From the overthrow of Sheikh Hasina’s government in August 2024 through November 30, 2025, Bangladesh saw 2,673 attacks on minorities, including indigenous peoples, according to local media reports. The violence has continued this month with the lynchings of Hindu youths.
On December 18, a Hindu man (Dipu Chandra Das) was beaten, hanged from a tree, and set on fire in Mymensingh district. A colleague accused him of making derogatory remarks about Islam at an event hosted by the factory where he was employed.
These “blasphemy” allegations rapidly spread from within the factory to the surrounding areas. A Muslim mob formed and demanded that Das be handed over to them. Videos are circulating on social media that show the police giving Das over to the mob, who then attacked him while chanting Islamic slogans such as “Allahu Akbar.”
Days after this lynching of Das, another Hindu man was beaten to death by a Muslim mob. The death of 29-year-old Amrit Mondal further raised concerns over the safety of minorities in Muslim-dominated Bangladesh.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to resign on August 5, 2024, and subsequently fled the country after weeks of student protests (which were later hijacked by Islamists). Three days after Hasina’s resignation, Muhammed Yunus formed an interim government. Bangladesh has since witnessed growing violence targeting religious minority communities as well as increased lawlessness, crime rates, and violations against press freedom. According to social media sources, between December 1 and December 24, at least a dozen Hindu citizens of Bangladesh were murdered.
Islamist groups such as Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) have been primarily responsible for the recent bout of political and religious violence in the country.
From August 2024 to September 2025, 281 killings and 7,698 injuries in political clashes occurred, according to local media. 12,231 political activists were arrested in February 2025. To date, 519,000 people have been implicated in 1,586 politically motivated cases.
2,485 acts of violence were reported against religious and ethnic minorities. 20,691 crimes were committed against children and women.
About 2,200 prisoners escaped from jails during the July-August uprising. Out of these it is estimated that about 700 (including nine militants and 60 others on death row or life sentence given convicts) remain at large. Illegal arms were also provided for Islamists, who now have much more freedom to operate both within and outside of Bangladesh.
From August 2024 onwards, more than 1,120 journalists have been targeted through arrests, intimidation, assault and legal harassment. Even the media outlet Prothom Alo, which supported the July-August 2024 uprising, was torched by Islamists. Several buildings, such as that hosting the media outlet Daily Star, were set on fire and vandalized on December 19. Firefighters brought the blaze under control and rescued 27 employees from the smoldering building.
“For the first time in the newspaper’s history, the publication had to be halted,” consulting editor Kamal Ahmed told AFP. At the Prothom Alo, executive editor Sajjad Sharif said he was “deeply saddened” that the newspaper could not be published due to vandalism and arson.
In addition, under the interim government, there have been 40 extrajudicial killings, including 14 in custody, due to torture.
Meanwhile, repressive laws such as the Anti-Terrorism Act and the Cyber-Security Act have been increasingly used: A total of 60 cases have been filed and 45 people arrested under these draconian acts.
Women are especially vulnerable during recent bouts of religious and political violence. Post-August 2024, Bangladesh has witnessed a concerning rise in attacks on female public figures, restrictions on women’s mobility, and gender-based violence, writes academic researcher Arunima Kishore Das:
Since the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s regime in August 2024, gender-based violence has risen with increased reports of harassment, assault, and rape. Radical Islamists have attempted to exploit the political unrest and weaponized religious rhetoric to justify gender-based violence, suppressing women’s participation in sports, entertainment, and public life.
The roots of the current crisis date back to the country’s inception in 1971, when Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) achieved independence from West Pakistan. The western and eastern portions of Pakistan had distinct linguistic and ethnic identities.
On March 25, 1971, the government of West Pakistan launched a devastating ten-month campaign, which included mass murder, rape, and other atrocities against the Bengali and Hindu residents of East Pakistan (today’s Bangladesh).
The campaign left an estimated three million ethnic Bengalis dead and more than ten million displaced. The Hindu minority bore the brunt of the violence as they were targeted by the Pakistani military and its local Islamist collaborators, such as Jamaat-e-Islami, in a manner that constituted genocide.
According to the organization World Without Genocide:
Scholars have documented the systematic nature of the genocide against Bengali people. Pakistan’s elite expressed superiority and disgust towards Bengalis. Military commanders intended to crush Bengali spirit and identity. The Pakistani army compiled lists of targets, focusing on intellectuals and nationalist leaders.
Rape was a primary weapon of genocide. Nearly 250,000 women and girls were raped, many of whom were abducted and raped repeatedly in army-run rape camps.
In December 1971, India forced a Pakistani surrender and ended the genocide.
Hasina’s Awami League (AL) Party in 2010 initiated an International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) to try genocide perpetrators. Pakistani perpetrators who live abroad are outside the reach of the court, so the tribunal focused on Bangladeshi collaborators, who did everything from propaganda efforts to identifying targets and participating in killing and other atrocities.
The conflict between the Islamists of Bangladesh and the anti-Islamists or supporters of secularism is ongoing today.
In his testimony before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on April 30, 2015, Jay Kansara, the then Director of Government Relations of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), said:
Although the Bangladeshi independence movement had emerged from the culmination of several longstanding factors, including linguistic, cultural, economic, and political repression by West Pakistan, at its core it represented an ideological contest between Islamism, perpetuated by Islamabad, and secularism, representing the larger Bengali movement.
