Saudi Arabia is set to donate $118 million to set up 560 model mosques across Bangladesh. This comes a year after PM Sheikh Hasina’s Saudi Arabia visit where she King Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, the Dhaka Tribune reported. The mosques will be able to accommodate at least 450,000 men and over 30,000 women for daily prayers and will have lodging space for more than 2,000 foreign guests and libraries. The model mosques project also aims to provide primary education to more than 150,000 children and conduct digital registrations for the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. The Saudi government has also agreed to donate money to establish a permanent campus for the Islami Arabic University in Bangladesh.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
This will certainly be a welcome step for HuJi, ISI and even Daesh to have a jihadi launchpad in the east of India. It is no secret that Bengal has been a fertile ground for jihad, whether due to the numerous governors and officials who formed their independent kingdoms there breaking away from the Delhi Sultanate which was weakened by the counter attack of Rajputs and the invasion of Timur, or later due to British backed partition of Bengal in 1905 which quickly erupted into a serious of anti Hindu riots (as was the case with most Muslim League & cleric backed initiatives). Main vote bank of Muslim League came from east Bengal and not west Punjab. More Hindus were killed in East Bengal in partition riots than in west Punjab, and the total number of Hindus killed in just two pogroms of 1950 and 1964 is higher than the victims of all riots in India post-independence. In 1971, most of the refugees from east Pakistan to India were Hindus, as were most of the intelligentsia that was liquidated by Pakistan Army and its backed factions. It was the single biggest holocaust post WWII, with estimates anywhere from 1 to 2.4 million. Do you hear any secular Bengali mention it today?
Following is the declining Hindu population % in Bangladesh region:
1941 28.0
1951 22.0
1961 18.5
1974 13.5
1981 12.13
1991 11.62
2001 9.6
Bangladesh in the long run is a bigger danger for India than Pakistan. Because it has a weapon which is much more dangerous than any nukes: – Demographic invasion. One just needs to see north east states in India to know about the irreparable damage caused by Bangladeshi migrants, who have a higher birth rate than locals.
Ever since becoming the leading petroleum producer in the world, Saudi Arabia has been funding madrassas/seminaries of Wahhabism, a doctrine of Sunni Islam founded by Mohammed Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-92), which stressed the abandoning of veneration of saints, the seeking of their intercession (including the intercession of Mohammed), and the visiting of their tombs, declaring that their domes or shrines should be destroyed, as this is Shirk or idolatry. As a foe of innovation, he advocated a return to what he saw as the purity of the first generation of Islam, the Salaf and the teaching of any school of law. His ideas were deeply influenced by the teachings of Ibn Taymiyah (1263-1328), who saw the state as an adjunct of religion and opposed discursive theology. He wanted Islam to be purged of all “impurities” that had been acquired in later generations. Wahhabism has also been called “a particular orientation within Salafism”, or an ultra-conservative, Saudi brand of Salafism. But most of its devout followers reject the term Wahabi and want to be called Salafis, as indeed Salafism and Wahabism have all but become one. One should remember that Salafis give just two options to polytheists- Convert or die. The dhimmi status (second class citizen status under Sharia for non-Muslims) is only for other people of the book i.e. Christians and Jews (Every major Islamic terrorist organization from Al Qaeda to Daesh, has its base in Salafi/Wahabi ideology)
Eventually, Al Wahab formed a pact with a local leader Muhammad bin Saud, and this alliance between the descendants of both al Wahab and bin Saud proved to be a long and durable one. Just a little more than 150 years later, the house of Saud, thanks to the backing of the British, formed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. Today Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab’s teachings are the official, state-sponsored form of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia.
The US State Department has estimated that over the past four decades Riyadh has invested more than $10bn (£6bn) into charitable foundations in an attempt to replace mainstream Sunni Islam. To give an idea of the massive efforts, more than 1,500 mosques were built around the world from 1975 to 2000 paid for by Saudi public funds. As per reports, The Saudi ministry for religious affairs printed and distributed millions of Qurans free of charge, along with doctrinal texts that followed the Wahhabi interpretation. In mosques throughout the world “from the African plains to the rice paddies of Indonesia and the Muslim immigrant high-rise housing projects of European cities, the same books could be found”, paid for by Saudi Arabian government.
This Petro Islam has wreaked havoc in the world, particularly south east Asia, where nearly three fourths of the world’s Muslims reside. Its real damage began in 1980, when US government funded mujahedeen to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Saudi influence entered Pakistan during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan with CIA backing, in the form of funds for madrassas and mosques in Pakistan (18000 Deobandi madrassas were set up across Pakistan by CIA) in order to create and train mujahedeen to fight godless communists. After the war was over, ISI got a readymade supply of thousands of rabid jihadis to be unleashed in a new Dar ul Harb:- Kashmir.
Petro Islam’s beginning can be traced back to 1973, when the embargo by Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries on US and NATO countries for support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War stopped Israel’s counter offensive. (Oil barrel rates had nearly tripled as a result). Saudis viewed petroleum reserves as a gift of god, and have relentlessly worked towards replacing every nationalist movement in Muslim world with Islam and to bind the Muslim world into a single creed of Wahhabism. This petro dollar funded wealth is also being used to buy the world’s media (which is the reason you will never hear any critique of Islam or Muslims or Islamic terrorism) and political lobbying around the world (which is the reason why you will see just about every major leader rushing to scream “terror has no religion” after every terrorist attack.)
