A Battle for the Soul of a Nation

The terrorist attack at Holey Bakery in Dhaka earlier this month deviated in important ways from the previous trend of assassination-style attacks against specific individuals in Bangladesh. The perpetrators targeted a group of random individuals, prolonged the attack to maximize media exposure, and engaged in an attack that provided little hope of escape. However, these developments are only the latest evolution of a long-existing effort to reverse the secular democratic principles on which Bangladesh was founded.

Bangladesh earned its independence in 1971 following a brutal war of secession from Pakistan and quickly established itself as a secular democracy that prided itself in its indigenous syncretic culture. This cultural nationalism was a direct challenge to the radical pan-Islamist ideology promoted by the Pakistani state, and Islamists have been fighting to undermine it ever since.