BANGLADESH’S ISLAMIST EXTREMIST RESURGENCE HAS FEMINISTS RAISING THE ALARM
Nawshin Flora
ON 27 MAY, a group of women’s rights activists, artists, academics and others wrote an open letter to Bangladesh’s information minister, Zahir Uddin Swapan, protesting a proposed dress code for female news presenters issued by Bangladesh’s state broadcaster, which had discouraged the use of “large bindis” or “dupattas worn to one side”. The broadcaster’s deputy director general of news, Mohammed Shariful Quader, later told the media that the directive was “to maintain a general standard reflecting Bangladesh’s socio-cultural perspective.” The directive was later rescinded due to backlash, with feminist activists arguing that it amounted to an infringement on women’s freedom of attire.
Such affronts to women’s agency and rights are not unusual in Bangladesh today, even after a much-anticipated election this February ñ the first after the youth-led July Revolution in 2024 led to the fall of Sheikh Hasina and her repressive Awami League government ñ that many had hoped would bring a more progressive political orientation. While the youth protesters of 2024 had called for change, including stronger protection of women’s freedoms, their hopes were short-lived.
The backsliding began after the installation of an interim government led by Muhammad Yunus, tasked with enacting an ambitious reform programme. In May 2025, Hefazat-e-Islam, a hardline Islamist pressure group, rallied against a report submitted by the Women’s Affairs Reforms Commission, headed by the women’s rights activist Shireen Huq, that outlined 433 recommendations to eliminate discriminatory laws and policies against women and other minority groups in Bangladesh. Major recommendations included equal inheritance rights, the recognition of sex workers and domestic workers under national labour laws, six months of paid maternity leave, and equal rights for women in marriage, divorce and child custody.
In a press conference attended by around 20,000 men ñ mostly teachers and students from privately-funded, non-official Qawmi madrasas ñ Hefazat-e-Islam put forward a 12-point declaration demanding the abolition of the commission altogether. Its secretary general, Mamunul Haque, said, “We don’t want equal rights for women, we want equitable fair rights for women. Women can’t survive by competing with the men if we grant them equal rights.” The protesters at the rally following the event repeatedly referred to the commission as a “prostitute commission”. The following day, Islamist activists slapped and threw shoes at a sari-clad effigy on the premises of Dhaka University. A video of this was widely shared online.
In an attempt to come across as a credible voice on women’s rights, the Jamaat-e-Islami, a right-wing Islamist hardline outfit that is now Bangladesh’s largest opposition party, also had its female cadres protest against the reform commission’s proposals. They claimed that Islam had already given women sufficient rights and rejected any policies that threatened the sanctity of the Quran and the Sunnah ñ the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. Niqab-clad women have been increasingly mobilised in public in recent months: for instance, at a rally calling for an end to discrimination against hijabis on World Hijab Day ñ despite there being no provision or policies against the hijab in government and corporate institutions.
This stands in stark contrast to the lead-up to the July Revolution, when women protesters were remarkably visible in demanding an end to a contentious quota system for government jobs. Female students at Dhaka University and other public universities put up banners and chanted slogans that said, for instance, “Nari jekhane agroshor, quota sekhane hasshokor” ñ Where women have progressed, the quota is a joke. Many of the women protest leaders who joined the student-led National Citizens Party (NCP) that emerged from the July 2024 movement resigned in protest after it aligned with the Jamaat-e-Islami, with many saying that the NCP leaders had failed their women fellows.
The movement Students Against Discrimination was a key actor in the quota reform protests, and many of its activists were part of forming the NCP. But senior members of the NCP went on to sideline women activists, the former NCP spokesperson Umama Fatema and the former party coordinator Nusrat Tabassum have said. The Democratic Students’ Alliance, a coalition of seven left-wing student organisations, has said that the interim government and other political groups worked right from the beginning to erase discussions of women’s role in the July Revolution. Nuzia Hasin Rasha, a former left-wing student leader at Dhaka University and an active participant in the July 2024 uprising, has also spoken out about a misogynist campaign targeting her during the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union (DUCSU) election in September 2025. In her public speeches and social media posts, she has spoken out about the systematic inequality female politicians face in Bangladesh. She has described the lack of action taken against the online sexual harassment of female politicians as both an institutional and state-level failure.
Bangladesh’s new parliament has only seven women occupying its 300 directly elected seats, with 50 more appointed to reserved seats. While the BNP dominates with 247 seats, the Jamaat-e-Islami holds an unprecedented 77 seats after it had its best-ever electoral showing in the February election.
THE HEAD OF the Jamaat-e-Islami, Shafiqur Rahman, said in an interview with Al Jazeera before the election, “This is god given, there are some differences between men and women. What Allah made, we cannot change it. No one can change it.” The secretary of the women’s wing of the Jamaat, Nurunnisa Siddiqua, echoed his sentiments, saying, “The Holy Quran said that ëmen are the managers of women.’ This is a Quranic directive and obligatory. So, in an Islamic organisation, women cannot hold top leadership positions.”
