Islamist groups, emboldened by the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government, are now demanding that the Ahmadiyya community be declared “non-Muslim”, just as Pakistan did in 1974.
October 27, 2025 / 17:29 IST
Muslim devotees offer special prayers for victims of the 2024 July Uprising, at the Baitul Mukarram National Mosque in Dhaka on July 1, 2025. (AFP photo used for representational purpose)
Bangladesh is witnessing a disturbing return of the same religious intolerance that once tore Pakistan apart. The Pakistani model of weaponising religion, persecuting minorities, and legitimising clerical extremism is finding eager imitators in Dhaka. Islamist groups, emboldened by the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government, are now demanding that the Ahmadiyya community be declared “non-Muslim”, just as Pakistan did in 1974.
A massive rally has been planned for November 15 in Dhaka to press for this demand, with clerics from Pakistan and India’s Deoband seminary among the invitees. For Bangladesh’s small Ahmadiyya population, the message is chilling: a new wave of state-backed religious radicalism may be taking shape under the Yunus regime.
Rising extremism and fear in Bangladesh
Since August 5, 2024, the day Sheikh Hasina’s regime fell, homes, shops and mosques belonging to Ahmadiyyas, Hindus and other minorities have been attacked across Bangladesh. Islamist clerics and street mobs, long waiting for an opportunity, are now openly threatening violence.
“Fanatics and extremists have an upper hand now, and there is a tilt towards a Pakistani mindset of persecuting religious minorities,” said a member of the Ahmadiyya community in Bangladesh, speaking to India Today Digital via Signal for security reasons.
Their fears are justified. In the run-up to the November 15 rally, clerics have issued threats of massacre against the small community, which numbers barely one lakh in Bangladesh.
At a recent gathering, Bangladeshi cleric Mufti Enayetullah Abbasi warned, “August 5 was a revolt. A revolution, led by the ulemas, will soon take place in Bangladesh. There will be no rallies or marches.”
“Wherever the Qadianis [Ahmadiyyas] are found, they will be killed,” Abbasi added, using a term the community considers a slur. “By occupying Parliament, not the streets, the clerics of Bangladesh will get the demand of Ahmadiyyas branded non-Muslims fulfilled.”
Another firebrand cleric, Maulvi Mamunul Haq, leader of Bangladesh’s Khilafat Majlis, threatened the interim government headed by Muhammad Yunus to “declare Ahmadiyyas non-Muslims or see fire of revolt across Bangladesh”.
The Pakistani blueprint
The dangerous parallels with Pakistan are unmistakable. In 1974, Pakistan became the first Muslim-majority nation to constitutionally excommunicate the Ahmadiyyas. Since then, the community there has faced systemic persecution, their mosques have been destroyed, graves desecrated, and believers jailed for performing basic Islamic rituals.
In June this year, the provincial governments of Punjab and Sindh imposed fines of five lakh rupees on Ahmadiyyas for performing qurbani during Eid, even in private. Pakistan’s message was clear: Ahmadiyyas have no place in public or private expressions of faith.
The roots of this discrimination lie in the claim by Ahmadiyya founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, born in Qadian, India in 1889, to be the promised Mahdi. Islamist clerics argue that this contradicts the Islamic belief in the “Finality of Prophethood”. That claim has been cynically exploited by politicians and clerics in Pakistan for decades to rally mobs and silence reformist thought.
The persecution has often turned deadly. In May 2010, more than 90 Ahmadiyyas were massacred in coordinated suicide bombings on two mosques in Lahore. In October this year, a gunman attacked the community’s headquarters in Rabwah, injuring six people.
Bangladesh, now echoing this same intolerance, appears to be following the Pakistani path of religious apartheid.
The November 15 rally: Imported radicalism
The upcoming November 15 rally in Dhaka is being organised by the International Majlis Tahaffuz Khatme Nabuwwat Bangladesh, an umbrella alliance of Khatme Nabuwwat organisations, backed by Hefazat-e-Islam and other Islamist groups.
“If the government ignores this peaceful demand, we will launch a powerful movement to enforce it. Declaring Qadianis as kafir is the common demand of all Muslims,” said Mohiuddin Rabbani, the organisation’s secretary general, according to BDNews24.
The rally is expected to draw tens of thousands of madrasa students, as all qawmi madrasas in Dhaka have been granted a holiday to ensure attendance. Clerics from Pakistan, India, and Saudi Arabia have been invited. From Pakistan, Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, president of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, is expected to attend. From India, Sayed Arshad Madani, Syed Mahmood Madani, and Abul Qasim Nomani, all associated with Darul Uloom Deoband, have reportedly confirmed participation.
Whether this “conference” is separate from the anti-Ahmadiyya rally or a front for it remains unclear. But for Bangladesh’s fragile religious harmony, the symbolism alone is alarming. The same Deobandi-Pakistani ideological axis that institutionalised hate in Pakistan is now setting its sights on Dhaka.
A pattern of intolerance
Opposition to Ahmadiyyas in Bangladesh is not new. The first attacks were recorded in 1963 when their annual Saalana Jalsa was targeted, killing two people. Organised agitation began in the 1980s and intensified in the 1990s after Bangladeshi clerics visited Pakistan.
One of them, Maulavi Obaidul Haq, then the khatib of the national mosque, returned from Pakistan in the 1990s calling for Ahmadiyyas to be declared non-Muslim. That campaign brought Pakistani extremist ideology directly into Bangladesh’s mosques and politics.
The hostility only grew. In 2001, Ahmadiyya publications were banned through a government gazette notification, though it was later overturned. Between 2003 and 2006, clerics like Noor Hussain Noorani and Mahmudul Hasan Mumtazi forced local authorities to rename Ahmadiyya mosques as Quadiani Upashanalaya (Qadiani prayer houses).
As Ahmad Tabshir Choudhury, external affairs secretary of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat Bangladesh, told India Today Digital: “We couldn’t organise our annual jalsa at Panchagarh in February, but held it in Dhaka as advised by the administration. We had a smaller event with 5,000 members, and others connected from six places virtually.”
He added that the number of connecting locations had to be reduced “because of local threats”.
The Yunus government’s silence
The rise in clerical aggression and open threats against minorities has coincided with what observers describe as a permissive attitude from the Muhammad Yunus interim government. Reports suggest that several jailed extremists have been released since August, further emboldening radical groups.
Despite open incitement to violence, including statements such as “Wherever the Qadianis are found, they will be killed” and “the fire of revolt will burn across Bangladesh,” the government has not initiated any major crackdown.
“The rally of November 15 will be a litmus test for the Yunus government,” a Dhaka-based Ahmadiyya member said. “The authorities have done little beyond lip service when it comes to protecting minorities.”
From Islamabad to Dhaka: A dangerous continuum
What is unfolding in Bangladesh is not an isolated domestic crisis. It is the export of Pakistan’s most corrosive ideology, the weaponisation of faith to control politics, silence dissent, and divide society. By importing Pakistan’s religious intolerance, Bangladesh risks undoing the secular foundations on which it was born in 1971.
Pakistan’s ghosts are walking the streets of Dhaka, and their message is clear: if extremism is not contained now, Bangladesh may soon find itself trapped in the same cycle of fanaticism, fear, and bloodshed that has destroyed Pakistan from within.
Moneycontrol World Desk
first published: Oct 27, 2025 05:29 pm
Categories: Ahmadis, Ahmadis And Pakistan, Ahmadiyyat: True Islam, Asia, Bangladesh, Pakistan