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https://www.wsj.com/articles/bangladesh-exports-a-new-generation-of-jihadists-1514499904
Bangladesh Exports a New Generation of Jihadists
By Sadanand Dhume
Nonetheless he represents a troubling new phenomenon: the rise of the transnational Bangladeshi jihadist. Mr. Ullah told interrogators the botched bombing was on behalf of Islamic State and his goal was “to terrorize as many people as possible.”
Also this month, authorities in London charged 20-year-old British-Bangladeshi Naa’imur Zakariya Rahman with planning to assassinate Prime Minister Theresa May by blowing up the gates of 10 Downing Street and attacking Mrs. May with a suicide vest and a knife.
The July 2016 Islamic State attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery, an upscale restaurant favored by expatriates in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, involved a global cast of characters. They included Tamim Chowdhury, a chemistry graduate from Ontario whose parents emigrated from Bangladesh to Canada, and Muhammad Saifullah Ozaki, a Bangladeshi Hindu convert to Islam who taught business administration in Kyoto, Japan.
The five Holey Bakery attackers hacked and shot to death 20 hostages over 11 hours. Nine of the victims were Italian, seven Japanese, two Bangladeshi, one Indian and one American. The attackers were later killed when security forces stormed the bakery.
Chowdhury, the Bangladeshi-Canadian mastermind, was fatally shot by security forces two months after the attack. Mr. Ozaki, who investigators believe acted as a conduit between the attackers and the Islamic State in Syria, remains at large.
Earlier Bangladeshi jihadists were usually poorly educated recruits from traditional Islamic schools. Most of the Holey Bakery attackers, by contrast, came from privileged backgrounds. They belonged to a new generation of Bangladeshi terrorists described by Ali Riaz, a political scientist at Illinois State University, as “tech-savvy, highly educated, and boasting deeper transnational links than their predecessors.”
Some Bangladeshis blame their jihadist problem on Western laxness toward Islamic extremism. Chowdhury, for instance, consorted with other jihadists, including a close-knit group known as the Calgary cluster, whose members prayed at the same storefront mosque and left Canada to fight in Syria. “Londonistan,” as Britain’s Islamist-friendly capital has come to be known, has long provided extremists access to global networks, exposure to hard-line preachers, and a patina of Western glamour.
Mr. Riaz estimates that as many as 100 of the 850 or so British fighters who joined Islamic State in Syria and Iraq may be of Bangladeshi origin. They include Saiful Haque Sujan, who came to Britain as a student and was killed two years ago by a U.S. drone strike in Raqqa, where he helped lead the terrorist group’s cyber operations.
To be sure, Western countries could do a better job tackling extremism. But it’s far-fetched to place Bangladesh’s jihadist problem at the feet of foreigners. The country has hardly been immune to a tide of radicalism that over the past four decades has washed over Muslim communities from Morocco to Mindanao.
By allying with Islamist groups like Jamaat-e-Islami, political parties such as the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party have given them a legitimacy they once lacked. Since 2013, a series of machete murders of atheist and secularist bloggers has chilled free speech. Instead of standing up for the victims, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, whose party, the Awami League, is ostensibly secular, has suggested that people tread carefully when speaking about Islam.
The Islamist promise of solving all of society’s problems by imposing Shariah does not resonate as deeply with Bangladeshis as with their Pakistani cousins. (Bangladesh was known as East Pakistan before independence in 1971.) But neither does it fall entirely on deaf ears. As in many countries, some Islamists use violence to pursue these goals.
In many ways the challenge is familiar. How do you draw a line between legitimate piety and its most extreme manifestations? One day your 18-year-old son may please you by taking a religious turn. The next thing you know, he could be on front pages around the world for hacking strangers to death.
For most of us, unpacking the precise relationship between piety and pipe bombs may be an unaffordable luxury. Siegfried Wolf, an expert on Bangladeshi militancy at the Brussels-based think tank South Asia Democratic Forum, points out that in recent years Bangladeshi jihadists have begun to show a new assertiveness and self-confidence.
Mr. Ullah is the first Bangladeshi to have placed his country on America’s mental map of jihad since a compatriot tried unsuccessfully to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in New York five years ago. He likely won’t be the last.
