What many in Bangladesh’s elite circles prefer to forget is that while the Awami League perfected the politics of thuggery, it was the Shahbagh movement that transformed those thugs into full-fledged fascists.

The logic at Shahbagh was brutally simple: because the majority of Bangladeshis are “too religious,” “too anti–Liberation spirit,” or “too provincial in their Bengaliness,” the country does not deserve democracy or the rule of law.

In this view, democracy and due process are luxuries that Bangladesh cannot afford if it wishes to retain its secular veneer.

This narrative–popular among the media, academia, civil society, and much of the country’s establishment paved the way for Sheikh Hasina to seize and consolidate authoritarian power.

Shahbagh’s brand of secular absolutism allowed her to capture the judiciary and turn it into an instrument of elimination for political rivals. The International Crimes Tribunal became the most visible tool of this transformation.

With the judiciary neutralized, Hasina abandoned the very foundation of democracy: free and fair elections. What emerged was a one-woman state–an autocracy cheered on by a sizable portion of the population convinced that authoritarianism was the price of “secularism.”

The country’s largest media houses–Prothom Alo and The Daily Star–played their part, whitewashing massacres as collateral damage in a struggle against “Islamists.”

The list of atrocities is long: the killings of protesters against the kangaroo verdict against Sayeedi in February 2013, the Shapla massacre in May 2013, the systematic attacks on BNP-Jamaat activists in 2013 and 2015, and the killings of anti-Modi demonstrators in 2021.

Each atrocity was rebranded as a “counterterror” campaign.

Global conditions made Hasina’s job easier. The post-9/11 “war on terror” logic meant that anything labeled Islamist could be crushed with impunity. Shahbagh provided the ideological cover; Hasina provided the iron fist.

Together, they dismantled the rule of law in Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, BNP’s repeated efforts to project itself as secular and Jamaat’s attempts to align with democratic procedures were both erased under the same convenient label: Islamist.

This label stripped them of even the most basic human rights.

New political trap

Today, Bangladesh is left with two corrosive forces: Shahbagh’s authoritarian secular zeal and Jamaat’s instrumentalization of Islam.

Both, in their own way, have hollowed out the democratic promise of the July Revolution. The question now is whether Bangladeshis will continue to trade freedom for false binaries–or whether a genuine democratic alternative can emerge before it is too late.

When BUET student Abrar Fahad was bludgeoned to death by Awami League student activists, his killers did not behave like criminals. They stayed on campus, coordinated openly with the police, even spoke to journalists.

In their minds, they had committed no crime. Their justification was simple, almost banal: Abrar was “Shibir,” a member of Jamaat’s student wing. Eliminating him was, they believed, a patriotic duty.

That moral immunity was a gift of Shahbagh. The movement’s success lay not in ending impunity but in normalizing it–convincing a generation that silencing opponents could be justified in the name of secularism.

Now, with Sheikh Hasina forced into exile in India after the July Revolution, Shahbagh is in search of a new host. Its overtures, alarmingly, are directed at BNP.

The strategy is familiar: label NCP as “Islamist,” offer BNP a blank check, and position themselves as a domesticated opposition within BNP’s orbit–so long as BNP protects Shahbagh’s cultural turf.

The sales pitch is seductive: Shahbagh claims it kept Hasina in power for fifteen years and can do the same for BNP. But the real cost would be devastating. BNP risks becoming a mirror image of Awami League–unpopular, authoritarian, and unable to ensure a peaceful transfer of power.

That would set the stage for yet another popular uprising.

Jamaat, meanwhile, is playing its own cynical game. By framing any prospective opposition alliance as “Islamist,” it fuels the very Islamist–secularist binary that Shahbagh thrives on.

In effect, Jamaat is helping build the scaffolding for its own marginalization–and dragging BNP further into Shahbagh’s embrace.

Bangladesh is clearly undergoing a profound political realignment. Yesterday’s adversaries are becoming allies; yesterday’s allies are turning into rivals.

But if this realignment is reduced once again to the tired binaries of secularists versus Islamists, it will squander the possibilities opened up by the July Revolution.

BNP must resist the temptation to let Shahbagh colonize it. And Jamaat must abandon the opportunistic instrumentalization of Islam. Anything less risks replaying the past decade in a darker, bloodier loop.

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Md Ashraf Aziz Ishrak Fahim graduated in Contemporary Islamic Studies from Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar. Reach him at [email protected]