Bangladesh News

The ameer of Islami Samaj and six out of the eight of its members arrested in Bandarban on August 7 for propagating Islamist militancy said they have past history with Islami Chhatra Shibir.

The arrestees told law enforcers that a few of them even held leadership positions in Shibir, the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami.

Another Islami Samaj leader Ansar Ali, one of the seven who were arrested on the same night in Jamalpur, had been detained twice before on charge of his ties with banned Islamist militant outfit Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

Different intelligence agencies are currently working on to dig up details about the Islami Samaj and its activists, said sources.

On last Thursday, Islami Samaj Ameer Syed Humayun Kabir was interrogated for several hours at the office of an intelligence agency, said the sources adding that the agency did not yet arrest Kabir.

Col Gulzar Uddin Ahmed, additional director general of the Rapid Action Battalion (Rab), told The Daily Star, “It draws our attention when an organisation distributes leaflets. We are investigating the background of the arrestees and how the activities of the organisation have spread.”

During a conversation with The Daily Star over cell phone, Islami Samaj chief Kabir said he was the president of Jahangirnagar University (JU) unit of Islami Chhatra Shibir in 1983.

However, when The Daily Star approached Prof Tasnim Alam, Jamaat-e-Islami’s publicity secretary, regarding the matter, he could not confirm Kabir’s claim.

On Aug 7, law enforcers arrested eight Islami Samaj members from the premises of District and Sessions Judge’s court in Bandarban and seven others in Jamalpur while the Islami Samaj members were distributing leaflets of the organisation.

In the four-page leaflet, Islami Samaj says the nation and the country is in grave danger and human rights in the country is severely violated as the country is being run by a man-made constitution that allows sovereignty and laws of the humans.

At such a dreadful state of the nation and the country, establishing the sovereignty of Allah and Islam, a comprehensive lifestyle guideline of Allah, in the country can only pull the country out of the crisis and protect rights of the people, the leaflet adds

Democracy and all other man-made laws are curse on humans and “if the man-made system remains in the society and the state, good governance and justice will not be established, discrimination will not be eradicated and people’s basic rights will not be ensured,” the leaflet signed by Islami Samaj Ameer Syed Humayun Kabir reads.

The leaflet also called upon all to revolt against people’s sovereignty and the man-made system and establish sovereignty Allah and Islamic rule in the country.

Humayun Kabir told The Daily Star that he did not join the Jamaat-e-Islami due to a row between his leader Mufti Abdul Jabbar and Golam Azam and the former on May 6 in 1993 formed a splinter group of Jamaat with a number of Shibir leaders and activists of JU.

“We are still members of Jamaat-e-Islami,” claimed Kabir.

Asked whether the organisation provides military training, Kabir said, “We are not providing any military training. After establishing Islamic rules, we will provide military training as Islam permits it to protect an Islamic country.”

The central office of Islami Samaj is located at Kabir’s birthplace at Kushiara village of Daudkandi upazila of Comilla while its branch office is at Paltan in the capital.