Blog

What constitutes our national cultural identity? By M Ahmedullah, 14 April 2023 The long-term solution to this unending controversy is to abandon the idea of a national cultural identity for Bangladesh and its people. National cultural identity is not attainable as it does not exist. Many diverse historical, local and outside influences shaped our people’s […]

By M Ahmedullah The recent Hindu-Muslim communal violence in several places in India, which I found pretty worrying, prompted and compelled me to take an interest in knowing the details and who was doing what. I wanted to know what was happening and understand their causes. Over the last week, I have watched many discussions […]

Around this time in March 1971, we were marching towards the Rubicon, and by the 25th of the month, there was no going back. I am sharing my 2016 reflection on the nine-month war that followed and some of the questions I have in my mind in order to understand better what transpired. How much […]

Why people supported the 1971 Liberation War in overwhelming numbers? By M Ahmedullah, 12 March 2015 The most credible explanation for Bengali Muslims’ overwhelming support for the creation of Pakistan in 1947 and its break-up in 1971 is not that they were first inspired by Islamic ideology and later by the ideology of Bengali Nationalism. […]

By M Ahmedullah This is a slightly edited version of what I first posted on Facebook on 20 September 2020. I was thinking about writing something on ‘Tetul Hujur’ (Shah Ahmed Shafi, the leader of Hefajat-e-Islam Bangladesh) after he died a few days ago. However, as I am quite busy right now, I cannot dedicate […]

An opinion piece by M Ahmedullah, first posted on 7 February 2015 February 2023 is the tenth anniversary month of the start of the Shahbagh Movement. I am reposting a slightly edited version of the writing I originally posted on Facebook in February 20215, on the second anniversary of the Shahbagh Movement. The unprecedented movement […]

I wrote this as a Facebook piece two years ago when I learnt the planned launch of The Journal of Controversial Ideas. Since then, I believe one edition was brought out early 2021. I did not have the time to search or find the journal’s first publication. My piece was around controversial issues and free […]

By M Ahmedullah This was my contribution to a project called Knowing One Another Through Philosophy – delivered by Brick Lane Circle and completed on 14 June 2022 with a project completion celebration that included dramatised performances of nine contributions by diverse individuals who examined a range of community cohesion issues faced by local communities […]

Many Muslims wanted or wished Salman Rushdie dead, and some still do. There are also Muslims who Muslims prefer he didn’t exist or just disappeared from the face of the Earth. Some other Muslims from the beginning believed that the anti-Rushdie campaigns run by various Muslim groups in the late 1980s would be counterproductive, harm […]

During an exhibition on East India Company at Mile End Arts Pavillion in early October 2010 (by Brick Lane Circle), I was giving a tour to a white man in his forties and his young son, probably around ten years old). I usually wouldn’t use the phrase ‘white man’ in this way, but the context […]