On 28 January 2025, a women’s football match in Joypurhat, in northwestern Bangladesh, had to be called off after locals, including madrassa students, vandalised the Tilakpur High School football ground, objecting to women’s participation in sports. That March, two young women were assaulted while drinking tea and smoking at a tea stall in Dhaka’s Lalmatia area after an elderly resident with political connections demanded that they move. Several videos have emerged on social media of women being assaulted in Cox’s Bazar, with the attackers bragging that the women had been engaged in “immoral activities”. In April 2026, a group, including a trans man and woman, were assaulted by an anti-LGBTIQA+ group while sitting outside a tea stall opposite the Shahbagh police station in Dhaka.
The rape and murder of women has become an increasingly regular part of the headlines. There was a 52-percent increase in the rape and gang rape of women and girls in 2025 compared to the previous year, according to a report from Bangladesh Mahila Parishad, a non-profit organisation focused on women’s rights. There was also a spike in other types of violence against women, with higher incidence of acid attacks, dowry-related violence, burn injuries and more. The president of Bangladesh Mahila Parishad, Fawzia Moslem, linked the rise in violence to the growing influence of conservative religious groups. Such events and the impunity around them has only deepened the misogyny in Bangladesh.
Apart from established groups, the Touhidi Janata, a loose new grouping of Islamist hardliners, has also played an instrumental role in attacks on cultural sites, impacting the public lives of women and Bangladesh’s minorities. The Touhida Janata has carried out attacks on shrines and cultural institutions such as Udichi, which uses music, dance and theatre to advocate for a secular Bangladesh, and Chhayanaut, which works to preserve Bengali art and music. Both organisations saw their offices torched and vandalised in 2025. The Touhidi Janata has also assaulted many women in public spaces under spurious claims of immoral behaviour. Associates of this group have previously been arrested for being part of extremist and militant groups, including Ansarullah Bangla Team, an internationally designated terrorist organisation. The resurgence of such religious extremist groups has enormously endangered public safety and further restricted women’s already limited public mobility.
Increasing numbers of women have joined the formal workforce in Bangladesh in recent decades, even as they have had to constantly negotiate patriarchal oppression. However, between 2023 and 2024, women’s labour-force participation dropped by 1.7 million ñ the first decrease since 2010. This came as the country continued its transition away from agriculture and manufacturing jobs became more scarce ñ including in the garment industry due to automation. Opportunities for women in rural areas are hampered by a lack of access to capital and information.
Parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami and Khelafot-e-Majlish are deploying their female cadres in an attempt to redefine the concept of equal rights within a hardline Islamist framing. In rural areas, such parties’ women workers often lure pious women into believing in an ambiguous idea of justice and rights, and mobilise them to work for their outfits if they want to ascend to heaven. The idea of equality itself is under threat, with these women mobilising in support of an Islamist form of justice in which women hold a secondary place below men. In this discursive battle, conservatism as an ideology is re-emerging, this time with the willing support of women.
The recent turn towards a more conservative and right-leaning politics that seeks to shrink the space available to women, including their right to work, has agitated many feminist activists, especially as they have to challenge the rhetoric of right-wing women on feminist grounds.
Some activists point out that many women in Bangladesh have had no choice but to work. “The way conservative politics glorifies the history of women staying at home, they hide the fact that only a small section of women from the elite and upper classes were able to do that,” Marzia Prova, a feminist activist and founding member of the Red Feminist Bloc, said. “The rest of us were never locked up in our homes.” Prova expressed concern over reports of mob assaults by right-wing groups working to cripple women’s socio-cultural rights. “We have all the institutions of democracy,” she said. “It’s not as if we live under a religious doctrine. But religious sentiments are being used in the corporate and international financing sectors for their own interests. They’re not following the emancipatory elements of the religion.” This, she added, “is the hypocritical dual nature of religion-based right-wing political groups.”
“The re-emergence of conservatism could have both material and ideological triggering points,” Ayesha Banu, a professor of women and gender studies at Dhaka University, said. “Economic decline might not be the only reason. The protests against rape we see, while not unimportant, are emotional and sporadic in nature. Women’s organisations are often aligned with the mainstream political parties and are not able to take a non-partisan position.” She added that “this political alignment, coupled with a lack of collective organisation and cohesive leadership, has hurt the movement.”
Nazifa Jannat, a feminist activist and key participant in the July Revolution who is now a member of the Network for People’s Action, a new political platform, said that shortfalls in the education system are part of what is leading women to join hardline Islamist groups working against their own interests. “Many women in these hardline parties studied in madrassas where they had no opportunity to break free from gender stereotypes,” she said. “They were taught to be submissive.” She used the term “system loss” to describe how women’s potential as political agents is lost when they are mobilised primarily to build vote banks for male politicians.
The hardline Islamist groups’ objections to pluralism and equal rights for all genders seem to derive from their view that such rights are contrary to Sharia. However, the constitution of Bangladesh doesn’t follow Islamic law except in matters governed by Muslim personal law. Islamist parties’ use of women to speak against the status quo has been instrumental in challenging the equality of sexes enshrined in the constitution. Leaders of the Jamaat have spoken of reducing women’s working hours under the pretext of giving working women more time to balance their professional and family lives. Although presented as being benevolent, such proposals restrict women’s mobility and risk eventually erasing them from public life.
Nawshin Flora is a writer, translator and researcher based in Bangladesh. She is a graduate of Dhaka University and her research sits at the intersection of caste, labour and gender, focusing on the political economy of Dhaka’s sanitation workers.