The interview was brief, but the message was unmistakable. When journalist Srinivasan Jain asked the Ameer of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami whether a woman could ever lead his organization, the answer came without hesitation: No. When asked how many women from Jamaat were contesting the national elections, the reply was equally stark: None.
These two responses, simple as they were, have exposed a reality that many had suspected but few wanted to name openly. What we are witnessing is not merely the ideological position of one political party. It is the systematic exclusion of half the population from leadership, governance and the very idea of political agency.
The interview with the Ameer of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami was conducted as part of Al Jazeera’s series “Bangladesh: A Democratic Test.”
The full episode was uploaded and widely shared on January 26, 2026, including on Facebook and Al Jazeera’s official YouTube channel. It later aired on television on January 28, 2026, as the third episode of the series. During the broadcast, journalist Srinivasan Jain directly challenged the Ameer on women’s rights, the question of secular identity, and the party’s vision for Bangladesh in the post–Sheikh Hasina period.
Jamaat’s Vision: A Democracy Without Women
Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami’s position on women is not a matter of interpretation or internal debate. It is official policy, stated openly and defended without apology. Women cannot lead the organization. Women cannot represent the party in elections. Women are welcomed as supporters, as mobilisers, as voters, but never as decision makers.
This is not about religious conservatism or cultural preference. This is about power and who gets to wield it. Jamaat’s ideology rests on a fundamental belief that women are unfit for political leadership, that their role is confined to the private sphere and that any attempt to claim space in public life contradicts divine order. This belief is not unique to Jamaat. It is shared, in varying degrees, by other Islamic political parties that have gained ground in recent months.
When a political party declares that half the population is ineligible for leadership purely on the basis of gender, it ceases to be democratic. It becomes a vehicle for male domination, using religious language to legitimize exclusion. Democracy rests on a fundamental premise: equal participation. When women are told they can vote, canvass for votes and mobilize support but never lead or represent, that premise collapses. What remains is not democracy but a carefully constructed hierarchy where power is reserved for men and women are kept permanently on the margins.
Islamic Political Parties and the Question of Women’s Democratic Participation in Bangladesh
The January 29, 2026 incident in Barishal, in which Dr. Manisha Chakraborty, an MP candidate, was forced to leave an electoral discussion after the Charmonai Pir, an MP candidate from Bangladesh Islami Andolon, refused to share a platform with a woman, has once again brought into focus the approach of Islamic political parties to women’s participation in Bangladesh’s democratic life. Fayezul Karim’s father, Syed Fazlul Karim, widely known as the Pir of Charmonai, was a powerful religious figure, and controversial allegations linked to his role during the 1971 Liberation War continue to shape public debate. Historical evidence and political narratives have alleged that during the Pakistani military crackdown, women who sought refuge at the Charmonai shrine were handed over to occupying forces and treated as “war booty (Gonimoter Maal)”, placing this episode within the wider pattern of mass sexual violence committed during the war. While Islami Andolan Bangladesh and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami operate as separate political entities, their shared insistence on gender segregation in public political spaces raises serious concerns about inclusive governance. Excluding women from electoral platforms by invoking religious doctrine directly contradicts the constitutional promise of equality and undermines the core democratic principle that political participation and debate must remain open to all citizens, regardless of gender.
The Shared Ideology of Islamist Parties
Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami is not alone in holding these views. Across the spectrum of Islamic political parties in Bangladesh, there is a remarkable consistency on the question of women’s leadership. Whether it is Hefazat e Islam, Islami Andolan Bangladesh or smaller groups, the message is the same: women belong in the home, not in parliament; in the kitchen, not in the cabinet; as followers, not as leaders.
These parties do not see this as discrimination. They see it as divine commandment. They argue that Islam prescribes specific roles for men and women, and that any deviation from these roles leads to social chaos and moral decay. But this reading of Islam is not universal. Muslim-majority countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh itself in the past, and even Iran have had women leaders. The claim that Islam forbids women from governance is a political position dressed up as theology.
What unites these parties is not religious scholarship but political strategy. By excluding women, they maintain control. By confining half the population to subordinate roles, they ensure that power remains concentrated in the hands of male clerics and party leaders. Religion becomes a tool, not for spiritual guidance, but for political domination.
The Erosion of Women’s Rights After July
The July movement was supposed to be about justice and equality. Many women participated, believing they were part of a struggle for a more inclusive Bangladesh. But the aftermath tells a different story. Women have emerged as among the biggest losers.
The quota movement that erupted against the Sheikh Hasina government initially focused on quotas for freedom fighters. But in the process, quotas for women and indigenous communities were also dismantled. Those who stood to benefit from affirmative action, those who had fought for years to secure a foothold in public institutions, found themselves pushed back. The very mechanisms designed to correct historical disadvantage were swept away.
And yet, some of the loudest voices in that movement came from groups and student organizations aligned with or sympathetic to Jamaat. It is worth asking whether this was coincidence or part of a larger design. When women’s quotas disappear and Islamic parties declare women unfit for leadership within months of each other, the pattern becomes clear. This was not accidental. It was methodical.
Bangladesh is a country where women make up nearly half the population. They work in fields and factories, teach in schools, run households and contribute to the economy in countless ways. The ready-made garments sector, the country’s largest remittance earner, is built on the labor and sweat of women. Yet in the political imagination of these parties, they remain invisible. They are expected to participate as supporters, never as decision makers. This is not a reflection of religious principle or cultural tradition. It is structural discrimination, dressed up as ideology.
Democracy for Muslims Only: The Vanishing Space for Minorities
But the exclusion does not stop with women. Alongside the rejection of female leadership, there has been a steady erosion of space for religious minorities. During the July movement, there was widespread talk of inclusiveness, pluralism and shared struggle. Many believed that the uprising represented a genuine demand for justice that transcended religious and ethnic lines. But as the dust settles, a different picture is emerging.
