Jasim Uddin Rahmani: A Portrait of the Spiritual Leader of Bangladesh’s Ansarulla Bangla Team

Jasim Uddin Rahmani: A Portrait of the Spiritual Leader of Bangladesh’s Ansarulla Bangla Team

Of late, Bangladesh has witnessed a renewed surge of Islamic radicalism, which has led to intermittent confrontations between liberal-progressive forces and Islamic hardliners. The Shahabag protests of early 2013 remain sketched in public memory as a bloody example of this ideological conflict which not only unearthed hitherto unidentified faces of extremism, but also exposed these extremists’ true characters and a much larger conspiracy against the secular fabric of the country. Fringe groups patronized by the country’s Qawmi madrasas (unregulated Islamic seminaries) came to the forefront. One such group is the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), a network that has been nurtured by Jasim Uddin Rahmani, a firebrand Islamist preacher and cleric who is more notorious for his hate speeches and jihadist sermons than his teachings at the seminary.

Along with the Chittagong-based Islamist conglomerate Hefajat-e-Islam (HeI), which took over the reins of the “defend Islam” movement in Bangladesh, Jasim Uddin Rahmani’s and ABT’s violent faces surfaced during last year’s Shahabag protests when members killed blogger Rajib Haider. Haider had played a pivotal role in organizing the whole protest movement demanding execution of Jamaat-e-Islami members on trial for atrocities committed during the country’s liberation war in 1971 (BDNews24.com, February 16, 2013). On an earlier occasion, ABT activists targeted another blogger-activist, Asif Mahiuddin, purportedly at Rahmani’s behest, but Mahiuddin survived the attack (BDNews24.com, January 14, 2013). Five students of North South University (NSU) confessed that Rahmani instigated the attacks against the bloggers. Rahmani himself confessed to speaking against bloggers and atheists in various religious sermons during Friday prayers (Priyo News, September 3, 2013).

During the height of Shahabag movement activities, Bangladesh police unearthed ABT’s existence and followed the leads to Jasim Uddin Rahmani through information gathered from various jihadist web forums, including the Ansar al-Mujahedeen English language portal, which posted news of the ABT student members under the heading, “Five Lions of the Ummah” (Khabar South Asia, April 3, 2013). According to available information, ABT was founded at NSU in Dhaka and modeled on the Iraqi al-Qaeda group Ansar al-Islam (Khabar South Asia, April 3, 2013).

Jasim Uddin Rahmani was arrested along with 30 other ABT activists on August 12, 2013, at the house of his brother Abdu Jalil. They had gathered for a secret meeting in Barguna (Dhaka Tribune, August 21, 2013). Subsequent investigations revealed Rahmani’s support for the Taliban and al-Qaeda causes through his published works and speeches. There are also media reports that ABT draws inspiration from the works of the late al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) ideologue, Anwar al-Awlaki (Dhaka Tribune, August 15, 2013). Rahmani received verbal support from al-Qaeda and its leader Ayman al-Zawahiri when the latter came forward to urge Bangladeshis into an intifada (popular uprising) against the government and anti-Islamic forces and to rally around “the true scholars of Islam” (BD News24.com, February 15).

Hailing from a sleepy village named Heulibuniya in Barguna, Rahmani travelled to India to study at the famous Darul Uloom Deoband and later at the Sabelus Salama seminaries. He even travelled to Saudi Arabia and worked as a teacher at a university in Medina. After his return from abroad, he joined Dhanmondi Hatembagh Mosque. Later he founded the Markazul Uloom al-Islamia seminary near Dhaka, where he laid the foundation of the Ansarullah Bangla Team (Dhaka Tribune, August 15, 2013). Rahmani has written over 20 books on Islam and jihad. According to sources in the Detective Branch of the Bangladesh Police, Rahmani has at least 3,000 followers spread across educational institutions in Bangladesh. Over 100 of them may have followed the path of armed jihad and are suspected to have taken part in armed struggle abroad (Daily Star [Dhaka], August 17, 2013).

Rahmani also worked as a khatib (person who delivers the sermon) and imam (prayer leader) at Hatembagh Mosque in the capital and his sermons were full of jihadist rhetoric and often depicted the plight of fellow Muslims elsewhere and atrocities against them. [1] His disdain towards the non-Islamic government of Bangladesh is clearly evident in his sermons.

Both Rahmani and ABT militants have taken an active part in jihad campaigns through blogs and other social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook. [2] An eloquent Arabic speaker, Rahmani and his followers spread their online propaganda in three different languages – Bengali, Urdu and Arabic – in web forums like Mujahideen Media, QitalTube, Ansar1.info and Bab-ul-Islam.net. [3] These jihadist forums showcase the incendiary speeches and discourses of Islamists like Jasim Uddin Rahmani, who, with carefully chosen graphic details of atrocities, torture and bloodshed, attempt to influence young minds and draw them towards armed jihad. During his arrest, police seized laptops, desktop computers and CDs along with jihadist literature from his residence and madrasa office. The investigators also found that Rahmani’s sermons invoke people to kill anyone who is against Islam and the Prophet (Daily Star [Dhaka], August 14, 2013). According to reports, Rahmani specifically mentioned progressive intellectuals (columnists, writers and bloggers), including Daud Haider, Taslima Nasrin, Muhammad Zafar Iqbal, Ahmed Rajib Haider, Asif Mohiuddin, Arifur Rahman and Ibrahim Khalil, as people who should be persecuted for defaming Islam (Daily Star [Dhaka], August 14, 2013).

Police recovered a list from Rahmani’s office that contained the names of at least 12 persons, including two ministers and the slain blogger. This list proves that these lists were made well before the death of Rajib Haider (Dhaka Tribune, August 15, 2013). Another leading follower of Rahmani, Salman Yasir, a core member of ABT’s intelligence unit, was also arrested while attempting to flee abroad. He was wanted in connection with Haider’s murder (Dhaka Tribune, August 16, 2013).

Following Rahmani’s arrest, ABT is reportedly operating under the fugitive Maj Syed Muhammad Ziaul Huq, who masterminded a failed army coup plot in January 2012 (Dhaka Tribune, August 29, 2013). Rahmani has also been expelled from the management committee of the Markazul Uloom al-Islamia Madrasa (BDNews24.com, August 17, 2013).

Presently, Jasim Uddin Rahmani’s and ABT’s connections with other existing militant groups, such as Harkatul Jihad al-Islami-Bangladesh (HuJi-BD) and Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), are under investigation. In late January, Rahmani was formally charged along with seven students of NSU who are ABT members for the murder of Rajib Haider (BDNews24.com, January 28, 2014). His trial began in mid-May 2014 (BDNews24.com, May 12).

Animesh Roul is the Executive Director of Research at the New Delhi-based Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict (SSPC).

Notes

1. For a list of Rahmani’s sermons, see https://banglawaaz.blogspot.co.at/p/blog-page_8.html.

2. A complete list of Mufti Jasim Uddin Rahmanii’s audio and video messages, speeches, sermons on Islam and jihad can be found here:  https://archive.org/details/BanglaIslamicBestLecturesbooks. Also see, Islamar Alo forum on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL40B1E874CA0FE65C. For audio lectures, see Bangla Awaaz, https://banglawaaz.blogspot.in/p/all-lecture-of-jashim-uddin-rahmani.html.

3. For a list of Rahmani’s online works, please see https://qitaltube.blogspot.co.at/.