That battle continued in the post-independence period due to the assassination of the Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founder of Bangladesh, by military officers. Subsequent coups and dictator regimes in Bangladesh have fostered the growth of radical Islam in state affairs. As Islam began to play a greater role in public life and the Constitution was amended multiple times to elevate the status of Islam and Muslims above other religions, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Ahmadiyyas, and atheists were effectively institutionalized as second-class citizens.
The process of Islamization and religious repression accelerated with the 2001 election of the BNP [Bangladesh Nationalist Party] and its Islamist allies, including Jamaat-e-Islami. During the five-year rule of the BNP-led coalition beginning in 2001, Bangladesh witnessed the increased role of Islam in politics and an explosion of madrasas (Islamic seminaries) teaching the same fundamentalist version of Islam that inspired the Taliban.
Moreover, activity by Muslim militants and radical organizations, such as Harakat-ul Jihad Islami (HUJI), a State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), significantly increased during the BNP regime. Yunus’s interim government has empowered these radical Islamist forces, revoking the ban on Jamaat-e-Islami.
Jamaat-e-Islami is already the most powerful Islamist group in the country as it is the ideological center and recruiting base for several terrorist groups, including Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, which has carried out several high-profile regional bombings.
Jamaat-e-Islami also enjoys extensive links to the wider terrorist network operating in South Asia and has also been intimately involved in facilitating terrorist activities outside of Bangladesh.
Another Islamist organization, Hefazat-e-Islam, gained notoriety in 2013 after calling for the prosecution and execution of “atheist bloggers,” as part of its 13-point Islamist agenda. The charter included, in part, “banning women from the work force by ending ‘free mixing’ of the sexes, a harsh new blasphemy law similar to Pakistan’s, the declaration of the beleaguered Ahmadi sect as non-Muslim, and an end to ‘candle lighting in the name of personal freedom and free speech.’” Moreover, Hefazat’s agenda demanded the removal of sculptures, a “special protection” for Islam, and the reinstatement of references to Allah in the constitution. Hefazat derives its strength from its control over many of the country’s madrassas (Islamic schools).
Islamist parties and groups, including Hefazat, have increased their visibility since Hasina’s ouster last year. On May 3, nearly 20,000 supporters of Hefazat-e-Islam rallied in the streets of Bangladesh’s capital to protest proposed government reforms. The protesters, who claimed that “men and women can never be equal,” were opposing reforms recommended by the country’s Women’s Affairs Reform Commission. At the rally, Hefazat-e-Islam demanded an end to all activities they deem “anti-Islamic,” including gender equality. The group has lobbied to disband the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission and pledged to organize rallies across the nation on May 23 if their demands were not met.
For many years, several secular or atheist bloggers were attacked by Islamist groups such as Hefazat, Islami Chhatra Shibir, and Ansarullah Bangla Team. Many other bloggers critical of growing Islamic radicalism have gone into hiding after they received death threats from Islamists. Those Islamist organizations, which pursue a shared religio-political goal of creating an Islamic theocratic state, have increasingly gained ground in Bangladesh under Yunus’ regime.
The expanding threat of ISIS (Islamic State) and al-Qaeda activities in Bangladesh also raises concerns for international security. The Islamic State’s Al-Naba magazine, for instance, called for an Islamic revival in Bangladesh, urging the youth to reject secularism.
Meanwhile, in August 2024, Yunus’ regime released Jashimuddin Rahmani, the leader of the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), an al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group. Rahmani, who was imprisoned for the murder of blogger Rajib Haider and faced additional charges under Bangladesh’s anti-terrorism laws, was freed on parole. ABT was banned in Bangladesh in 2015 during Hasina’s administration, but it was later rebranded as Ansar al-Islam, which was later banned in 2017. Rahmani’s release raises concerns for India as ABT has been trying to strengthen its presence through sleeper cells, with several affiliated terrorists previously arrested in India.
Since Islamist organizations, such as Jamaat-e-Islami, share a similar ideology with ISIS and a common agenda of creating an Islamic state, a formal collaboration of those organizations would be catastrophic for this nation of 175 million, as well as the entire South Asia region. Religious minorities, women, and supporters of secularism remain in critical danger as long as Jamaat-e-Islami and other Islamist groups can operate with impunity.
Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, should thus be designated by the US government as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” because their activities threaten both American and international security and economic interests.
As Kansara noted in 2015 during his testimony at the U.S. House:
The U.S. should strongly encourage the Government of Bangladesh to declare Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Chhatra Shibir illegal organizations, based on their longstanding involvement in terrorist activities and violence against religious minorities, and impose complete bans on their activities.
The U.S. should condition all future economic and military aid to Bangladesh only after robust monitoring by the State Department and Congress indicates improved conditions for religious and ethnic minorities. The U.S. should encourage Bangladesh to induct more religious minority community members in government administrative and military services, particularly at the officer level, as a specific condition for aid.
Christmas has come and gone, but the gift that keeps on giving lasts all year.
Right now, you can get 74% off PJ Media VIP with the code MERRY74—and yes, that same deal works if you want to give VIP as a gift to someone who appreciates sharp commentary, fearless reporting, and a little common sense in a world that’s running low on it.
PJ Media VIP gives you exclusive articles, podcasts, and community access you won’t find anywhere else—and your support helps keep independent conservative voices strong heading into the new year.
This special Christmas offer runs through New Year’s Day, so don’t wait.
Use code MERRY74 and save 74% today—for yourself or someone else.
