I see a mass of humanity, surging forward on Elephant Road. It is ten
minutes to iftaar, and musollis are distributing small snack packages.
This close to the city capital, the rush of poverty overtakes any
semblance of traffic police-created order. Hundreds lunge forward,
moving from their sitting position to get to the front of the line.
The mothers rush with their children in arms, it gets them to the
front of the begging line. Those with older children, leave them in a
safe space. One mother pushes her son, she is hobbling, she wants him
to take her place. “Ja na” she pleads.
Behind the ranks are the cripples. One man, in a wood cart. I have
seen him for many years now. When I was going to school, he had jet
black hair. His dark eyes said to me, don’t pity me, don’t you dare.
Give me alms, or move on. At a distance of a decade, his hair has
turned white. His look is not that fiery any more. Too many people
took him literally. Every now and then his cart snags on a rock, he
falls behind.
This is actually one of the good moments. The homeless and the dirt
poor, but during Ramadan there is increased generosity and alms and
iftaar. A spirit of giving and piety infuses the city. It is one of
the good moments to be a Dhaka dweller. Most of the time,
unfortunately, people are too desperate trying to make ends meet in
the middle.
A writer once talked about the darkness “behind the BMW shine”. While
business and development has improved parts of our life, poverty is
still everywhere. There is no end to the crises in our lives.
Spiralling prices are bringing markets to a standstill and driving
shoppers insane. A government official suggested that people use pepe
instead of begun for the Iftaar favorite. Food substitution: sign of
the times.
Jute mills closing down, business coming to a standstill. Garments
factory orders drying up as the follow-on to last year’s anarchy
politics, garment workers go on rampage, a foreign buyer stranded in
middle of Tejgaon begs workers to stop destroying their “own”
factories. But who listens. The evil times have not left us.
But tonight I sleep in peace. Because out on the street are protesters
and leaders who are marching, chanting, leafletting, shouting,
threatening, deadlining. All to make sure a blasphemous cat can be
destroyed without a trace.
I feel safer already.
In the Middle of Nowhere 
September 25, 2007 at 1:31 am
What I’d like to know is simple: at what point in time did the religious elite in Muslim countries lose the plot completely? Since when did pressing human issues take a backseat to debatable issues like these?
September 25, 2007 at 8:21 am
miaow.
Depends who you look to as being elite. and whther you think faith is a human matter.
In bangladesh context my favourites are the educationalists.
September 25, 2007 at 1:04 pm
fugstar,
I had a feeling you might comment on this thread. I can’t speak on Rumi bhai’s behalf, but I personally feel you have NOTHING to contribute given your horrendously un-ISLAMIC (ie. hypocritical) stand on this issue. So please feel free to address my concerns on other issues from now on, leave this be.
ps. our “educationalists” were arrested, thrown into jail and tortured. Don’t recall you being a critic of that move at the time.
September 25, 2007 at 1:16 pm
theres you on your takfiri trip again. seeing hypocricy behind every bush. too hasty.
Pardon me, i was refering to religious elites and pointing to islamic educationalists, who tried to construct something all together better than they started with. i was not talking about accomplished biochemists as educationalists.
People, now deceased, who were learned enough to have influence in the policy scene, jamati scene, the quami scene and the secular scene to be able to have some binding effect on them all, so we woulndt end up in these kinds of messes in the first place. people who dont have worthy successors hence to plotless path you mention.
you are right of course, what is the point.
September 25, 2007 at 2:05 pm
My dear friend, I see nothing but hypocrisy, evasion and denial in your stance in this ENTIRE issue, not just your comments on this thread. For instance, when someone pointed out that the HT pamphlet was saying very stupid things, you said that it was photoshopped. Denial at its best. I’m not takfiring you at all. You have the RIGHT to say whatever you want. I do not have the power to shut you out, and would not use it had I possessed it. I was signalling my intention to ignore your contributions on this issue in order to save you the effort of typing things in for my benefit.
