I could be a sweaty-palmed teeny-bopper sitting face to face with a law enforcement agent haltingly recalling how I met the pedophile on the internet, the one who has just been nabbed by Interpol. “Never met the guy, I swear,” the girl would say, “--- had no idea what he looked like until I saw his picture in the paper the other day” (The Daily Star, Oct. 28, 2007).

And so say I. To verify my testimony I quote the man himself, Mr. Shah Abdul Hannan, who wrote: “I have never seen or met Ms Farida Majid at any time in my life (from a post on Wed. Nov.21, 2007 in banglarnari@yahoogroups.com).” Readers unfamiliar with the daily goings on in the intricate jumble of cyber-world may wonder what the fuss is all about. Lest the reader thinks this may be a reference to some dreary bantering, consider the latent intent of Hannan’s next sentence: “I do not have time or money to spend in litigations. I think my society knows me thoroughly to believe lies against me.” While countercharges of lying is a familiar ploy, what is meant by “my society” or the trustworthiness of that society’s ability to detect “lies against“ Mr. Hannan is not clear.

This much is clear that I do not belong to that exclusive club. This much is abundantly clear that the club is a formidable one with a sturdy claw-grip on Bangladeshi political, social and financial perches and, judging from the ferocious attacks I receive via the internet from deshi supporters of Hannan in four corners of the world, its global wingspan is awesome!

I know him through his writings on the internet. A tireless self-promoter, S. A. Hannan sends Eid Mubarak greetings over the internet attaching his personal résumé with it! He did this once on a hard-line ultra-Islami e-forum which did not seem to have any Bangladeshi member; my e-mail was subscribed unsolicited, probably picked up from some Qur’an-translation related article I had published. The participants in the e-group were a motley crew of mostly pseudonymous Muslims living in the West with an aggressive adherence to anything they deem Islamic and violently anti-Israel and hence anti-U.S.A.

Occasionally there would be postings from a group that called themselves Jehadi Internationalists. One of their ‘manifestoes’ was particularly spine-chilling! Their mission, they stated with aggressive pomposity, was to eliminate enemies of Islam. But even as they do away with non-Muslim enemies, they must pay close attention to the enemy within, “[T]hose who pretend to be Muslims but are in fact wolves in sheep’s skin! They must go first!” I quaked in fear, as any non-Jehadist Muslim would!

My quaking had not subsided when the world was shaken by the news of several devastating attacks on Shia Muslims on 3-4 March, 2004. At the holy city of Karbala, Iraq, carnage was caused by a suicide bomb attack on Ashura, the holiest day in the Shia Muslim calendar. At a Shia shrine near Baghdad too, sixty worshippers were gunned down by the newly formed Iraqi Al Quaida brigade under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian Jehadist. Simultaneously, beyond Iraq, Shiite celebrants of Ashura in Quetta, Pakistan, were bombed during their festive march through the street. Reverberation of Jehadi Internationalist Manifesto was verbatim.

Hannan’s own posts on this e-forum were namby-pamby in comparison, though he had towed the Jamaati line in demanding a non-Muslim status of the Quadianis and expressed his distrust of Shia and Sufi Muslims. His firm resolve to be of service to the Empire of Islam was never in any doubt in his posts. They consisted of short descriptions of his self-praised undertakings of Islamising Bangladesh through Islami Banking. He was eager to impress his fellow Islamists in the group. He described his business trip to Kazakhstan for setting up Islami Banking there. He praised Kazakhstan’s efforts to Islamize the country and expressed hope of Bangladesh speeding up her own efforts towards that end. [Make a note of it here that S. A. Hannan’s English articles have now been collected in an e-book and should be available for the asking].

Was the act of attaching his CV with Eid greetings just plain eccentric, or something else? Was he looking for a ‘job offer’ from somewhere? For a former top government bureaucrat as par claim of the posted personal resume, this behavior struck me as bizarre! With more exposure to Shah Abdul Hannan over the internet in the next few years I concluded that it was indicative of a psychologically insecure personality suffering from delusions of grandeur -- just the kind who resorts to wild fantasies of a ‘Muslim Empire’ where he is the supreme Sultan of a principality called ‘Sonarbangladesh’ (the domain of his e-mail address). There is a monthly Jamaati web magazine that is called ‘Sonar Bangladesh’.

