Bangladesh

[Proletariat]

Some 300 small bombs rocked cities across Bangladesh Wednesday, killing one person, wounding at least 100, and raising questions here about whether the government has come down hard enough against a rising tide of Islamic militarism.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0818/p06s01-wosc.html

THE 300 bombs that went off all over Bangladesh yesterday may have been crude and technically unimpressive devices but the level of organization that went into their being placed in 50 different towns and cities is worthy of note. If leaflets left at some of the scenes are to be believed, the attacks that have slain two and injured dozens are the work of the outlawed group Jamatul Mujahedeen who, with another fundamentalist outfit, Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, was banned earlier this year. Both have been linked to attacks on local aid agencies. They are also prime suspects in the multiple bombing of a Muslim shrine in the east of the country five days ago and in a similar attack in May 2004 with grenades at another shrine at Sylhet.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&sect...=18&m=8&y=2005

Police arrested about 50 people in connection with the bombings, which affected nearly every big town across the country, the state-run news agency, Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, reported.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...551239,00.html

[Proletariat]

So how did the Bangladeshis offend anyone? Well, they offended Allah's Law.

The leaflets found at the sites of the blasts said "It is time to implement Islamic law in Bangladesh. There is no future with man-made law," and "(US President George W Bush) and (British Prime Minister Tony Blair) be warned and get out of Muslim countries."

While calling on the people, government and the political parties represented in Parliament to implement "Allah's laws", the leaflets said that "currently laws are formulated by infidels".

"We will help you in implementing Allah's laws. We do not want power," they said.

"We're the soldiers of Allah. We've taken up arms for the implementation of Allah's law," the Islamic outfit said in the leaflets. The group asked "anti-Islamic" NGOs to stop activities "against Islam, otherwise, you will be uprooted".

(italics added by yours truly.)

[AntiochusIII]

Awesome /sarcasm

Petty terrorists preached by madmen act against an ordinary society. If Allah is real he would've been lamenting over how pathetic these people are.

They got a lot of "menus" (from the words of a Thai prime minister) to choose from. Imitation, freakish "cultist", you know... something like "look at the [sarcasm]freedom fighters[/sarcasm] in Iraq!"

Similar things are going on in nearby countries in South/Southeast Asia as well. The case in Indonesia is probably the worst and oldest; I don't know much about Malaysia; Burma/Mianmar, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia have little to no Muslim population at all. The southern part of Thailand suffers the same situation of petty radical Muslim terrorists beheading perfectly reasonable ordinary Buddhist.

Damn.

[Petrus]

So how did the Bangladeshis offend anyone? Well, they offended Allah's Law.




(italics added by yours truly.)

The huge majority of muslims are moderate, but i do not think there can be any form of moderate islam.

EDIT by Ser Clegane: Please no general unsubstantiated slander of any (!) religion

[scooter_the_shooter]

No they are not....in the middle east it is extreme....talk to a muslim from the west and they will (probably) be moderate.

[Don Corleone]

No they are not....in the middle east it is extreme....talk to a muslim from the west and they will (probably) be moderate.

Well, with all due respect, how many muslims from the West or the Middle East have you sat down with & compared political views? I don't think all muslims are violent, I don't think it's even a majority. But they're in much the same predicament Europe found itself in back in the 1500's. They need to make some hard decisions about what role religion will be allowed to have in their lives, and will they allow an extremist minority to inflict their views on everyone else. I wish them well, and I hope they come to see religion as a facet of humanity, not as the end-all, be-all reason for existence. I'd go so far as to say that religion and faith aren't synonomous, but that's probably too big a leap for them right now.

[econ21]

I was shocked by this news. Bangladesh seemed to be a country that was marked down for stagnation and disaster a few decades ago - mass absolute poverty, flooding, high population growth, etc - but then it went out of the international news as it quietly made real socio-economic progress. It would be a tragedy if these efforts were stalled by political/religious conflict.

[Samurai Waki]

Sounds a lot like India's problem with seperatists in the 70s. I don't think Bangladesh will role over so easy, I have met a few men from Bangladesh, very nice, very hard working, and very hard to sway towards a viewpoint. I doubt the majority of Bangladesh will be put off by these attacks, and if worse comes to worse, would probably fight fire with fire.