Bangladesh is a fragile and unstable country – in terms of institutions and inherited individual and collective good practices, including an inability to deal positively with differences in views, opinions and lifestyles. There are many reasons for this sad state of affairs, but I won’t explore my understanding of them in this short piece.
Recently, the Bangladesh interim government announced the formation of several reform commissions with a head and committee members to carry out vital work for reform to set Bangladesh on a road to creating a new Bangladesh – based on freedom, equality, justice, etc. As far as I know, one of the commission’s committees became controversial and has now been disbanded. ‘The government yesterday dissolved a committee formed earlier this month to revise the textbooks under the National Curriculum and Textbook Board.’
The media reported three issues raised by some sections of the country regarding the committee’s membership, which presumably led to the committee’s dissolution. However, some suspect the main reason was the objection by some religious groups and personalities to the inclusion of Samina Luthfa and Kamrul Hasan.
The issues reported are:
- Two members – Samina Luthfa and Kamrul Hassan – should be removed for ‘their anti-religion stance’.
- Two Islamic scholars should be included in the committee
- The committee, as constituted, had a ‘conspicuous absence of curriculum experts among its members’.
Obviously, I am not privy to what went on in the minds of those who decided to dissolve the committee, but I guess it was to avoid a greater controversy emerging and consuming their energies. Regardless, what are the implications for our country and the individuals labelled as possessing ‘their anti-religion stance’?
On his Facebook page, Shaikh Ahmadullah posted this on Friday, 27 September 2024.
ধর্মপ্রাণ মানুষের সন্তানরা কী পড়বে, তা ঠিক করবে চিহ্নিত ধর্ম বিদ্বেষীরা!
এটা শহীদদের রক্তের সাথে সুস্পষ্ট বেঈমানি। (What the children of religious people will read, will decide by the identified religious haters! This is obvious dishonesty with the blood of martyrs.)
On the one hand, this is the practice of cancel culture, and anybody who has been at the receiving end of cancel culture, like I have been several times, knows exactly how bad it makes one feel. However, this is even worse as this cancel culture has been in public in Bangladesh and is suspected by many to be due to the labelling of the two individuals as Islamophobic. Although the interim government, none of their advisers and the education commission head are responsible for labelling Samina Luthfa and Kamrul Hasan as anti-Islam, the causes and effects of the process resulted in these two individuals becoming labelled as Islamophobic have serious security implications for these two people and perhaps also some of their close associates.
However, going back to the committee, the controversy and is dissolution, it is important to look at it from the context of the current time as a continuum from a long past of conflicts, wars, dictatorship, exclusion, narrative domination, attempted social engineering by one group when other groups were weak, etc.
After the July/August 2024 revolution, we have an opportunity to create a new Bangladesh of inclusivity – equality and equal justice and opportunities for all. As most groups in Bangladesh either supported or actively participated in the movement and made sacrifices – excluding the Awami League and their many sub-leagues – the interim government is trying to work with all to transit to a new Bangladesh.
In a post-revolutionary situation, where many individuals and groups from different backgrounds came together to oust a common enemy, the situation remains fragile, and things need to be handled with care. Otherwise, things could go out of control. Also, within the broad coalition of convenience – each with a different ideological standpoint – not all groups and individuals possess the same power and influence: some have more than others.
When you form a committee dealing with the education of children, parents and society have strong feelings and opinions about what should be included or excluded and concerning age-appropriate materials. If certain people are included in the committee and certain people are excluded from it, then objections by certain powerful sections can render the outcome – revised education textbooks – useless and obsolete, with a lot of additional controversies.
I tried to look through online searches to find any materials relating to either Samina Luthfa or Kamrul Hasan that could be considered anti-Islam. As I did not know these two persons before because they did not come under my radar due to my limited areas of interest, I am not familiar with their thoughts, ideas and writings. I could not find anything online about these two individuals that could be considered Islamophobic. However, these people may have written things, made speeches or said in talk shows or in foreign interviews that others are aware of who are making such claims.
In the UK, I have been labelled over the years as a razakar, a Jamatist, a secularist dressed up as a Muslim and treated with suspicions by a whole range of people. But as I live in the UK and no public pronouncement has been made in this regard, I have never felt unsafe because of also how things are in this country. Only at one time was I advised by the police to hire some private security to avoid trouble at an event I was organising – in 2012 when I invited Sarmila Bose to talk about her book on the Bangladesh Liberation War called Dead Reckoning, hosted by Professor Mushtaq Khan. The police said they would keep an eye on our event and get some officers to walk past the venue a few times. But Bangladesh is a different matter, and people can be in serious danger of certain public labels being used against them.
I have managed to watch a little bit of a short video – I don’t know what the whole programme might have contained – in which Samina Luthfa talked about how including certain Islamic dressing images or advice in children’s textbooks could continue the exclusion of women from society (I don’t remember the exact details of the conversation). This could be one of the reasons why certain people might have raised objections against her inclusion in the committee. There might be other materials with which I am not familiar.
Although I agree to some extent with the view expressed by Samina Luthfa, a good outcome from her view and the views of those who are objecting to her inclusion is for there to be open discussion and dialogue between the two camps as no doubt Samina is not alone in her view. I say this because I am aware of how Islamic women have been vilified and excluded over their dress and habits by certain sections of our society. In the past, those who were visibly more Islamic were less educated and mostly excluded from the modern sectors of our society – excluded through both internal and external factors. Now, you can see how more and more visibly Islamic women are taking their place in society in Bangladesh; they are highly educated and very articulate. An open and sustained dialogue would be good for everyone as no one openly can argue for keeping women uneducated, ignorant, dominated, treated unjustly, etc.
Through discussion and dialogue, it would be possible to find a solution to school textbook controversies by dealing with issues that suppress and oppress women while at the same time not denigrating Muslim women who want to follow the Islamic dress code and are visibly Islamic.
The Mollahs have also become more knowledgeable about worldly affairs, science, history, and international relations and more intellectually capable and organised. As such, we are talking about a new situation. With the collapse of the Awami League, the power balance has shifted to a great extent and is shifting. That’s why it is necessary to build new power centres in society to create a new balance where no one can acquire large or overwhelming power.
I support the interim government decision to dissolve the committee rather than change its membership – on balance, from far away in the UK, I think this is the best decision given the context. But our government and our society must provide security and act to create conditions for their safety.