As a “political orphan” I thought perhaps you were different from the intolerant Islamist mainstream. Clearly you are not (at least on this issue): therefore, your views mean little to me. But please feel free to (mis)educate others.
September 25, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Wow i cannot beleive it(but then again i can because theres a pattern emerging)i gave a link to the original ht bd website pointing out that it was made using photoshop, not as an accusation of fraud, but a simple software use remark. you actually want to see hypocrisy everywhere.
September 25, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Ahh ok. My apologies.
Your comment then was:
“its very Adobe photoshop! still doesnt positively id them calling for executions and/or burning effigies. The media engine is not very good at conveying demo dynamics so anybody can say anything like they always do.”
Forgive me for interpreting it that way. I thought the call for banning a publication was pretty bad (and meaningless) by itself, but you want to give them the benefit of the doubt until you see a written call for execution. Since you don’t trust the media to report fairly on what they were chanting at the protest. Fair enough.
Also, what do you make of HT banners that say that PA is a friend of “Ihudi and Nasaras” as if that’s a crime unto itself? How do you think that reflects on them? Let me get two words from you condemning that.
If you are against people’s right to protest, then be consisten. If you are for people’s right to be offended at each other, then be consisten and empathetic. You clearly are not. Which is why I say again, you have nothing useful to contribute to my perspectives on this issue.
September 25, 2007 at 3:18 pm
they didnt threaten me with sticks, disrupt my work, create a situation where my loved ones were endangered, destroy pubic property, run amok etc, try do bring down the government…. check the time stamp of my first remark on DU riots and understand that i was a mile down the road at the time.
So my scale of dissapointment is far far less.
I would word the banners differently but suprisingly enough im not part of said organisation so i doubt my politicaly correct sissynesses would make a difference. I have my own sources assuring me that by bangladeshi standards the demo was pretty ‘bhodro’.
September 25, 2007 at 5:36 pm
What I understand is that your personal safety issues come before the principle of there not being armed men in a place of education. Weren’t you saying something the other day about the principle of the majority’s utility coming before the utility of the individual? Hypocrisy again, or perhaps plain forgetfulness.
I’m sure your “sources” were really, really much more neutral than the “secular” media.
Ahhh yes, I’ve heard how sissy political correctness is from your ideological good friends the Republicans for the last few years. You sure have friends in high places….
September 25, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Why do Islamists and Republicans end up sounding the same in the final equation?
On a personal note: you ever read Edward Said’s post-Orientalism works?
September 25, 2007 at 5:50 pm
And the only reason the demo was “bhodro” is because fringe Islamists probably can’t outnumber my extended family back home….
September 25, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Please forgive the harsh comments, but the analysis, or rather reflexive kneejerk comments of some secularists will not get us to any tangible tactics against HT.
I oppose HT 100%, but I also respect their tactics. This is a political struggle and has to be dealt with political. Getting hysterical with people you disagree with and starting to foam at the mouth will accomplish absolutely nothing. The secular left (and I count myself within it)– has no analysis, no tactics, no lekhapora, doesn’t change with times. That is why we are getting beaten every day by machines like HT, that are smarter, well organized than anyone on our side.
HT approached me twice about coming to meet with them. “Apni American invasion on Iraq oppose kore kaj korcchen. Amader onek mil ace.” They met with a senior editor of prothom alo saying “apni bamponthi, kintu apnar ekta anti imperialist position ache, amra ek shathe kaj korte pari.” (this is 2 years ago). They appropriated and made Mazhar their totem. The level of their acumen is revealed in the manner in which they are sharply trying to appropriate all traditional positions of the left (anti-US, anti-world bank, anti-imf) and make it all part of their struggle.
When I see “secularists” fighting “islamists” (or rationalists with a dose of piety)with such blunt tools, I worry for our secular future. These tactics are as impotent as Shahriar Kabir gong, and many of you are at least 40 years younger than that group. Please for heavens sake, start studying the opponent. Read everything written by them that you can get your hands on. Read it in Bangla. Translate the text so others can read. Do not underestimate, and please please do not sneer,
This is a fight to the finish. We are like the Iranian leftists and we have no clue what is coming. And traditional hysteria of “ban jamaat” (how can we make that demand when we are asking for political freedom for ourselves), “1971 er khooni der thamao”, etc won’t work, doesn’t work, and is blinding us to how far behind we have fallen.
