My friend Zaman has a profound interest in the issue of militancy and the media in Bangladesh and he asked me to comment further on my point about language. How fundamentalists in the West become militants in Bangladesh. When you think about it its difficult but nevertheless here are some provisional thoughts.
In the west fundamentalism is a multivalent force. There are Christian, Jewish and Hindu fundamentalists as well as Muslim, although sometimes sight seems to have been lost of this fact and fundamentalism has been constructed along certain rigid visual and behavioral vectors. The fundamentalist dresses in a particular way, believes quite literally in the given text, wishes to impose its view on all and is prepared to kill to see this happen - or so it is claimed.
By contrast in Bangladesh there is only one source of fundamentalism and that is Islam and while some seem prepared to kill to have sharia imposed upon all a sufficient number of their co-religionists are opposed to this agenda. Indeed you can be a devout Muslim and wish to live according to sharia but it doesn't follow that you will kill to impose its introduction. Consequently another word has to be found to describe the behaviour of excess, and that is militancy.
The militants are those who desire to impose a rigid set of rules of behaviour upon all - something that is at odds with the Sufi traditions of Islam in Bangladesh and the inherent pluralism found in Bengali culture.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment