History Repeated in Treachery

If 1971 was the year of genocide, 2024 was the year of betrayal. On 5 August 2024, the American deep state’s CIA, in league with Pakistan’s venomous ISI and their local collaborators, engineered the unlawful removal of the most successful Prime Minister in Bangladesh’s history — Sheikh Hasina. This coup, conducted through orchestrated violence and mass manipulation, reawakened the demons of 1971.

And who emerged from the shadows? The same Jamaat-e-Islami, now resuscitated, emboldened, and bloodthirsty. In their league stood Dr. Muhammad Yunus, illegally installed as “Chief Adviser” on 8 August 2024 — a puppet on foreign strings, a usurper of the people’s mandate. Under his apathy, Jamaat has expanded its poisonous roots into every artery of Bangladesh’s body politic.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." — George Santayana

Our failure to eradicate Jamaat after independence has now borne its full, dreadful fruit. The butchers of yesterday now masquerade as politicians, preachers, and power-brokers. Their rhetoric is sanctimonious, but their intent is carnivorous. Their ideology is not Bangladesh’s; it is Pakistani. Their loyalty is not to our martyrs, but to Rawalpindi. Their God is not Allah, but power.

The Spirit of 1971 Betrayed

Bangladesh is not an accident of history; it is an achievement of sacrifice. Every grain of our soil has been purchased with blood. Every freedom we enjoy is a debt owed to those who laid down their lives. To allow Jamaat to exist within this sacred homeland is not only political folly, it is spiritual treason.

These forces are not of us. They belong to the dark heart of Pakistan, that rogue state which still denies its genocidal crimes, still nurtures terrorists, and still dreams of re-colonizing Bangladesh through its ideological proxies. Jamaat is not a political party — it is a fifth column, an infestation, an enemy masquerading as neighbor.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." — Martin Luther King Jr.

And injustice has festered in our midst for far too long. For every survivor of wartime rape who never saw her tormentor punished, for every orphan who grew up without a father because Al-Badr snatched him away, for every intellectual whose pen was silenced by the assassin’s bullet — justice remains a hollow word until Jamaat is eradicated root and branch.

The False Piety of Jamaat

What is most insidious is Jamaat’s exploitation of Islam. They shout God’s name, but their hands drip with blood. They sermonize about virtue, but their history is a chronicle of vice. They invoke the Quran, yet they desecrate its spirit by embracing murder, rape, and treason. Islam in Bangladesh has always been humane, tolerant, and pluralistic. Jamaat’s Islam is alien, imported, and poisonous — an ideology not of light but of darkness.

Let us recall the words of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Father of the Nation: “The independence we earned through rivers of blood must not be betrayed by the enemies of our people disguised in religious garb.”

The Call to Justice

Bangladesh stands today at a crossroads no less perilous than in 1971. The enemy is no longer in uniform; he wears a tie, a turban, or a politician’s suit. But his essence remains unchanged: to undo 1971, to unravel our sovereignty, and to devour the flesh of our people under the pretense of religion.

The time for indulgence is over. To allow Jamaat to operate in Bangladesh is to spit upon the graves of three million martyrs. To let them pollute our politics is to dishonor our raped mothers. To watch them conspire with foreign masters is to betray our very existence as a free nation.

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." — Thomas Jefferson

We must act — not tomorrow, but now. To ban Jamaat-e-Islami is not intolerance; it is justice. To prosecute their leaders is not vengeance; it is accountability. To uproot their networks is not oppression; it is liberation.

Deceit, thy name is Jamaat-e-Islami

Deceit, thy name is Jamaat-e-Islami—the mass-liquidators of 1971—their present-day successors, and their dreaded mango-twigs! These fiends are no sons of Bangladesh; they are, in truth, rogue Pakistanis through and through.

I swear upon the memory of our nation, I witnessed with my own eyes the colossal massacres that befell Bangladesh in 1971. The dreaded Pakistani Army, aided by their vile collaborators—most notoriously the Jamaat-e-Islami Al-Badr goons—hijacked our sacred religion, invoking holy words such as “Naray-e-Takbir, Allah-hu Akbar. Pakistan Zindabad; Pakistan is the holy place of Islam” even as they mercilessly slaughtered countless freedom-loving sons and daughters of our land.

They denied the dead the dignity of burial. Instead, with grotesque pride, they left the bodies to be devoured by vultures, jackals, dogs, and other scavengers, celebrating such barbarity with unimaginable cruelty and malice.

There can be no forgiveness for these hellish monsters, their present-day successors, or their allies, under any circumstances. These dire creatures must never escape the inexorable justice of the hangman’s noose. The debt of blood they owe Bangladesh demands nothing less than absolute retribution.

The Final Word

Bangladesh was not gifted; it was earned. The freedom-loving people of this land must never permit its soil to be desecrated again by the butchers of 1971. Let the world know, let the heavens bear witness: Jamaat-e-Islami is not a political party. It is an enemy organization. It is Pakistan’s stepchild, America’s pawn, and Bangladesh’s curse.

If we fail to rise now, we risk condemning future generations to live under the shadow of the very monsters our forefathers died to defeat.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." — Edmund Burke

Let us then, as children of 1971, rise once more. Let us cleanse our land of Jamaat’s poison. Let us honor our martyrs not with words alone, but with decisive action. For only then shall Bangladesh truly embody the spirit of its birth — free, sovereign, and just.

Written by: Anwar A. Khan 

Author's Bio: The writer was a freedom fighter in 1971 to establish Bangladesh and is an independent political analyst based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, who writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs.

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