THE GUNFIRE on the Shia mosque in a remote village in Bogra district on Thursday killing the Muazzen and injuring three others including the Imam is the latest such attack on religious persons bringing yet another surprise to the people to wonder why bloody attacks are on rise on sensitive targets. Earlier another Iman of a Shia mosque was seriously injured in an attack on a mosque in Dinajpur and a priest narrowly escaped from slaughter in Pabna. Moreover, the attack on Shi-ite procession in the city and the casualties shows the unleashing of targeted killings to provoke sectarian fights in the country to destroy century old intra-religious harmony and social peace. We have earlier condemned such attacks and condemning it again to say that enemies of the country and also our religion Islam are at work to derail the nation and destabilize its development taking advantage of the present political chaos and disunity among political forces. Such attacks are very much part of earlier killing of two foreign nationals, in addition to fatally injuring another Italian physicians in Dinajpur district in the past week. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for most of those attacks but it is not clear why they are out to hit Bangladesh despite being a predominantly Muslim nation. The Shia-Sunni fights in Iraq, Syria and Yemen and at some other places and the rise of Islamic State is an ominous sign to use religion as an emotional factor to provoke people to join the fight. The spread of IS militancy in Bangladesh, although the government does not want to concede to it, is increasingly making the nation victims of an unwilling fights. We are not interested to join in debate whether or not the IS extremists are present in the country; what matters the most at this moment is to build the unity to defeat extremism – be it from within or outside. Bangladesh never saw killing in mosques but such killing has started like those in Pakistan and in the Gulf states. We never saw attempt on an innocent priest but it had occurred. The killings of foreigners and the latest killing of a Shi-ite cleric were unheard of in this country in the past. As it appears police are swimming in a pool of clueless killings but mysteries are not breaking apart. In many cases police are targeting wrong persons to claim progress in investigation and taking them on remand. The highly politicized police as they lack high level of professionalism are no match to such terrorists attacks and we believe that the unity of the nation is all the more important at the moment to deny any vulnerability to our enemies.We can’t let our country to become battleground to allow the terrorists to make us fool and pay heavily for disunity in our political front.
