Here is some disconcerting news for all disciples of neocon gurus, who had discovered Islam as the enemy of democracy and the successor to the "evil empire" of the cold war era. An Islamic country of 160 million people, under an elected government, is witnessing important but ill-noticed moves to abolish religion-based politics.
On February 2, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh struck down a nearly 11-year-old constitutional amendment that had allowed religion-based political parities to function and flourish in the country. The ruling had the effect of restoring the statutory secularism, which Bangladesh adopted in 1972 after liberation from Pakistan and lost five years later following a series of military coups.
It may also have the effect of inspiring at least a debate on the issues in Pakistan, the other Islamic country of South Asia. It may also have a ripple effect, helping to raise the issues subsequently in sections of the rest of the Islamic world.
This only carries forward an old battle. The logic of Bangladesh's liberation war itself led the nation's founder, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, to place its linguistic identity above the religious. The reverse of the same logic drove religion-based groups in the pre-liberation East Pakistan to side with Islamabad in the war.
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9:43 PM
Moderate Islamist here
