Politics and Islamic Revivalism in Bangladesh: The Role of the State and Non-State/Non-Political Actors

Bangladesh is an overwhelmingly Muslim majority country in South Asia. Islam is quite predominant in its political, social and cultural landscapes. While most classical and the contemporary sociologists predicted that religion would gradually fade in importance and cease to be significant with the advent of the industrial society, Bangladesh has instead witnessed a reemergence of the religious forces in its society. In order to address this theoretical exceptionalism and paradox, we have examined the role of both state and non-state or non-political actors in the Islamic revivalism in Bangladesh. Drawing on ‘Islamic revivalism’ as a theoretical construct and employing a triangulation of methods, we have critically investigated the contributions of five major independent regimes and key social, cultural and non-political organizations and groups to the Islamic revivalism in Bangladesh. We have found that Islamization in Bangladesh was actually initiated by the very first political regime in order to mobilize public supports and the subsequent regimes followed suit, albeit differently. None of the five independent political regimes in Bangladesh was however genuinely interested in establishing Islam and Islamic polity in society, but largely used Islam and Islamization to advance their political interests and legitimacy.