Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh

Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh is a far-right conservative-islamic advocacy group consisted mostly of hard-line religious teachers and students. In 2013, they submitted a 13-point charter to the Government of Bangladesh, which included the demand for the enactment of a blasphemy law.

Quotes

• From now on, we will have our own intelligence wing... If the minorities of the country, the Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, conspire against Islam, we’ll catch them like a baby rat.
  • Nur Hossain Noorani, leader of the Hefazat-e-Islam Hefazat leader Nur Hossain Noorani warns minorities in Bangladesh

About

• Another Islamist organization, Hefazat-e-Islam, is thought to be a front for JeI, and controls many of the country’s madrassas. Hefazat was one of the prominent groups that said it would carry out jihad and use violence if necessary to ensure that Islam remained the state religion in the Constitution. In 2013, Hefazat called for the prosecution and execution of “atheist bloggers” as part of its 13-point Islamist agenda. The charter included, in part, “banning women from the work force by ending ‘free mixing’ of the sexes, a harsh new blasphemy law similar to Pakistan’s, and the declaration of the beleaguered Ahmadi sect as non-Muslim...’”
  • quoted in Hindu American Foundation, Survey of Human Rights, 2017