The Odhikar Report into the Dhaka Massacre that Adilur Rahman Khan got arrested for.

They have renovated their website, so its here.

Read all about it.

From Motijheel to Rabaa

Unrequinted Ummahtic Love Brigades,
Our hearts are frayed,
Afraid.

Hyder Husyn and brothers Qawwali Album.

Chand ka shikwa

You no longer visit me my love,

Perhaps I should be grateful.

You don't bow to me these days either, 

Ingratiatingly,

That was embarrassing.

Despite my glad tidings

You keep rejecting my advances 

Hiding behind mathematical punditry

Beaurocracy, Community, Saudi Moronarchy.

Why won't you look at me when I'm liminal?

You are no oil painting yourselves,

Don't think I can't see you,

Trudging heavily along your clingo-filmed rock.

Sajeeb Joy Wajed: The Grandson of the Nation.

Nepotism and corruption are politically disfiguring Bangladesh. We owe it to deshi futures to smack it around the head a few times by challenging these moronarchies. The slavish support of dynasties must be lampooned and made difficult to hold onto.

Two prime deshi cases in point are: Tareq Zia and Sajeeb Wajed Joy, the sons of Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina respectively. Nepotism within the Jamaat is socially and institutionally apparent, it is essentially the same social stock we are talking about here.

Tareq Zia's misdeeds were rightly, if not always accurately, seized upon by the seculib press during the last-but-one BNP led government in Bangladesh.  His back was physically broken by the caretaker government which was then ushered in with international support and he continues to mobilize the BNP B team from London, with comical effect. 

Hasina's son is insidious on another level, including marshalling WarOnTerror bullshit for political advantage. There is no shortage of this individual opening his mouth in public, from cheering on his mothers killing machine to Indian TV audiences, farting out loud about Digital Bangladesh and proclaiming knowledge of the unseen regarding his family party's forthcoming victory.

His influence on the government  needs investigation.  His candidacy for the seat of Rangpur-6, where his late father hailed from, should be the focus of an electoral decapitation campaign aimed at encouraging debate, electoral scrutiny and challenging passive acceptance of moronarchy as status quo. 

The Awami League won a mega landslide victory in Rangpur-6 in 2008, winning this north western constituency on the border with India from Noor Mohammed Mondol who won in 2001 on a Jatiya Party (Ershad) ticket but then tried to defend it as part of the BNP alliance. It will be interesting to see how far Ershad's shadow still stretches in this area. Local Bangladesh war scars and proximity to India make this natural terrain for the Awami League.

Pirganj literally means the The Storehouse of the Spiritual Leader and is 400 sp km in extent and covered in important wetlands. Just under 400 000 souls reside there, a quarter of a million of whom can vote. Joy, rather the Awami League engine, would need to convince about 100 000 people to vote for him.

Glancing at the news today the boy seems to have been summoned the the US. oo-er.

The Tulips of Westerham

The world of the Bangladeshi Awami Moronarchy is not impenetrable to the outsider, because its braggishness knows few bounds.

In this video we can see the Prime Minister of long suffering Bangladesh, her sister Rehana Siddiq and associated sycophants of the Awami-Labour Party rally to celebrate the wedding of a youngling Tulip Siddiq, soon to be crowned Labour candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn.

I trust they were all personally rooting for principles of social justice, egalitarianism and human dignity. Not.

***

There is no accounting for tastes amongst the vicious thugs that control Bangladesh, but that is a secondary concern.

I wonder how much blood was in that badly designed banqueting suite in Newham. From the power-wielding family members and spooks to the Chatro League brown shirts and I wonder how much of this skull duggery the youngling Tulip would know about and condone, given her history of lobbying and campaigning for her family's political concern.

The most feared people in Bangladesh are the Awami Leagues brownshirt Chattro League, even the police are scared of them during their joint operations on the Bangladesh publics.

***

Which reminds me. Earlier in her famous 'Hefazot Smeared Red Dye On Their Chests' speech to Bangladesh Parliament on 29th(ish) June, the Prime Minister had 'rewritten' Islamic jurisprudence, lashing out at Barrister Kamal Hossein's daughter Barrister Sara Hossein's marriage to the Journalist David Bergman, who has a Jewish background, in order to present her son Joy's marriage in a virtuous light.

Because we care so much.

