16th December 2021 will mark the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh Victory Day and many are gearing up to celebrate this occasion. Whilst the celebratory mood is being promoted by a tiny minority of elites in Bangladesh, it will be business as usual for the vast majority of the common people. They suffer endemic corruption, insecurity, extra-judicial killings and state-sponsored abductions, abject poverty, daily price-hikes, poor infrastructure and unsafe roads and lack of basic public services like healthcare and education.

After 50 years of ‘independence’ and 30 years of failed Western liberal democracy, a bleak future for the masses remains the only prospect under the present autocratic Hasina regime. Moreover, over the past three decades, both BNP and Awami League (AL) governments and their cronies have looted the nation.

For example, a documentary called ‘All the Prime Minister’s Men’, aired by Al Jazeera network in February 2021, showed how corruption and ‘tender-bazi’ was linked all the way to Hasina’s top general Aziz Ahmed (Chief of Army Staff of the Bangladesh Army). According to Transparency International (TI), Bangladesh scored only 26 out of 100 in TI’s 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index. Hasina’s brutally corrupt regime was ranked by TI at 146 out of 180 countries, which rendered Bangladesh the 34th most corrupt state, even worse than Myanmar. Such accolades hardly represent ‘success’, which Hasina repeatedly promotes.

Similarly, ‘The Risk & Compliance Portal’ online describes Bangladesh in extremely gloomy terms:

“According to all major ranking institutions, Bangladesh routinely finds itself among the most corrupt countries in the world. Companies should, therefore, beware of high corruption risks when operating or investing in Bangladesh. Corruption is pervasive at all levels of society…”

As regards poverty, based on a measure of poverty line of $1.90 per person per day (equivalent to 163 BDT), a measure which in itself is seriously flawed, Bangladesh still has over 22 million people who survive below the poverty line. It is impossible to see how a human being could survive on 163 taka per day. Yet, even by this meagre standard, the Hasina government has unashamedly failed the people of Bangladesh, despite forcibly ruling the country for well over 13 years now.

The quagmire faced by the country cannot be remedied under the present post-colonial democratic system governing Bangladesh. In fact, five decades of experiment with Western secular liberal democracy has produced nothing but misery for the masses. The average youth in Bangladesh flees from the country at the first opportunity; many even die in transit to Europe and elsewhere. Therefore, Hasina’s government represents a failed system.

The way forward does not lay in more experiment with the same failed democratic system; rather the people of Bangladesh must revert to the system that is rooted in our culture and heritage, namely, the Islamic system of governance, represented by the Khilafah. Moreover, the Islamic system of governance is not just for Muslims; rather it represents a system for all of mankind irrespective of race, religion and language.

The Khilafah had started with the sahabi Abu Bakr (ra), after the death of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (saw), and continued throughout the Muslim world for several centuries until Western colonialism appeared in our lands. The Khilafah will aim to end the endemic corruption and looting of the country, dictatorship, poverty and the plethora of failings that we have seen in the past 50 years and will seek to bring a new dawn rooted in Islam. The Khilafah will aim to stand as a beacon of hope for the oppressed masses.

Allah (SWT) tells the Ummah in the Quran,

فَلَا وَرَبِّكَ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ حَتَّىٰ يُحَكِّمُوكَ فِيمَا شَجَرَ بَيْنَهُمْ ثُمَّ لَا يَجِدُوا۟ فِىٓ أَنفُسِهِمْ حَرَجًا مِّمَّا قَضَيْتَ وَيُسَلِّمُوا۟ تَسْلِيمًا

“But no, by your Lord, they will not [truly] believe until they make you, [O Muhammad], judge concerning that over which they dispute among themselves and then find within themselves no discomfort from what you have judged and submit in [full, willing] submission.” [An-Nisa 4:65]

Wakil Abu Dawud
Member of Hizb ut Tahrir Britain
08 Jumada Al-Ula 1443
12 December 2021