Please for heaven’s sake, everyone, wake up wake up. Start educating yourselves in the opponents theory. In 2007, I read Gaffar Chowdhury’s column, and it could be cyclostyled from 1985. I read the new Islamist theories, and I find them quoting Habermas, Marx, Deleuze, and making it all fit within their agenda. Guess which ideology can/will attract young people in the thousdands?
It’s not too late, but all of you MUST must must stop being so smug about the islamists. You must stop thinking “uneducated!” You are so very wrong.
September 25, 2007 at 7:31 pm
AsifY, in defence of my friends in the Republican party, it is a party in crisis. It is also a party that still has principled people like Chuck Hagel in it.
Of course there is the ideological kin of the Islamists there too. I like to refer to them affectionately as “wingnuts”.
September 25, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Otithi, excellent points in your comments. I think we underestimate groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir at our peril. When I researched the group last year, I called them media savvy. They are very good at appropriating legitimate causes for their own to recruit and expand their appeal. However, this is not uncommon of extremist groups. And there is much one can learn about HUT by studying the general appeal of extremist groups. HUT is a multi-national group spanning from Europe, to Asia to Africa and beyond. They are very good at attaching themselves to local grievances and then tying those grievances into larger grievances that connect all their disparate country operations together.
This is, as I’ve said many times, a battle of ideas and not one that can be fought with bullets or bans. In the current world environment, these groups have a lot of oxygen to grow in. However, it is by no means a lost cause.
Having said all that, Fugstar offers entertainment for free. So its hard not to partake 🙂
September 25, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Otithi,
Really liked your piece. Your comments though harsh are ill-directed. I consider myself neither a “secularist” nor a “rationalist with a dose of piety” (with all due respect, the dosage of my piety is no one’s goddamn business, pun intended :)).
My little duel with fugstar is just that, an internet spat . Not a part of some imagined grand duel between secularists (KC or AGC are not to my taste at all) and Islamists. I call out hypocrisy and idiocy on both sides whenever I can. If that seems knee-jerk, then I really don’t know what to say other than that that really is my reflex action: call people’s idiocy out.
I appreciate your call for a better analysis than what Kabir Choudhury and other self-proclaimed secularists have done. I myself am by no means part of the all-Islamists-are-same school of thought. I am however a bit more optimistic than you are: I do not foresee a “complete takeover” in our immediate future, Iran’s unique experience notwithstanding.
Nor do I personally like the “fight to the finish” sort of mentality, since I myself do not support any of the major goals of secularists other than non-discrimination on the basis of religion. Secularism IMHO in drawing a false binary between organised religions and all other ideologies is simply doomed in the really long-run. That it is not replaced by these illiberal measures we tend to call “Islam” is all I care about.
September 25, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Fugstar,
“I would word the banners differently but suprisingly enough im not part of said organisation so i doubt my politicaly correct sissynesses would make a difference”
Yes. And I and many like us on DP said pretty much the same thing after the students started getting violent: “I would protest differently, but surprisingly enough I’m not there to protest so I doubt my aantel PC-ness would make a difference”. Guess what you and others opposed to the very idea of students protesting said to us then? That we supported violence from the start. At least I’m not coming back at you and saying that you’re an intolerant bigot.
Nothing but hypocrisy Fugstar, nothing but hypocrisy.
Mash,
I respect a lot of people on the Republican side as well, both pro-War and anti-War. But the Republican moderates are the ones who enable the extremes, such as the Rush Limbaughs and the Ann Coulters with their almost ritual denigration of Muslims in America. Anyone on the left calling them out on it is immediately labelled with the “sissy political correctness” epithet.
Now I don’t much like PC-culture myself. I’d rather be accurate than politically correct. And as we all know, accuracy and truth points to the fact that those wingnuts are plain wrong, as are HT.
