Conclusion

Abstract

This concluding chapter argues that the Bangladesh case gives an important lesson for the Western political scientists, IR specialists, and even for the Bangladesh experts as it is evident throughout the book that politics in a Muslim-majority country like Bangladesh draws its strength from the non-Western, Islamic concept ummah. This book has demonstrated that, in the Bangladeshi case, ummah supports two separate, yet, to some extent, interconnected political patterns—a state-led Islamization of domestic politics on the one hand and the actions of inter-government and transnational networks of political Islamists on the other. This model of political Islam turns traditional democratization and globalization theories on their head by turning a Muslim-majority state against Western liberal, secular ideas in pursuit of a political order infused with Muslim traditions. The ummah, as a trans-historical and trans-regional ideological group, provides an alternate vision to fulfilling the legitimate goals of international and domestic politics, thereby inspiring state and non-state actors to strengthen religious ideology in state law and the national consciousness. What is problematic however is that Bangladeshi political actors’ use of Islam has largely been authoritarian and devoid of any enlightening philosophy of Islam that supports democracy, human rights, and co-existence though Islam supports democracy, human rights and pluralism.