Bangladeshi artists under attack from Muslim hardliners

DHAKA, Nov 13, 2008 (AFP)

Rashed Ahmed paints the fiery eyes of a python on to a giant piece of white cloth in the grounds of Dhaka University, as a huge crowd of painters, actors and writers cheer the fine arts student on.

Each of those gathered then has a tilt at drawing their own symbols, leaving a personal mark indicative of the Bangladeshi cultural heritage they say hardline Muslims are determined to destroy.

“The python is the symbol of radical Islamists,” says Ahmed. “It has started devouring our rich culture. Unless we can collectively stop it, the survival of our arts, sculptures, writings and dramas will be at stake.”

Large groups of Bangladeshi artists — including film-makers, singers and writers — began daily protests last month after authorities removed two newly commissioned sculptures of local folk singers erected outside Dhaka’s airport.

A group of Muslim hardliners calling themselves the Anti-Statues Resistance Committee complained that the sculptures were idols, which are strictly forbidden in Islam, and threatened to attack the artwork with power tools.

Buoyed by their removal, hardline Islamists are now demanding that the government erect a minaret honouring Muslim pilgrims at the same airport site.

One of the group’s leaders Mufti Fazlul Haq Amini, a former MP, says that he will “demolish all statues” if his party wins the December 18 parliamentary elections.

This is not the first time extremists have targeted people in the arts in Muslim-majority but officially secular Bangladesh. In 1994, feminist writer Taslima Nasreen fled the country after she was accused of blasphemy.

Another respected writer, Humayun Azad, died in 2004 after he was attacked with machetes at a book fair by suspected Islamists.

According to leading intellectual and English literature professor Sirajul Islam Chowdhury, the removal of the sculptures capped the state’s growing acquiescence with extremist groups.

Last year, a satirical magazine published by the country’s largest media group was closed down and its editor apologised after it printed a cartoon of prophet Mohammed.