Humayun Kabir

Of all sectarian, sub-sectarian, and maslaki (denominational groups) offshoots of Islam in South Asia, the Ahmadiyya community has been historically subject to ‘othering’ by all mainstream Muslims who are strongly antithetical to the Ahmadis’ belief in the prophethood of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908) after Muhammad. What is distinctive in the process of ‘othering’, as delineated in this chapter, is that earlier the nature of resistance against the Ahmadiyya community was limited to theological debates, reform and preaching activities, and less violent, but now it turns to be increasingly intolerant, hostile, and violent. This chapter captures the shift from the Bengali Deobandis’ reformist and preaching activities that began to construct the Ahmadiyya community as a religiously ‘other’ in Brahmanbaria, which is where the country’s first Ahmadiyya Jamaat was established in 1912, to the rise of more politically-informed violent persecution of Ahmadiyya community in the country since the 1980s, the beginning of de-secularisation of the Bangladeshi state. The ‘grassrootisation’ of the hatred campaign against and persecution of Ahmadiyya community that tend to undermine the inclusive and syncretised religious tradition in Bangladesh is the result of the rise of political Islamic forces and their gradual strength in popularising the demands for the sanctity of Islam (Sunni Islam), and nexus between Islamists and mainstream liberal-democratic forces. A heightened persecution of Ahmadiyya community is bound to happen if the state fails to demarcate the boundary between religion and politics and the liberal-democratic forces continue to maintain an ally with the Islamists and bow to their popular Islamic demands on the basis of majoritarian religious theory.

The proliferation of the Deobandi model of religious school has been taken for granted in South Asia, although how its pedagogic method and theological stances are being replicated in Bangladesh has received little academic attention. This paper delves into the replication of the Deobandi model of religious schooling in Bangladesh by describing the replication process in a local Quomi madrasa, which received strong patronage from Deoband at the height of the Islamic revivalist-reformist movements in South Asia. This study reveals that localized versions of Deobandi madrasas in Bangladesh are concerned with the ‘other’ Muslims, that is, Muslims with doctrinal views differing from the Deobandi school of thought. The contestation between the Deobandi interpretation of Islam and the other interpretive Islamic groups within the circle of madrasas suggests that Muslim identity is a matter of contention, with differing points of view from one type of madrasa to another and from one group of ulama to another.

India’s Muslim community, which accounts for 14.4 percent of India’s vast population and is thus the largest of all religious minorities, has been the subject of considerable development discourse as Muslims have the lowest level of educational attainment and standard of living among socio-religious groups in the country. This study addresses the meaning of education and career opportunities for Muslim youths in relation to their educational credentials and social position in the hierarchy of Muslim class and caste groups, with particular reference to a community in Uttar Pradesh. The author contends that the career opportunities, possibilities, and strategies of Muslim youths in Indian society depend on multiple factors: social hierarchy, opportunities to utilize economic resources, social networks, cultural capital, and the wider structural disparities within which the Muslims are situated and wherein they question the value of higher education in gaining them admission to socially recognized and established employment sectors.