It is said that Hannan is an important behind-the-scene operative of the Jamaati Islam party. He is the coordinator of all the Jamaati lies ranging from the crudest to the smoothest. He embodies, more than other Jamaati leaders, the ‘modern progressive’ ambition of Syed Abul ‘Ala Moududi (1903-79), the founder-guru of Jamaat. It is Moududi’s “modernism” that is reflected in Hannan’s campaign for ‘development’ of women and a sizable cadre of hijabized female disciples. He is the Chief Guest at the solemn annual observation of International Hijab Celebration Day in Dhaka. He is the inspirational author of the “Foreword” for a website for hijab where Bollywood –style cuties are wrapped in headscarves and nikabs.

My fellow netizens in the secular camp fail to appreciate the “modernity” of the hijab-clad cuties. They crab and quibble in the internet forums, and mistakenly call Hannan a ‘molla’ and an ‘obscurantist’. Hannan is actually an avid internationalist, and imperious in his ambition of Islamizing Bangladesh. In January 2008, Hannan gave the Chairman’s speech at the inaugural session of the International Islamic Law Seminar attended by the Honorable Chief Justice of the Bangladesh Supreme Court, Mr. Ruhul Amin as chief guest. A snapshot of him delivering the speech accompanied the news of this International Islamic Law Seminar held in Dhaka that was posted in all the yahoogroups forums that he belongs to.

Shortly after his Oct. 2007 statements about 1971 being a ‘civil war’ of Pakistan and not a ‘war of liberation’ fought by people with an end to free the country from the grip of an occupying Pakistani military force, Hannan made comments on the internet discussion forums (Jan. 6, 2008) on Irene Khan’s visit to Bangladesh. She is the Secretary General of Amnesty International, a human rights organization with a global presence. Let me ‘copy and paste’ what Hannan wrote against Irene Khan’s supportive remarks on the issue of 1971 war crimes trial:

We know that Amnesty is a respectable organization .However, we do not think involving in domestic politics is a part of agenda of Amnesty. Knowledgeable people know that the present demand by some quarters for war crime trial after 36 years of independence of Bangladesh has been raised for partisan political purposes, to malign nationalist and Islamic forces .This is obvious also from simultaneous demand by the same quarters for banning of Islamic parties. Every body knows that in a popular referendum extremist secularism of 1972 constitution has been overthrown and Islam was made a pillar of the statecraft. The left and extremist seculars have no support in the country, so they take political cover to reach their unpopular agenda. After all the war prisoners of 1971 war was released and the then President of Bangladesh gave amnesty to all people except specific cases of murder etcetra, there is no justification except partisan politics to raise such old issues.
We think the Amnesty has done grave error in this matter; this has become possible because the present secretary general of Amnesty is a person of Bangladesh origin and she has been influenced by a group. We hope Amnesty would realize its mistake.

On November 4, 1972 formation and functioning of all religion-based political parties were abolished as per sections 12 and 38 of the Bangladesh Constitution. Jamaati Islam of Bangladesh as a political party should therefore be considered illegal and unconstitutional. Understandably Jamaat is anxious to undermine, malign and even deny the Constitution of Bangladesh. Inspired by that purpose, as the above quote illustrates, Hannan invents a fanciful fiction: 1972 Constitution has been overthrown by a popular referendum! Ensconced in that fiction is the lie that “Islam was made a pillar of the statecraft” by a popular referendum.

It does not occur to Hannan and all his Jamaati cohorts that Military Dictatorships that overturn civilian governances and mangle the nation’s Constitution are the opposite of “popular referendum” and no amount of lies can change that fact. Jamaati-style lies are crude, comical, and by necessity, by their very raison d’être, perverse. These lies are cover ups, the coverings showing smudges of blood --- rank seepages from mass murder of a whole population.

Jamaati-style lies are the kind the Holy Qur’an succinctly warns us against: “Wa la talbisoo alHaqqa bi-albatili wa taktumu al Haqqa wa antum t’alamuna (And cover not Truth with falsehoods, nor conceal Truth when you know what it is). 2:42.

Farida Majid is a poet, literary translator and scholar on cultural studies