AL to float its 'Islamic wing'

The ruling Awami League is considering floating a new front, which will be the party's religious wing with representatives from Islamic scholars and thinkers.

Though some Islamic organisations at times claimed their allegiance to the AL, the party is seriously thinking of giving a full-fledged shape to its Islamic front so that people supporting Islam as a religion and the AL as a pro-liberation party can come under one umbrella.

AL Religious Affairs Secretary Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah put forward a proposal to float the new organisation at a party secretarial meeting at the party president's Dhanmondi office yesterday.

Meeting sources said some AL leaders backed Abdullah's proposal.

Chaired by AL General Secretary Obaidul Quader, the meeting decided not to give AL membership to anyone from other political parties without permission from the party high command. Some AL leaders demanded the party immediately expel the infiltrators, particularly those who joined the ruling party in the last couple of years.

The decision was taken after some grassroots AL leaders raised their voice against infiltration from the BNP-Jamaat at a special extended meeting on Saturday. They alleged that some AL lawmakers were helping BNP-Jamaat men to strengthen their own cliques.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, also the AL chief, asked all not to allow anyone from the BNP and Jamaat in the party and warned that organisational actions would be taken against the MPs involved in such activities.

Speaking at yesterday's meeting, Quader asked AL leaders to stay alert to communal forces so that they couldn't intrude into the party during the ongoing drive to collect members, which started on Saturday.

Talking to the Daily Star, Abdullah said some organisations like the Olama League were operating without the AL's consent.

“The Olama League has many factions and many of its activities go against the Awami League's ideologies. So I've put forward a proposal to float a separate wing of the party comprising Islamic scholars and thinkers [Ulema],” he said, adding that the party didn't want any organisations like the Olama League to continue its activities.

The Olama League came up with some demands which went against the AL's declared ideologies of democracy and secularism and also against the government's major policies and decisions.

Over the last two years, a faction of the Olama League accused the administration of “favouring the Hindus” and demanded the government revoke the minimum marriageable age for girls, make a law with a provision of death penalty for demeaning Islam, ban the Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission and take all the Indian TV channels in Bangladesh off air.

It also raised voice demanding cancellation of “anti-Islamic” education policy and confiscation of textbooks containing write-ups of “anti-Islamic and atheist” writers.

AL sources said some leaders at the meeting questioned the police raid on the BNP chairperson's Gulshan office on Saturday and the LGRD ministry's orders suspending elected city mayors. The AL leaders said such activities were damaging the government's image. 

A central leader told the meeting that the LGRD ministry suspended mayors, but the higher court stayed those suspension orders. “Then why was the government doing this?” a secretarial member of the AL quoted the central leader as saying.

Some recent government decisions indicated a lack of coordination between the party and the government, the AL leader added.

About the police raid on Khaleda Zia's office, the AL general secretary said he and many others in the government were not aware of the move.