Bangladesh’s post-uprising political landscape has been defined by transition (Sazzad Hossain/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The rise of coercive Islamist mobilisation in Bangladesh

A loosely organised religious movement presents the country with challenges to its transition that go well beyond elections.

Saqlain Rizve

15 January 20264 min read

For nearly 16 years, Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League governed Bangladesh through an authoritarian model combining elections, a powerful security apparatus, and a state-endorsed narrative of secular Bengali nationalism. Islamist parties and religious networks were suppressed, co-opted, or fragmented. Public religiosity was tolerated, but political Islam outside state control was tightly managed. While this limited overt confrontation, it did not erase religious politics; it pushed it into informal, depoliticised spaces. When the system collapsed in August 2024 with Hasina’s ouster, it exposed not only a political vacuum but also a crisis of moral authority.

Bangladesh’s post-uprising political landscape has subsequently been defined by transition: from authoritarian rule to an interim government and from enforced stability to contested pluralism. Beneath these shifts lies a deeper struggle — less about elections and more about authority, legitimacy, and who defines moral order. The collapse of long-standing political control has opened space for actors claiming moral authority rather than electoral mandate.

Into this vacuum emerged Tawhidi Janata — a loosely defined Islamist mobilisation that invokes religious duty to influence public life. It is not a formal organisation but a label under which disparate actors converge, intervening in public spaces, policing behaviour, disrupting cultural activities, and targeting women-centric events. Its power lies in ambiguity: without leadership or formal structures, it operates through crowds, symbolism, and moral pressure rather than institutional presence.

The term “Tawhidi Janata” has appeared in earlier Islamist mobilisations, notably Hefazat-e-Islam, a far-right Islamist group, in 2013, but today it has re-emerged in a far weaker institutional context.

Since the uprising in August 2024, the term has increasingly been used to justify mob-style interventions, particularly against cultural expression and women’s participation in public life. Incidents ranging from the halting of women’s football matches to vandalism of shrines, flower shops and forced cancellations of cultural programs reveal a recurring pattern.

Several radical figures consistently appear at flashpoints linked to Tawhidi Janata mobilisation, including Abu Sayeed Sher Muhammad Khan, Ataur Rahman Bikrompuri, Mohammad Tamim, and Arman Uddin. While the past arrests of Sher Muhammad for funding the banned militant group Jama'atul Ansar Fil Hindal Sharqiya and Bikrompuri for Ansarullah Bangla Team membership are notable, their significance lies in how these actors adapt to new political openings, with many repackaging their coercive moral authority as social activism.

With 91% of the population identifying as Muslim, religious language provides a recognisable frame for mobilisation, though the community is far from monolithic.

Alleged supporters of Tawhidi Janata have also engaged in direct violence. In September 2025, a mob clashed with police in Rajbari, attacking a shrine and exhuming and burning a dead body, leaving one person dead and many injured. In Dhaka, a crowd occupied a police station demanding the release of a man detained for harassing a woman about her “inappropriate” clothing, all the while livestreaming the event.

These episodes reflect a shift from clandestine to visible moral activism. Emphasis is on presence — occupying streets, intimidating institutions, and testing state limits. Economic stress and declining trust in politics amplify these episodes, particularly among youth.

With 91% of the population identifying as Muslim, religious language provides a recognisable frame for mobilisation, though the community is far from monolithic. Bangladesh has long accommodated diverse Islamic traditions, including Sufi and shrine-centred practices. Tawhidi Janata promotes a narrow, exclusionary vision of religious authenticity, rejecting such traditions as un-Islamic and responding to disagreement through coercion rather than debate. This assertion of moral superiority helps explain recurring attacks on shrines and cultural symbols.

The fragility of institutional authority on these matters became especially visible after the killing of Sharif Osman Hadi, a youth protest leader, in December 2025. Hadi’s death — set against growing frustration over accountability and reform — triggered mob violence targeting media and cultural institutions, includingProthom Alo,The Daily Star,Chhayanaut, andUdichi. These attacks were targeted; striking at symbols of secular discourse, cultural pluralism, and press freedom, underscoring how moral coercion can quickly turn into cultural repression when state authority falters.

Tawhidi Janata’s rise is best understood not as a revival of organised militancy but as a form of coercive populism rooted in moral claims. It thrives where institutions hesitate, law enforcement weakens, and political legitimacy remains unresolved. By operating openly and framing the targeting of un-Islamic values as a religious duty, such mobilisation avoids immediate repression while reshaping public space.

This serves as a warning for Bangladesh’s transition. The challenge is no longer only electoral or constitutional; it is whether authority will be reclaimed through law and democratic legitimacy, or surrendered to those claiming moral supremacy through the crowd. Tawhidi Janata shows how, in moments of rupture, power shifts from institutions to identity — and from governance to coercion.

About the author

Saqlain Rizve

Saqlain Rizve is a Bangladeshi journalist and photographer who writes and documents Bangladesh's politics, society, and its regional dynamics.

Topics

Bangladesh