Abdur Rahman Shamim alias Shamim al-Jahangir was beaten to death in front of police. In a democracy, that is not just murder. It is the state’s confession.
There is a particular horror in what happened in Kushtia today. Not just the violence, not just the death, but the detail that sits at the center of this story and refuses to leave, the police were there. They were present and Abdur Rahman Shamim was beaten to death anyway.
That detail changes everything. Because this is no longer only a story about a mob. It is a story about a state that watched.
From Rumour to Violence: A Planned Attack in Philipnagar
According to a report by Prothom Alo, a 36-second video began circulating in the Philipnagar area from late Friday night, 10 April, posted from seven Facebook accounts, including three pages and four personal profiles. The video, alleged to be defamatory to religion, was widely shared across Messenger and local accounts until Saturday morning. By 9:00 a.m., police became aware and initiated discussions with local leaders regarding potential unrest. However, based on accounts from local residents and a police official, the situation does not appear to have been a sudden outbreak of violence. Rather, the sequence of events suggests a premeditated plan that led to organized attack, vandalism, and killing.
Jamaat Involvement
The killing of Abdur Rahman Shamim is currently under active police investigation, with legal proceedings ongoing. According to preliminary findings, a key suspect, Rajib Mistri, has been identified through video footage as one of the attackers. Local sources, including a Jamaat leader, have alleged his affiliation with Jamaat, though this claim remains subject to official verification.
A murder case has been filed by the victim’s brother, naming four individuals and accusing approximately 180 to 190 unidentified persons. Reports indicate that the attack was carried out by a large mob described as “Tawhidi Janata,” who allegedly stormed the shrine following accusations of Quran desecration. The incident led to severe violence, including assault, vandalism, arson, and alleged looting.
The accused named in the case are Muhammad Khaja Ahmed (38), a Jamaat member from Daulatpur Upazila; Rajib Mistri (45), a local Jamaat activist; Mohammad Asaduzzaman (35), President of Daulatpur Upazila Khelafat Majlis; and Mohammad Shihab (45), a madrasa teacher.
Shifting Power, Shrinking Space
The reported victory of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami in three out of four constituencies in Kushtia points to a changing political and social landscape in the area. It reflects a growing influence of religion in public life and local power structures.
Against this backdrop, the brutal killing of a man for his beliefs raises serious concerns for a democratic state. When violence is directed at someone solely for their ideology, it sends a chilling signal about who is considered safe and who is not. The question that follows is unavoidable: can people with different views continue to live, speak, and believe freely, or is that space steadily shrinking?
A Man, His Faith, His Right
Abdur Rahman Shamim was a Sufi practitioner, a teacher, a graduate from a university who dedicated his life to his faith and to sharing it with others. He had his own understanding of Islam, his own aqidah. He preached it openly. He gathered followers. He lived as a free man exercising his conscience.
Under international human rights law, this is not a privilege. It is a right.
Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is clear. Every person has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including the freedom to manifest that belief in teaching, practice, and worship. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Bangladesh has ratified, reinforces this in binding legal terms. No one may be violently punished for the theology they hold.
Abdur Rahman Shamim held his theology in his heart, taught it with his voice, and was killed for it. That is a human rights violation of the most fundamental kind.
Silencing the Voice Before Taking the Life
This killing did not arrive without warning. First, he was obstructed, prevented from practicing his faith. Then he was attacked. Then he was jailed, not for any recognized crime, but because his preaching had become inconvenient to those who wanted him silent. And then, having survived all of that, he was beaten to death.
This is a textbook pattern of escalating persecution. Each stage that goes unanswered by the state is a green light for the next. The silence of institutions at every prior stage did not prevent his murder today. It contributed to it.
Freedom of expression is not only the right to speak. It is equally the duty of the state to protect those who speak, especially when their speech challenges powerful or majority sentiment. A government that jails a man for preaching his faith and then stands by while a mob kills him has not merely failed. It has participated.
The Democratic Contract, Broken
Bangladesh is a constitutional democracy. Its Constitution guarantees freedom of thought, freedom of religion, and freedom of expression. These are legal commitments made to every citizen without condition.
But democracy is not reducible to elections. Its substance lives in the guarantee that every citizen, regardless of belief or minority status, is equally protected by law and equally entitled to live without fear. When that guarantee is selectively withdrawn, what remains is the form of democracy without its content.
Every Sufi practitioner in Bangladesh heard what happened today. Every religious minority, every person who holds their faith differently from the mob’s preferred interpretation, heard it too. The message is plain: be silent, or be next. That is not democracy. That is theocratic mob rule granted impunity by the state.
The State Cannot Walk Away
Some will say this was the act of extremists, and that the state cannot be blamed for the violence of citizens. That argument must be rejected.
The state’s obligation under its own Constitution and the international covenants it has signed is not passive. It is active. The state is not simply required to refrain from persecuting minorities. It is required to protect them, investigate threats against them, and prosecute those who attack them.
When police are present at a murder and a man dies anyway, the state is not an innocent bystander.
The government of Bangladesh must answer directly: why was a man with a documented history of attacks not protected? Why did police presence not become police action? Who will be prosecuted, and when? These are not rhetorical questions. They are the minimum that a democratic state owes its citizens.
A Country That Cannot Tolerate Difference
Bangladesh is not experiencing isolated incidents of violence. It is experiencing a pattern, consistent, recurring, and predictable. People are being killed for thinking differently, believing differently, praying differently, for simply living in a way that self appointed guardians of correct belief find unacceptable. Sufis, Hindus, Ahmadiyyas, Christians, atheists, bloggers, teachers, anyone whose existence does not fit an increasingly narrow definition of who belongs here has become a target. A state cannot sustain itself without tolerance. This is not opinion. It is historical fact. Every society that turns on its own diversity pays an enormous price in bloodshed, intellectual collapse, and cultural decay. Bangladesh was founded on a different idea. The Liberation War of 1971 was fought against exactly this kind of enforced conformity. That founding vision, secular, pluralist, democratic, is now being dismantled quietly and violently, year by year. Democracy in such a climate is a word without meaning. Secularism exists only in constitutional text that no longer reflects lived reality. And unless this country makes an honest choice about what it wants to be, Abdur Rahman Shamim will not be the last name we mourn. He will simply be the latest.
What Is Lost
Abdur Rahman Shamim chose teaching. He chose a life of faith and devotion. He had followers who loved him and students who learned from him. He gave more to his society than he took from it.
He is gone now. Beaten to death for believing differently.
Every society that loses a teacher to persecution loses something it cannot easily recover: the living proof that it is safe to think freely, believe openly, and speak honestly. Bangladesh lost that today in Kushtia, and the democratic forces of this country cannot afford to respond with silence.
Because silence, as Abdur Rahman Shamim’s own story shows, has a cost. And eventually, that cost is paid in blood.
Parvez Hashem, Lawyer and Human Rights Defender
