Jamaat's rise and the risks ahead for Dhaka

From being principal collaborators in Pakistan's genocide during the Liberation Struggle of 1971, through periods of proscription and electoral exclusion, the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh (JeI-BD) has come a long way. It has now emerged as the second-largest party in the Jatiya Sangsad (Parliament), winning 68 of the 297 seats declared and securing a 32% vote share in the February 12 Bangladesh elections. Another nine seats went to its alliance partners, taking the total to 77. The Jamaat’s strongest independent electoral showing before this was in 1991, when it won 18 seats and 12.2% of the vote. 

Given JeI-BD’s sanguinary history, it is not surprising that its electoral prominence should provoke a measure of alarm. Indeed, the record of the 18 months between the collapse of the Sheikh Hasina government and the national elections is chilling. The JeI and its students' wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS), along with other Islamist extremist organisations — including Ahle Hadis Andolan Bangladesh (AHAB), Bangladesh Khelafat Majlis (BKM), Hefazat-e-Islam (HeI) and Islami Andolan Bangladesh (IAB) — essentially hijacked the students' 'revolution' and, even after Hasina’s flight, continued violent campaigns under the interim government. Their attacks particularly targeted minorities and individuals perceived to be aligned with the former regime, and extended as well to ideological rivals.

The JeI, moreover, anticipating a victory in the elections, sought to create a unified platform for all Islamist parties even as it launched a campaign of violent clashes with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). JeI and BNP cadres fought continuous street battles, and partial data indicates that at least 276 JeI and BNP cadres were injured in such confrontations, and another 40 in clashes between ICS and the student organisation affiliated with BNP, Jatiotabadi Chatra Dal (JCD), in 2025. A further 128 cadres were injured in such clashes in 2026 (up to February 12). 

It is important to recognise that the resurgence of the JeI-ICS complex, as well as other Islamist extremist formations in the country, received significant encouragement from Mohammad Yunus’ interim government. First, the ban on the JeI imposed by the Hasina government was lifted, and shortly thereafter, the Election Commission reinstated JeI's registration as a political party. Leaders and cadres in jail were released, including many convicted for heinous crimes, along with other similar offenders from various Islamist formations. Among those released was ATM Azharul Islam, who had been on death row for 14 years in a 1971 crimes-against-humanity case. He was abruptly 'acquitted' on May 27, 2025, and shortly thereafter appointed as the JeI’s Naib-e-Amir.

The last development is symbolic of the JeI’s sustained duplicity. The JeI's Ameer Shafiqur Rahman issued a somewhat ambivalent apology to anyone who “has ever been hurt by his party since 1947”, but those guilty of the 1971 genocide continue to hold prominent positions in the organisation. It is useful to recall that JeI’s history is drenched in blood from the very moment of the country’s birth pangs in 1971. At least nine top leaders of the JeI were convicted by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) for atrocities committed during the 1971 Liberation War, and at least five were executed. 

In another development symbolising the Yunus regime's benevolence towards JeI extremists, on March 12, 2025, convicted war criminal and former JeI leader Abul Kalam Azad, alias Bachchu Razakar, who had been on the run since the ICT sentenced him to death, was allowed to return to Dhaka from Pakistan. 

It is important to understand the role of the ecosystem created by the interim government, within which JeI-ICS and other Islamist formations thrived. Islamist radicals were given a free hand by the Yunus government after August 2024. The JeI and its allies enjoyed exceptional impunity. Further, at least 700 inmates, including convicted Islamist militants, fled from jail under the interim government — among them 70 Islamist extremists and death row convicts. Worse, 174 known criminals, including 11 top-listed offenders, gangsters and extremist group leaders, were given bail. These included Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) ‘chief’ Jashimuddin Rahmani; Abdus Salam Pintu (a Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami Bangladesh aide); and Abdullahil Aman Azmi and Ahmad Bin Quasem (JeI).

While the JeI has always maintained a formal distance from Islamist terrorist formations, it is important to emphasise that investigations in Bangladesh have reported strong recruitment overlaps between JeI-ICS networks and various jihadi groups, prominently including the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), the group responsible for the series of 469 bombings across 64 districts of the country in 2005, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and its offshoot, Neo-JMB, as well as Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B), and the ABT. Significant proportions of the leadership and cadres of these organisations come from the JeI-ICS recruitment pipeline.

Any sustained resurgence of these groups under a regime in Dhaka that seeks to accommodate Islamist extremism would constitute a significant security threat to both Bangladesh and India. During the 2005-2010 period, HuJI-B was involved in a series of joint terrorist strikes across India. The JMB and Neo-JMB have had a long presence in the Northeast, West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand, maintaining safe houses and bomb-making units (recall the Burdwan blast of 2014). However, Hasina’s 'zero tolerance for terrorism' policy and India’s extensive crackdown on these groups dramatically reduced the risks. Nevertheless, any ideological normalisation of JeI’s influence would lower barriers to recruitment into such militant formations.

It is necessary, however, to recognise a range of mitigating factors. While JeI’s potential for subversion — directly and through loosely affiliated groups — cannot be ignored, it is worth noting that both Prime Minister Tarique Rahman and the JeI leadership have made some gestures of reconciliation in the days following the election results. Rahman has also spoken of a ‘reset’ in relations with India. The JeI’s engagement in the democratic process, as the largest bloc in Opposition, may temper ideological rigidity, particularly as the vote itself demonstrated a wider rejection of extremism and violence. It is also important to recall that the JeI failed spectacularly in its efforts to stitch together a unified platform of Islamist parties before the elections, and the numbers it has secured in Parliament are at least partly a consequence of the vacuum created by the ban on the participation of the Awami League. Economic imperatives may also prove to be a stabilising force, as the country’s export-oriented economy has little tolerance for domestic disruption.

(The writer is the Executive Director of the Institute for Conflict Management and South Asia Terrorism Portal)