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.
The party’s registration to participate in elections was canceled in 2013, and it was banned on August 1, 2025 — four days before Hasina fled to India. As a result of unprecedented repression during Hasina’s rule, some JI activists camouflaged their political identities and projected themselves as AL members. Some infiltrated the AL’s student wing, the Chhatra League, as well as Bangladesh’s civil service.
The JI advocates for establishing an Islamic welfare society and runs charities that provide religious, social, food, and medical services at the local level. This has helped it build a strong network at the grassroots. However, critics argue that the JI espouses an anti-liberal political philosophy, as the party does not view women and minorities as equal partners. In recent times, the JI has articulated minority- and women-friendly rhetoric. But critics downplay these shifts as cosmetic rather than ideological.
Its critics have also drawn attention to its violent means; in 2020, activists of its student wing cut the veins of an AL activist. They point out that it participates in elections only to establish a shariah state. Jamaat insiders dismiss such claims.
In its Constitution, the JI states that “it will form policy only on the commandment and principles of Allah and Prophet Muhammad.”
The Jamaat’s website and training syllabus feature books written by its founder, Mawlana Maududi, who established the Jamaat movement in South Asia. An influential Islamist thinker, Maududi has been accused by many of promoting radicalism. However, some scholars have argued that Maududi’s radicalism needs to be understood in the context of British colonial violence.
A former journalist, Maududi was a prolific writer who interpreted the basic tenets of Islam as political. He said that “prayer, fasting … provide preparation and training for the assumption of just power. Just as governments train their armies [and] police forces … before employing them to do their job, so does Islam. … [Islam] first trains all those who volunteer for the services to God before allowing them to undertake jihad and install God’s rule on earth.”
In 1951, a group of senior Islamic scholars in India’s influential Madrassah Darul Uloom Deoband signed statements labeling some of Maududi’s ideas as heretical. However, Maududi felt that interpretations of Islam and the enforcement of Islamic law should not be left to the traditional religious scholars like those at the Deoband Madrassa.
In the new political climate in Bangladesh, the JI has a strong presence among online activists, who have been somewhat successful in mainstreaming public discussions that are critical of the BNP. It has made significant inroads into the Dhaka University campus by hiding its identity while engaging in activities there. Recently, organizations affiliated with the JI organized an international conference at Dhaka University on the July Uprising. International participants, including a former U.S. diplomat, were flown in for the event. Many did not know it was organized by Jamaat.
With the JI’s student wing, the Islami Chatra Shibir, forming a loose alliance with the NCP, the presence of the BNP’s student wing, Jatiyatabadi Chatra Dal (JCD), has receded in Dhaka University.
For decades, the JI has suffered the stigma of its role in the 1971 Liberation War, when it collaborated with the Pakistani military. However, thanks to the AL’s political use of the memory of the 1971 war, which it called “the spirit of 1971” as a tool of repressing criticism, the war of independence lost some traction among voters.
NCP convenor Nahid Islam, who was an adviser in the interim government, recently said that “people who were trying to revive the politics of ‘for or against ’71’ wanted to drag the country back into an outdated political framework.” This remark is seen to be supportive of the JI.
The JI is also aiming to form a broader political alliance with other Islamist parties such as Khelafat-e-Majlish, Islami Andolon, and influential religious civil society forums such as Hefazat e Islam. This broader alliance with other Islamist parties will shift Bangladesh’s mainstream politics to the right. As a result, the BNP, traditionally a center-right party, has moved toward the center in the post-Hasina period.
Domestically, the JI is unlikely to win a major vote share in an election on its own. That is why it is with the NCP, another political force that is unlikely to win major public support in the election.
More broadly, the JI is pushing to change the electoral system in Bangladesh from the existing first-past-the-post (FPTP) system to a proportional representation (PR) system. In the FPTP system, the candidate who receives the most votes in a constituency is the victor, whereas the PR system allocates seats according to each party’s share of the vote. The BNP is not in favor of this change, which would increase the representation of smaller parties.
The JI’s resurgence is a significant development not only for Bangladesh’s domestic politics but also for the global transnational movement of political Islam, where, apart from a handful of countries like Turkiye, Malaysia and Indonesia, Islamists are under severe pressure from their government.
The JI’s resurgence is supported by the increasing influence of Turkiye in Bangladesh. The Erdogan government has increased financial, strategic, and ideological influence on actors and parties in Bangladesh who espouse conservative politics. This means further pushback to the already waning Indian influence in Bangladesh’s domestic politics.