RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22020/bangladesh-islamists-erasing-hindu-heritage

The rise of Islamist extremism in South Asia is entering a new and troubling phase.

Their real goal, however, is far darker than banning a Hindu organization: it is to purge majority-Muslim Bangladesh of its remaining Hindu population and to reshape the country into a theocratic state.

In a disturbing development, the government’s response to a court petition demanding a ban on ISKCON described the movement as a “religious fundamentalist organization”. This rhetoric, once confined to the fringe, now finds a place in official discourse – a dangerous sign of how far Islamist influence has penetrated the state.

[I]n the eyes of Islamist ideologues, peaceful outreach represents a challenge — the assertion of a pluralistic worldview that contradicts their absolutist doctrine.

What makes this current wave of anti-Hindu agitation particularly alarming is its transnational dimension. Intelligence officials in Dhaka have identified growing coordination between Bangladeshi and Pakistani Salafist groups, some with direct ideological or logistical ties to organizations once linked to Al Qaeda and ISIS.

The persecution of ISKCON is not merely an attack on a Hindu organization — it is part of a larger strategy to dismantle Bangladesh’s secularism and to replace tolerance with totalitarian theology.

If left unchecked, this campaign could transform Bangladesh into yet another bastion of jihadist ideology in South Asia.

The rise of Islamist extremism in South Asia is entering a new and troubling phase. What began as a political movement cloaked in piety has increasingly transformed into a campaign of cultural and religious erasure. In Bangladesh, the latest target of jihadist wrath is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), a global Hindu organization. Islamists now brand it an “extremist Hindutva group”, call for banning it, commit arson against its temples, and violence against its followers. Their real goal, however, is far darker than banning a Hindu organization: it is to purge majority-Muslim Bangladesh of its remaining Hindu population and to reshape the country into a theocratic state.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/10/30/sudans-civil-war-has-unleashed-unspeakable-horrors/

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid is a writer based in Pakistan.

A turning point has been reached in Sudan’s civil war. On Monday, rebel forces took control of the city of El Fasher, the capital of the state of North Darfur. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese Armed Forces and de facto ruler of Sudan, said he had withdrawn his troops to ‘spare citizens and spare the city from destruction’.

Unfortunately, it appears he has condemned citizens to yet more horrific violence. The retreat of the Sudanese army leaves El Fasher in the hands of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (commonly known as Hemedti). Already, there are reports that the RSF is carrying out more ethnically motivated killings of the city’s African-Sudanese population. By Wednesday evening, it was being reported that more than 2,000 civilians had been killed – mostly women, children and the elderly. The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab says El Fasher is enduring a ‘systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of… indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution’.

Such has been the ferocity of the civil war that it is easy to forget how recently the Sudanese army and the RSF were allied. They joined forces to overthrow president Omar al-Bashir in 2019, ruling the country through a joint military council until April 2023, when tensions between them broke out into the merciless hostilities the rest of the world has observed – mainly with silence – ever since.

The violence visited upon the people of Sudan, particularly its non-Arab population, is without parallel in the 21st century. Darfur has been the epicentre of this misery. In the three decades in which Sudan was ruled by al-Bashir, the Sudanese army repeatedly attempted the ethnic cleansing of the state’s non-Arab population. This was done with the help of Arab militias such as the Janjaweed, many of whose fighters now belong to the RSF. The Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups bore the brunt of al-Burhan and Hemedti’s war crimes.

With the fall of El Fasher, the tally of those displaced in Sudan is now approaching 13million. It has been described as the world’s ‘largest humanitarian crisis’ by UNICEF with 25million people – half of Sudan’s population – experiencing malnutrition or famine. As many as 400,000 people have been killed since the start of the civil war.

Massacres of the region’s non-Arab population are sadly nothing new. This violence is rooted in the Arab colonisation of east Africa, beginning with the seventh-century conquests that converted northern Africa to Islam.

The enslavement of the region’s non-Arabs also has a long history. After Arab armies were thwarted in their bid to expand southwards from Egypt by the Christian Nubian kingdom of Makuria, the Baqt treaty of AD 652 allowed Arabs to trade grains and spices in exchange for slaves. The land acquired the Arabic name Bilad as-Sudan, or ‘Land of the Black People’. By the end of the 19th century, Sudan was a critical source of slaves for Egypt and the rest of the Ottoman Empire.