Mubashar Hasan
Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Dr. Shafiqur Rahman addresses a rally in Rangpur, Bangladesh, on July 4, 2025.Credit: X/Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami
Since the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government in August 2024, the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), the largest and most organized Islamist political party in Bangladesh, has significantly expanded its influence.
The party was severely repressed by Hasina’s government. However, in the post-Hasina period, the JI has gained ground. According to local journalist sources, the JI has emerged as a key powerbroker, having placed its members in important leadership positions in public universities and key state institutions
The JI has broken away from its long-time strategic political ally, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and is in an alliance with the National Citizen Party (NCP), which was formed recently by student leaders who led the anti-Hasina protests. The two parties have taken positions different from the BNP and have sought to influence Yunus’s reform agenda in their favor. For example, the JI and NCP took to the streets in May to build pressure on the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government to ban the Awami League, the party of Sheikh Hasina. Yunus subsequently bowed to their demand and suspended the AL.
So why is the JI gaining ground in Bangladesh, and what does it mean for local and global politics?
Under Hasina’s government, the JI faced severe persecution for over 15 years. Most of its leaders, including Ghulam Azam, Motiur Rahman Nizami, Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, and Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, were either hanged through a locally established and highly controversial international crimes tribunal (ICT), or died in prison. These leaders were charged as war criminals by Hasina’s ICT for their role in supporting the Pakistani army in committing atrocities and war crimes against Bangladeshis during the 1971 war of independence. International human rights organizations, however, have severely criticized the ICT for serious procedural flaws. In addition, hundreds of Jamaat leaders and activists were either put in jail or extrajudicially murdered.
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