The language of inclusiveness is giving way to declarations of a state for Muslims alone, governed by men alone. The rhetoric of equality is being replaced by the logic of exclusion. Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and other minorities, who have lived in this land for generations, are increasingly being framed as outsiders, as guests whose presence is conditional on their acceptance of a subordinate status.
Attacks on minority communities have increased. Places of worship have been vandalized. Families have fled their homes. And the response from those now wielding influence has been muted at best, complicit at worst. When political parties speak of an Islamic state, they are not merely talking about religious governance. They are talking about a state where citizenship is graded, where Muslims are first class citizens and everyone else exists at the mercy of the majority.
This is not democracy. Democracy does not rank citizens by faith. It does not tell women they are unfit to lead or minorities that their rights are negotiable. A democracy that excludes is not a democracy at all. It is majoritarianism with a ballot box.
The Path to Sharia and the Taliban Model
If this trajectory continues, what comes next is not difficult to predict. The call for direct Sharia rule will grow louder. Already, there are voices demanding that the constitution be rewritten to make Sharia the sole source of law. References to Taliban-style governance, once dismissed as alarmist, are becoming part of mainstream political conversation.
The Taliban model is already being held up by some as an example of Islamic governance. The fact that it has turned Afghanistan into a prison for women, that it has banned girls from education and women from work, that it has erased entire communities from public life, is dismissed as propaganda or justified as necessary for preserving Islamic values.
The progression is predictable because it has happened before in other countries. First comes the rhetoric of Islamic governance as a solution to corruption and moral decay. Then comes the demand for Sharia courts and religious police. Next, women’s freedoms are curtailed in the name of modesty and family values. Minorities are pushed to the margins or forced to convert. Dissent is silenced as blasphemy. And finally, what remains is not a state governed by law but by the whims of clerics who claim to speak for God.
If Bangladesh moves in this direction, the consequences will be catastrophic. Not just for women and minorities, but for the nation itself. Economic development requires educated women in the workforce. Social progress requires diverse voices in decision making. International standing requires respect for human rights. A Taliban-style state offers none of these. It offers only isolation, poverty and repression.
Good Governance Requires Inclusion
Good governance is not possible without representation. Representation is not possible without inclusion. And inclusion cannot exist when entire categories of people are ruled out from the start. A government that excludes women is not governing for the people. It is governing for a fraction of them, while the rest are told to accept their subordination as divinely ordained. A government that marginalizes minorities is not serving the nation. It is serving a sectarian vision that divides citizens into hierarchies of belonging.
Secularism, often misunderstood and deliberately misrepresented by Islamist parties, does not mean the absence of religion. It means ensuring that the state does not privilege one religion over others and that citizens of all faiths, and none, have equal rights under the law. It means that laws are made by elected representatives, not religious authorities. It means that women, regardless of their faith, have the same political rights as men. It means that minorities are not treated as second class citizens. Without secularism, democracy becomes sectarian. Without secularism, governance becomes theocracy.
The Islamist parties reject secularism not because it is anti-religious but because it limits their power. In a secular system, they cannot impose their interpretation of religion on everyone else. They cannot exclude women or persecute minorities in the name of God. They cannot turn the state into an instrument of religious control. This is why they frame secularism as a Western conspiracy, as an attack on Islam itself. It is a deliberate distortion designed to mobilize support for an authoritarian project.
The Crossroads
The question Bangladesh must now confront is whether this is the future it is willing to accept. Can a country that fought for liberation, that built its identity on the values of justice and dignity, now embrace a model of governance that denies half its population the right to lead and tells minorities they exist only on sufferance? Can democracy survive when it is reduced to elections in which women are voters but never candidates, participants but never leaders, and minorities are tolerated but never equal?
Bangladesh now stands at a crossroads. One path leads towards a democracy that is genuine, inclusive and accountable, where women and men, Muslims and non-Muslims, have equal stakes in the nation’s future. The other leads towards a state governed by religious edicts, where power is concentrated in the hands of male clerics, where half the population is told their role is to obey, not to lead, and minorities are told their place is to be grateful, not equal. It leads to a Taliban state, where religious police enforce morality, where women disappear from public life and where difference is crushed in the name of uniformity.
Democracy is not just about holding elections. It is about who gets to stand for election, who gets to lead and whose voices are heard when decisions are made. If women are shut out and minorities are pushed to the margins, then what we have is not democracy. It is a man-only, Muslim-only club with a democratic facade. And that is not worth defending. It is certainly not worth the sacrifice of those who died for liberation, who believed in a Bangladesh where all citizens, regardless of gender or faith, would be equal.
The journey from excluding women in political parties to a full Taliban state may seem distant, but history shows us it is alarmingly short. It begins with small concessions, with accepting that some citizens are less equal than others, with allowing religious parties to set the terms of political debate. And it ends with a nation unrecognizable to those who built it, a prison for half its population and a threat to the other half. Bangladesh must choose now, before the choice is taken away.
Conclusion:
The Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer’s words were not a slip. They were a declaration. When he said women cannot lead, he was announcing a vision for Bangladesh where half the population is permanently excluded from power and minorities exist only on sufferance.
This is the crossroads. One path leads to genuine democracy, where all citizens have equal stakes regardless of gender or faith. The other leads to a Taliban state, where religious edicts replace law, women disappear from public life and difference is crushed in the name of uniformity.
The mask has slipped. The intent is clear. Bangladesh must choose now, before the choice is taken away. Because silence today will not buy peace tomorrow. It will only make the descent faster and the cost unbearable.
Parvez Hashem, Lawyer and Human Rights Defender
