Hefazat-e-Islam, local third party extremist and all-round Islamic know-it-all, wants to remove the statue of the Lady of Justice from the Supreme Court premises.
“As per the tenets of Islam,” they claim, “one cannot remain a Muslim if one believes the goddess is a symbol of justice. Only the Holy Qur’an can be the symbol of justice.”
They say that it is an “idol … moreover, it is the idol of a goddess.”
Islami Andolan Bangladesh Chief and the Pir of Charmonai (a most esteemed position of much influence and gravitas, no doubt) has said that if the sculpture was not removed, the public would “create a river of blood.”
How and why this Pir claims to speak for the public, I do not know.
And how and why and if the Lady of Justice is a symbol that is at once blasphemous and does not equate to justice, I do not claim to know either.
I am, after all, no expert on Greek mythology and its tenuous connections to Bangladeshi legal history.
Whether or not the Holy Qur’an can be the only symbol of justice and, as such, no other symbol cannot be allowed to represent a similarly abstract idea, is also something too many brain cells should not be spent pondering.
Why it is more egregious a sin to have an idol that is a goddess than anything else is also something I do not wish to claim to presume.
I suppose there are sexist undercurrents, or maybe that it is of a deified figure matters.
What should be thought about is this: Why does Hefazat-e-Islam have its priorities so much out of order?
Why are they not riled up by the increasing rates of poverty in the country? Why are they not enraged seeing little children, boys and girls, men and women, nude and begging for change?
When we, as people, choose to highlight the least relevant of issues, when we are focusing on the most inane of subject matters, leaving behind more pertinent topics of our time, I suppose we are catering to our extremist urges.
Let this be known henceforth: Every time someone, or something, or some organisation, completely misses most pressing matter of an issue in Bangladesh, they’ve pulled a Hefazat.
I suppose that is not fair. There are other extremist groups who do the same.
But language isn’t always so kind and, for now, I’ll let it run its cruel course.
The point is simple: Why is it that these so-called speakers for religion always focus on the least relevant aspect of the narrative to focus on?
I presume that some of us, not being criminals or lawyers, have never gone to the High Court or gone there enough to have even noticed that there was a Lady of Justice statue on its grounds. Or we’re just ignorant.
Either way, one doubts that even people who were aware of its existence had any sort of grudge held against the lady in question, blindfolded as she is, statuesque as she is.
For this unforgivable mistake, apparently, there will be demonstrations; rivers of blood will flow through Bangladesh.
Whose blood though? The blood of the Greeks? The judges and lawyers present at the Supreme Court? The one who gave the order to have the statue erected in the first place? The sculptor?
Literally, only God knows, it seems.
But the sentimental is clear: Someone will have to pay.
One wonders why these groups, while choosing to make a mountain out of a molehill, ignore all the mountains on their way to work (where do they work? Or is God’s green earth their office?).
Why are they not riled up by the increasing rates of poverty in the country?
Why are they not enraged seeing little children, boys and girls, men and women, nude and begging for change?
Where is this anger when they hear stories of muggings and kidnappings in broad daylight?
What is their reaction when they see minorities, or the Rohingya, struggling to survive, caught between a government who hates them and a government who is apathetic?
And when the police, government officials, public servants, in public and without shame, extort them for bribes, stinking of corruption, what then?
How are they not filled with anger when women are harassed, raped, beaten, when they are treated as less than human, on a daily-hourly-by-minute basis?
Where are their demonstrations then? Whose blood will their swords be drenched with, whose blood will fill our rivers then?
If Hefazat-e-Islami, or any other extremist group, wishes to be taken seriously, wishes to garner some sort of public support, to at least make us think that yes, they have a point or that yes, they do in fact have God’s divine word right, they would have to at least be able to tell the difference between what is important, and what is not.
Their propensity of complaining about the weeds while the house burns down serves to make it clear that they are groups of people so out of tune with reality, with hundreds of scores of youth brainwashed behind them, that their words are not worth listening to.
Look at the country you live in. Look, for once, around you. Look how the filth clogs up the drains, how the people sweat and suffer.
Look how you, ignorant and blinded, tread on the bones of innocent men and women. Look at yourself and see, see how you see nothing at all.
SN Rasul is Editorial Assistant at the Dhaka Tribune. Follow him @snrasul.