Jihadist mobs demolished four shrines or mazars and burned down several houses in Cumillaโs Homna Upazila on Thursday for a Facebook post by a youth, which allegedly defamed Prophet Muhammad.
Hours before the coordinated attacks, on Wednesday afternoon, police arrested Mohsin, the son of a custodian of one of the shrines, after the radical Muslims of Asadpur and nearby villages staged a demonstration against the Facebook post.
In the evening, a leader of the Bangladesh Islami Jubo Sena filed a case against him, and the police produced him in a court on Thursday.
Despite his arrest, local Touhidi Janata created a mob using loudspeakers on Thursday morning and attacked Mohsin’s house. Then they demolished the Kafil Uddin Shah Shrine, managed by Mohsinโs father Alek Shah, and torched three houses.
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Later on, the mob attacked and vandalised shrines in three separate locations in the same village: the shrines of Abdu Shah, Kalai (Kanu) Shah and Hawali Shah. A woman named Hawa Begum runs the Hawali Shah shrine. However, no one is buried there. The tomb-like structure in that house was set on fire.
Members of the Bangladesh Army, police and Fire Service intervened after the mobs left the area.
In the videos and photos that surfaced on social media, police were seen witnessing the anarchy as onlookers, as was seen in the recent attack in Rajbari, where the Touhidi Janata dug out the corpse of a Sufi Pir, Nural Pagla, and burned it on the highway. Moreover, over 100 people were injured, and a disciple was killed in the attack.
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Police have arrested a few people but taken no action against the instigators, who are local leaders of the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami.
Since the Jamaat-led interim government took office last year, radical Islamists under the banner of Touhidi Janata have destroyed over 120 Sufi shrines, which they consider anti-Islamic.
Researchers say mob attacks against Sufi shrines started in the late 1980s and increased in the 2001-06 period when militant group JMB killed dozens of Pirs and Khadems (custodians). The killings came down after the Awami League came to power.
Meanwhile, Taliban supporter and mazar-hater Mamunul Haque, a top Hefazat leader and jihadist ally of the Yunus regime who coordinated the police massacre and demolition of statues across Bangladesh last year, is visiting Afghanistan along with six other leaders of Bangladesh Khelafat Majlish. This Islamist party eyes Shariah law in Bangladesh and supports collecting the Jizya tax from the minorities.
Mamunul’s father Allama Azizul Haque is one of the founders of the banned militant group Harkatul Jihad al-Islami (HuJI-B). He also runs Jamiya Rahmania Arabia in Mohammadpur, which has been a den of jihadists for many years.
He is also linked to al-Qaeda cleric Jasimuddin Rahmani and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba leader Mufti Harun Izhar, both of whom are close aides of the Yunus regime and Jamaat-e-Islami
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