October 2, 2007 at 12:43 am
Otithi,
Aapni jodi kono major poschima shohor-e diaspora Muslim community dekhe thaken tahole janben HT’r appeal koto strong. Aami personal experience theke bolte paari je poschima university’r average Muslim chhatra-chhatri-ra Drishtipat type organisation theke HT type organisation ke prefer kore. Keno? Amader to eita chinta korte hobe, tai na?
Aar HT niye jotheshto-i worry korar aache. HT Jamaat othoba Qaumi madrassah fatwabaz der theke onek beshi dangerous. Again, jodi poschima Muslim diaspora community dekhe thaken tahole janben, HT’r shathe jihadi-der shomporko koto gobhir. Aapni jodi amar moto kolom-khochano type hon, aapni HT-te join korben. Ektu beshi adventurous hole aapnake kono secret meeting-e niye jawa hobe. Beshi adventurous hole gontobbo Pakistan-er uttar paschime.
Bangladesh-e Islami biplob aashle sheta era-i aanbe. Eder shomporke highlight kora’r jonno onek dhonnobad.
October 2, 2007 at 1:10 am
This is a very interesting TV debate on freedom of expression and Islam. A very good watch in the backdrop of recent cartoon controversy in Bangladeshi. Also specifically look for the Hijbut Tahrir rep in the debate. That gave me an idea what quality of people HT is composed of in the west. The debate is in this link.
October 2, 2007 at 5:02 am
You all should see this Panoroma program that was shown in BBC last night on HT. Its a half an hour show and was done by someone who has recently come out of HT.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6920000/newsid_6923600/6923616.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&news=1
October 2, 2007 at 6:32 am
Can’t play the BBC piece in my machine. But if it is Ed Hussain then thoroughly recommend it. Heard him speak earlier this year. Know some people myself who shares similar experience as him.
October 2, 2007 at 9:46 am
Zia Sardar on Mahbub Hussain AKA ‘Ed’,
http://arts.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article2600334.ece
Yahya Birt reviewing the book,
http://www.yahyabirt.com/?p=71
October 2, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Otithi and others,
The rise of HT type outfits raise a very important question – what do Left and Right mean in Bangladesh?
If the Left doesn’t stand for material improvement in poor people’s lives and freedom of thought then I’m not sure there is anything left to the Left. And similarly, if the Right doesn’t stand for social stability and traditional values, then is it right to call it the Right?
October 2, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Couldn’t finish the previous comment.
Outfits like HT are really about a reaction against social changes. But those social changes are an inevitable consequence of pulling millions of people out of poverty.
We can rail against the IMF and Iraq war all we want, but if we want to improve the living standards of the poor man in the ganj (to use Fugstar’s word), we really have to accept that his old way of life will probably change. HT makes its stand on that trade off pretty clear -social values over material gain. It’s the Left (not just the relics like factions in Purana Paltan, but also the NGOs and activists and so on) that have to think about the trade off.
October 3, 2007 at 1:35 pm
“It’s the Left (not just the relics like factions in Purana Paltan, but also the NGOs and activists and so on) that have to think about the trade off.”
Too often of course the Left (once again with your caveat that Left and Right are pretty muddled) has an immature, nihilistic streak about it mirroring religious fanatics themselves. They want overnight change. They are hostile to anything traditional, including the family that usually is the best insurance against the vagaries of change. They are inimical to land-owners in the countryside and “capitalists” in the city, out of nothing but sheer dogmatism.
Some NGOs have started overcoming this trend. Someone involved with BRAC’s microcredit for the ultra-poor program came to speak at my university. I remember vividly how he said that they incorporated the local elites – the matabbors, the murubbis, the shalish/panchayat people, the union parishad members – and made them a part of the program and how it had paid off so far. Had you left it to an old-style Marxist (or even the mostly Western audience present there), you would not have seen this aspect of the program.
I’m not even going into how the “poor man in the ganj” reacts to microcredit programs targetted towards women. Too big a can of worms there!:)