since so many need their brains defogged. I hate to append this good piece of clear writing to a thread whose title continues to make fun at a serious topic.
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Re: The Next Islamist Revolution?
Shabbir A. Bashar, PhD. San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
I read with interest Eliza Griswold's disturbing yet detailed report published in the New York Times Magazine of January 23rd, 2005, about Bangladesh essentially turning into a breeding ground of religious extremists. I have also read the short responses to it by Iftekhar Chowdhury, the Bangladesh Permanent Representative to the UN, and Zahirul Haq, the Director General of the Foreign Ministry External Publicity Wing as quoted in your newspaper on January 26th, 2005.
As a Bangladeshi my natural inclination is to be loyal to my country and to defend it with if nothing else but all my heart especially at a time when there is so much blatant hypocrisy and deliberate misrepresentation of developing (particularly Islamic) nations by the western media. Yet, there are plenty of cases of corruption (Enron and Haliburton in the US), nepotism (speeding up immigration cases of nannies in US and UK by respective cabinet level officers/candidates), abuses of human rights (Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons) and pure stupidity (Britain's Prince Harry dressed up as a Nazi at a party) even in the West.
But, can we afford to take such a dismissive view of everything in life? Take for instance the dramatic picture of a bare human standing in a pool of bovine blood in Dhaka during Eid and published in the BBC news website taken by Roland Buerk, their resident correspondent in Bangladesh. It is part of series of 12 rather well composed photographs titled "Fighting Corruption at Eid Festival Cattle Slaughter" depicting lavishly dressed folks at the prayer, beggars on the street, RAB trying to keep bribery at the market at bay, a mullah's face dotted with animal blood, people haggling over cattle worth many times their monthly income etc. Are they designed to portray Bangladeshis as barbaric, unhygienic, poverty stricken, corrupt yet zealous Muslims trying to live beyond their means? I doubt it very much. Some viewers will see Bangladesh as a nation striving to play a rather delicate balancing act given all the realities yet others will be less enthused by our ways.
It is very easy for our man in the UN to announce Ms. Griswold's prolific report with specific allegations - most of which are also corroborated and were exposed initially by some of the most credible Bangladeshi media organisations - as "one sided, baseless and politically motivated". But as most expatriates who often find themselves on the front line of defending Bangladesh's "image"
abroad, I can say that such pithy remarks do little to consolidate the nation's credibility. On the contrary, it gives fodder to our enemies and embarrasses our well wishers. One sided and politically motivated the report may be, and it doesn't take a genius to name three obvious, benefactors: the Awami League, India and pro-Zionist lobbies in Washington and elsewhere.
Taking a logical view on this, who has the better perspective: the reporter who travelled to the remote village to investigate or Mr.
Haq, the civil servant in Dhaka? Given that only recently the local press has again reported on Bangla Bhai's attempted misdeeds, what makes the director general at the foreign ministry think the NY Times report is "humorous"? Alas, I am sadly reminded of the collusion and incorrigibility of the top civil servants as exemplified by the disappearance of thousands of government owned vehicles ear-marked for donor aided development projects in remote areas which turned up in the personal use of the friends and family of these very officials. Furthermore, when the anti-corruption commission made an issue out of these disappearances, it seemed the civil service did its very best to not only discredit, but also cripple the very commission. Do we not see a pattern of behaviour of shooting the messenger by the civil service? Indeed Mr. Haq insults the intelligence of the readers in his attempt to discredit Ms Griswold's report when he says, "Since there is a question mark in the headline, it suggests the author herself is not clear and confident about the subject matter."
What if the NYT Magazine report is right and Bangladesh really is on a slippery slope to becoming the next den of anarchists and parasites? Then aren't some of the very conditions for these irritants to prevail: (a) a weak, unstable and unwieldy centralised government without any political vision; (b) near collapse of law and order situation; (c) high unemployment and disenfranchised youth; (d) severe lack of infrastructure and development; (e) rampant corruption in the civil administration; (f) politicisation of educational and commercial institutions; (g) lack of industrialisation and excessive red tape for entrepreneurship, to name but a few already in place in Bangladesh?
Now, fixing any one of these is a gigantic task in itself that requires generations worth of investment in human and monetary capital. While the betel-leaf-chewing-fatwa- giving Muftis in parliament are proud to become easy baits for the likes of Ms Griswold to make sensational stories out of, it is far more important for the stake holders in Bangladesh to realise that it is a wake up call. It is time to change our national attitude and first accept that we have problems and then to face them head on. It is time to come clean and present our side of the story in all its troubling reality to the world instead of getting consumed by past glories and being touchy about every criticism.
Only by coming clean can we circumvent any embarrassment, intentional or otherwise, caused by these disturbing reports. Many of our Asian neighbours have transformed themselves over the past few decades through strong visionary leaderships. It is time for national soul searching.
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