In the months leading up to the recently concluded national elections in Bangladesh, many commentators discredited the struggle for democracy by arguing that secularism comes first. The ruling Awami League (AL) regime’s lack in democratic credentials were supplemented by its supposed secular character, whereas a focus on democracy would bring back the Islamists in power, or so we have been told.
How Islamist is BNP really?
Some not-so-negligible problems with this narrative include the fact that the main pro-democracy party in Bangladesh is Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). It has historically been considered a secular party led for decades by a fashionable lady at ease with publicly showing considerable amount of skin in a supposedly conservative country, who also happens to be the first female premier of the Muslim-majority nation. It has severed ties with the “Islamist” Jamaat-e-Islami party and recently befriended parties commonly known in the country as ultra-secularist. BNP have tried to appease India, usually an anathema to the Islamist politics in South Asia, by distancing itself from its previous anti-India stance. It is presumed that a free and fair poll would catapult this freshly re-secularized BNP, banking on the (perceived) Western support, to power, and understood that AL is officially in bed with the self-styled Islamist party Tarikat Federation (TF).
Given so many attributes of BNP running counter to our understanding of Islamist politics in general and its manifestation in South Asia, we may be forgiven for failing to make sense of BNP’s characterization as an Islamist party.
Historically, BNP has been accused of harbouring sympathies for Islamists, but many of its supporters and even a few critics have noted that BNP’s alliance with Islamists is based on political expediency and that AL, if presented with an opportunity, also does the same. The accusation that BNP is Islamist is a novel one in the sense that it was previously categorized as a pro-Islamist party at best, but the party itself was never deemed Islamist -- barring a handful of pundits who place the entirety of Bangladesh, including AL and BNP, within the Islamist category.
Inventing labels of political convenience
The 2024 elections, in this sense, saw the Islamization of BNP itself even though the party was doubling down on its secular credentials. Based on this Islamization of BNP, suspension of democracy was justified and, indeed, advocated for. This shows that Islamism or Islamization is not simply out there; it is invented.
More often than not, the purpose behind inventing Islamism is to deny certain people and ideas their due share in society. Viewed in this light, BNP’s attempt to secularize itself seems naïve insofar as one cannot become secular through self-proclamation, adopting certain policies, or abandoning certain traits. Becoming secular is a matter of discursive politics.
It is the discursive construction of the secular that expels BNP from it, even though it dissociates itself from JI, but includes AL in it despite its formal ties with TF and informal ones with Hefazat-e-Islami, not to mention the close cooperation between AL and India’s BJP.
There is a lesson to be drawn from BNP’s “Islamization.” If inventing Islamism -- usually a nefarious attempt to defend the indefensible and making even the worst form of governance moral -- goes uncontested, the Muslim world will never be able to land on its feet. No amount of appeasement or shifts in narratives, policies and rituals can make an entity secular so long as the power determines that entity as Islamist.
Speaking truth to power requires contesting inventing Islamism. It is only through a change in power relations that can liberate BNP from the Islamist category -- or any other entity that finds itself in it and therefore suffers.
Anyone can find themselves in the Islamist camp anytime, anywhere, and thereby be dehumanized.
Md Ashraf Aziz Ishrak Fahim has a first degree in International Relations and Global Affairs from Mahidol University, Thailand, and an MA in Social and Political Thought from the University of Leeds, UK. He is currently a graduate student of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar. He can be reached at [email protected]
