The question periodically raised in the minds of the national and international community is whether Bangladesh can become a hub of Islamic extremism. Though the country has secular political parties, the efforts by some to establish Islamic rule or Khilafat gives rise to such enquiries. Indeed the head of the Hizb-ul-Tehriri (Bangladesh) publicly announced that "we always want to oust all governments in all Muslim countries in the world to establish Khilafat states." The world is already mired in the militant activities of al Qaeda operatives. The conflict is sometimes communal and on occasions has taken refuge under the garb of underdevelopment, poverty, tribal and cultural differences among people to unleash its fangs of poison. Containment of such vitriolic and violent activities is of supreme importance to the world.

Though some Muslim scholars consider the essentialist construction of the people and the religion of Islam dominant in Western academic orthodoxy as grossly distorted, yet one must also acknowledge that the deviants of Islamic religion immersed in their own grotesque interpretation of pristine Islam do pose a serious threat not only to the West but also to Muslims who they consider to have deviated from the "true" path. The time is past for the Muslim world to hold on to tortured nationalism by blaming the West for failing to seize the moment when Western technology was on its way to irreversibly changing the contours of global civilization. The Islamic renaissance is unlikely to emerge from the destructive acts of Osama bin Laden.

Devoutly Muslim Bangladeshis are unlikely to countenance any Machiavellian machinations by religious extremists because Bangladesh has a tradition of secular culture which is neither atheistic nor agnostic. Bangladesh, like many other countries, is busy constructing its own brand of democracy keeping in view its social, historical and cultural traditions. One, however, becomes apprehensive when religion is advocated to be one of the pillars of the Bangladeshi socio-political construct and provides space to the likes of columnist Christopher Hitchens to term countries like Bangladesh as "Islamo-fascist" and by the historian Niall Ferguson as "Islamo-Bolshevists" committed to revolution and reordering the world in a way that would undo modernism.

Bangladeshi denials, notwithstanding, the question, however, remains whether non-state actors living in a shadowy world received political patronage from some of the leaders of the erstwhile BNP-Jamaat alliance government. Madrassas being springboards of fundamentalism continue to flourish and the degrees awarded by these institutions continue to be recognized as equivalent to the degrees given by colleges and universities making religious education equal to secular education. The number of madrassas in Bangladesh is divided into two broad categories Aliya madrassas run with governmental support and control, and Dars-e-Nizami or Deoband-style madrassas who are totally independent. The Jamaat-e-Islami had grown out of the Deoband madrassa system and was from the very beginning inspired by the Ikhwan-ul-Muslemin or Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt. Initially in undivided India, the Jamaat was opposed to the concept of Pakistan. Later, however, when the Jamaat came to support Pakistan as the Islamic state for the Indian Muslims, Bengali nationalism was totally unacceptable to them. Unsurprisingly therefore, the Jamaat sided with the Pakistani occupation forces in East Pakistan and fought against the war of liberation.

The emergence of religious intolerance in Bangladesh, documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the US State Department among others, should be seen in the global context. The facts of the Jaamat-e-Islami's collaboration with the Pakistani occupation army in 1971 and of some of its leaders being guilty of crimes against humanity are undisputed. Hitchens in his book The Trials of Henry Kissinger used the term "genocide" as appropriate for the war crimes committed in Bangladesh in 1971 and castigated the American Secretary of State for downplaying the aspirations of the Bengali nation for independence. Susan Brownmiller in her book Against Our Will, Pierre Stephen and Robert Payne in Massacre and the Archer Blood telegrams to the US State Department (now declassified) have documented the genocidal acts by the occupation army and the Jamaat's anti-liberation wings namely Razakars, Al-Badr, and Al- Shams.

The Jamaat's current acceptance of democratic pluralism and female leadership in the stewardship of the country is tactical. The character of Jamaat-e-Islami is not only apocalyptic but nihilistic as well. The leader of Awami League had demanded of the government that the two ministers from Jamaat be interrogated by the police to "unearth the mystery" behind religious militancy in the country. Another opposition political leader has alleged that Jamaatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh and Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh are in fact creations of the Jamaat-e-Islami. If Bangladesh were to revert back to secular politics which was one of the country's founding principles it would not have to compromise its Muslim identity because the great majority of the people are devout Muslims but it would have to be ever-vigilant against Islamic extremism.