Mehfil Ali debate on the situation in Syria

Archive news report of Bihari ordeal in new Bangladesh

really sad.

What's next with Jamaat e Islami Bangladesh?

It is a challenging time for political Islam generally these days, with the coup in Egypt, #Occupygezi in Turkey and the continuing annihilation policy against Jamaat e Islamic in Bangladesh. Internal shortcomings and external forcings have contributed to this situation and the levels of hate-mongering seem only to grow with every social media fuelled moment.

In Bangladesh the conduct of the War Crimes Tribunals, the wildness and idiocy of much of the Shahbag, the detention and torture of Amardesh editor Mahmudur Rahman and the slaughter of the non-Jamaati protest group Hefazat e Islam are a pretty depressing state of affairs.

Furthermore, the organisational decapitation of JI seems, to this observer, to have served to lobotomise and entrench defensive thinking and disarray. But its not as if other paths haven't been imagined.

Two years ago, Shah Abdul Halim, a challenging voice within the diverse internal party debate, wrote this piece on the formation of a political party. Its worth reading and highlighting the following points.

• Binning centralised authority
• Making good on commitments to social justice.
• The dead end of the fiqh-as-policy approach.
• Rejecting the control freakery of leadership panels.
• Delinking Shibir from JI control
• Rejection of the cadre system
• Mitigating against the self interests of whole-timers
• Greater honouring of women, ditching of the segregationist fascination and veil fetish.

Times of relentless attack are difficult to transform towards, as conservative survival tendencies have been seen to dominate. I am not a member of the organisation or any of its fronts but wish non secular political subjectivities and values to flourish. Hence the interest in this time being fruitful. Personally I'm more into kamrangas than tetuls, or the corrolla phlegminists that dominate our very uncivil civil society in desh.

Kamranga is a tangy fruit found in Bangladesh and many other places. Often written off as a peasants fruit and therefore inexpensive, it is good for the skin and bones, and when slices reveals a stellar quality

The rise of Hefazot, quite broad admiration/sympathy yet frustration with their disinterest in power is interesting to dwell on. 

My favourite deshi blogger Mukti has gone into purdah these days, I miss his insight and humanity, and Bloggerganj is poorer without it. He shared these observations, a while back.

As for the developments in the rest of the Muslim world, the point is not that Turkish or Arab or Indonesian politicians are going around being Zia-shoinik. Rather, when Islam-based politicians want to seriously contemplate politics beyond Hudood acts and the illegitimacy of anal sex, they arrive at the kind of synthesis that Zia articulated three decades ago.

In Bangladesh, people who talk about Islamic governance do not talk about social justice. Jamaat has spent 40 years trying to regain their 1970 position. Their biggest so-called alim, Delwar Hossain Sayedee, delivers sermons that are little better than soft-porn. All the others — Islami Oikko Jote and Khilafat Andolon and such like — talk about either declaring XYZ kafir or making sure that women stay indoors. Social justice? I don’t think so.

Maqasid orientated policy explorations anybody?

***

Its not that there aren't individuals seeking these alternate futures in the organisation, but that they are politically unweighty and effectively gagged by rules, regulations and methods that offer them no leadership or tone-defining scope.

The post Bangladesh Maududian engine does not run on hydrogen cells

***

Jamaat e Islam are not the be all and the end all of Islamisms and mIslamisms in Bangladesh, but they constitute a significant Ummahstructure. The self dubbing as the only correct Islamic option confuses us all and sends the wrong signals the millions of awesome people outside their organisation and sympathisers.

***

Some ideas that are doing the rounds and some which are not, for the Manifesto:

• Reform and expand the War Crimes Tribunals to include all participants and histories at an International level.
• Campaign against the commodification and inverted practices of dowryism with gusto.
• Consult widely on a moratorium on international 'development' aid.
• Commit to meritocracy.
• Venture beyond Neoliberalistan and Bismillah Capitalism
• Learn to work in partnership with diverse actors without dominating them.
• Take an evidenced approach to make justice for the bereaved of Motijheel and other smaller brutalities.
• Ease off the simpleton model of Nasticness and Cold war attitudes to all forms of socialism.
• Vacate the space and work with the people as they are.
• Do what Shah Abdul Halim said?
• Do what Kamaruzzaman said in his letter?

Qur'an recitation from Tarawih prayers in Sudan