Bangladesh Exports a New Generation of Jihadists
By Sadanand Dhume
Nonetheless he represents a troubling new phenomenon: the rise of the transnational Bangladeshi jihadist. Mr. Ullah told interrogators the botched bombing was on behalf of Islamic State and his goal was “to terrorize as many people as possible.”
Also this month, authorities in London charged 20-year-old British-Bangladeshi Naa’imur Zakariya Rahman with planning to assassinate Prime Minister Theresa May by blowing up the gates of 10 Downing Street and attacking Mrs. May with a suicide vest and a knife.
The July 2016 Islamic State attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery, an upscale restaurant favored by expatriates in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, involved a global cast of characters. They included Tamim Chowdhury, a chemistry graduate from Ontario whose parents emigrated from Bangladesh to Canada, and Muhammad Saifullah Ozaki, a Bangladeshi Hindu convert to Islam who taught business administration in Kyoto, Japan.
The five Holey Bakery attackers hacked and shot to death 20 hostages over 11 hours. Nine of the victims were Italian, seven Japanese, two Bangladeshi, one Indian and one American. The attackers were later killed when security forces stormed the bakery.
Chowdhury, the Bangladeshi-Canadian mastermind, was fatally shot by security forces two months after the attack. Mr. Ozaki, who investigators believe acted as a conduit between the attackers and the Islamic State in Syria, remains at large.
Earlier Bangladeshi jihadists were usually poorly educated recruits from traditional Islamic schools. Most of the Holey Bakery attackers, by contrast, came from privileged backgrounds. They belonged to a new generation of Bangladeshi terrorists described by Ali Riaz, a political scientist at Illinois State University, as “tech-savvy, highly educated, and boasting deeper transnational links than their predecessors.”
Some Bangladeshis blame their jihadist problem on Western laxness toward Islamic extremism. Chowdhury, for instance, consorted with other jihadists, including a close-knit group known as the Calgary cluster, whose members prayed at the same storefront mosque and left Canada to fight in Syria. “Londonistan,” as Britain’s Islamist-friendly capital has come to be known, has long provided extremists access to global networks, exposure to hard-line preachers, and a patina of Western glamour.
Mr. Riaz estimates that as many as 100 of the 850 or so British fighters who joined Islamic State in Syria and Iraq may be of Bangladeshi origin. They include Saiful Haque Sujan, who came to Britain as a student and was killed two years ago by a U.S. drone strike in Raqqa, where he helped lead the terrorist group’s cyber operations.
To be sure, Western countries could do a better job tackling extremism. But it’s far-fetched to place Bangladesh’s jihadist problem at the feet of foreigners. The country has hardly been immune to a tide of radicalism that over the past four decades has washed over Muslim communities from Morocco to Mindanao.
By allying with Islamist groups like Jamaat-e-Islami, political parties such as the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party have given them a legitimacy they once lacked. Since 2013, a series of machete murders of atheist and secularist bloggers has chilled free speech. Instead of standing up for the victims, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, whose party, the Awami League, is ostensibly secular, has suggested that people tread carefully when speaking about Islam.
The Islamist promise of solving all of society’s problems by imposing Shariah does not resonate as deeply with Bangladeshis as with their Pakistani cousins. (Bangladesh was known as East Pakistan before independence in 1971.) But neither does it fall entirely on deaf ears. As in many countries, some Islamists use violence to pursue these goals.
In many ways the challenge is familiar. How do you draw a line between legitimate piety and its most extreme manifestations? One day your 18-year-old son may please you by taking a religious turn. The next thing you know, he could be on front pages around the world for hacking strangers to death.
For most of us, unpacking the precise relationship between piety and pipe bombs may be an unaffordable luxury. Siegfried Wolf, an expert on Bangladeshi militancy at the Brussels-based think tank South Asia Democratic Forum, points out that in recent years Bangladeshi jihadists have begun to show a new assertiveness and self-confidence.
Mr. Ullah is the first Bangladeshi to have placed his country on America’s mental map of jihad since a compatriot tried unsuccessfully to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in New York five years ago. He likely won’t be the last.