Saudi Arabia funded seminaries are hell bent on purging the local influences on Muslims of the given region. It has started showing, with respect to attire, or even in lessening of the Persian vocabulary in daily conversations (Ramadan, instead of Ramzan. Allah Hafiz instead of Khuda Hafiz. Salat instead of Namaz, etc). Also on the target are the Muslims among the thousands of migrant labourers from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to the Gulf states. A huge number of them return radicalized, feeling hostile in their own country. The sands of gulf become more influential than the aroma of the soil that they have been born in.
The Wahabi and Deobandi influence has been steadily growing in Pakistan, and you can judge the hell it has made out of the country by the fact that a mere accusation of blasphemy, no matter how frivolous it is, is enough to permanently destroy anyone’s life.
In Bangladesh too, the generally followed Hanafi and Sufi school of Islam is at odds with the petro dollar Wahabi one. The Bangladesh Jamat e Islami and parties similar to it make it very clear that their sole objective is imposing Sharia in the country and put end to ‘evils’ like genders mixing, western attire, education of women, music, popular arts and above all, implementation of Koranic punishments. More and more Bangladeshi women are wearing black burqas, as it makes them feel ‘safer’. In addition to Hindu massacre, an untold number of secular bloggers, dissidents and even LGBT activists have been butchered in broad daylight, and it has no signs of reducing. Already, it is a strong base for Pakistan’s ISI, a safe haven for separatist outfits like ULFA and NSCN factions, and now rising Daesh base. In the words of a religious scholar in Dhaka University, “After all Bangladesh, a Muslim country, you get oil on a concession price from the Middle Eastern countries and they don’t come free. So, if Saudi Arabia is giving oil, Saudi Arabia would definitely want that some of their ideas to come with oil.”
In the words of Taslima Nasreen (somewhere around 2015):-
“The Islamization of Bangladeshi society began in the 1980s. Vast sums of money from the Middle East have been sent to make Bangladeshi Muslims more radical. Numerous mosques and madrasas (institutions of Islamic religious studies) have been built in the country for indoctrinating young boys and converting them into terrorists.
These mosques and madrasas are breeding grounds for Islamic fundamentalists and terrorists.
In the 1970s and 80s, there weren’t many Bangladeshi girls and women wearing hijabs and burqas. But in recent years, the extremist Wahhabi culture has unfortunately invaded Bangladesh. And it has replaced an innocent form of Islam that was practiced by my grandparents with political Islam, which is really unfortunate.
The Awami League is no more a secular party. It is more like the Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami. The Awami League has a group under the name ulema league, which is comprised of Islamic fundamentalists who approve the killing of free thinkers and liberals.
Members of Jamaat-e-Islami have been joining the Awami League because they share more or less the same ideology. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has not issued any statement so far against the brutal killings of progressive and secular writers. Instead, she warned free thinkers that they must not cross the limit and hurt the religious feelings of people. Her government passed a law which is against freedom of expression. Atheist writers and bloggers are increasingly becoming victims of a dangerous provision of Section 57 of the Information and Communication Technology Act.”
To be fair, Bangladesh Awami League govt has been cracking down on Islamic militants very effectively. But these efforts seem poised to be washed away in the tsunami of Saudi petro dollars.
India is nowhere insulated from this threat brewing in Bangladesh. Billions of dollars pouring from Saudi Arabia has seen radicalization in Muslim youth in large numbers. Terrorist organizations like SIMI and Indian Mujahideen are merely two examples of it.
Hundreds of religious violence incidents in UP, WB, Kerala and of course Kashmir which the liberal media generously funded by petro zakat will always try to cover up bear testimony to the fact that we need to stop this practice of feeding the lion in hope that it won’t eat us. We have seen prayers for Osama bin Laden in Kolkata by thousands, or a midget like Burhan Wani being elevated to a martyr, or a suicide bomber like Ishrat Jehan promoted to a ‘’victim” of the Indian state.
Even after a thousand year constant war, India has not been Islamized. And more importantly, the Islamization of Muslims in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh isn’t complete. There are no moral Islamic police here, imposing dressing norms, whipping unchaperoned women, segregating both genders, carrying out beheadings or amputations of criminals and stoning of adulterers. Petro Islam wants to change all that, it wants to make the likes of Osama bin Laden as the role model of Indian Muslim youth and want them all to be cannon fodder for the likes of Daesh. No Saudi is getting killed in global jihad. It’s the Pakistanis, Afghans, Iraqis, Indians , Syrians etc. that are dying.
We as a society need to grow a spine, and stop the influx of this poison in our country’s veins. Instead of appeasing the ‘’holy men’’, we need to call out their lies, simply by saying that we don’t need filth like Osama bin Laden to be promoted as a role model when we have APJ Abdul Kalam.
Further Reading – http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/wahhabism-in-south-asia/
