DHAKA, Aug 8, (Agencies): Bangladesh has started monitoring the weekly sermons of the country’s mosques to ensure clerics follow formal guidelines on highlighting the dangers of Islamic militancy, an official said Wednesday.

The government distributed the guidelines to more than 200,000 mosques several months ago, Shamim Mohammed Afzal, head of the government’s Islamic Foundation, told AFP.

“We have set up an anti-militancy cell at the Islamic Foundation. Every week our officials monitor at least 10 mosques in Dhaka to see whether the clerics speak about militancy in their Friday sermons,” he said.
Other government agencies were monitoring sermons in mosques across the rest of the country, he added.

Bangladesh was hit by series of blasts by Islamic militants in 2004-2005, which killed dozens of people and prompted fears that the world’s fourth largest Muslim majority nation was becoming a militancy hotspot.

The government’s elite security agencies responded with a massive crackdown on militant outfits, arresting more than 1,000 people. Six prominent leaders of a banned group were hanged in 2007.
Afzal said the guidelines had already had an impact with “fewer processions or meetings” by Islamist outfits in recent months.

“We’ve successfully convinced the clerics and Islamic teachers about the danger of militancy. They now speak against Maududi philosophy, which has harmed Islam in the sub-continent,” he said.

Abul Ala Maududi, who died in 1979, was an Islamic revivalist leader who founded the Jamaat-e-Islami party, whose Bangladesh offshoot is the country’s largest Islamic political grouping.

Months after taking office in 2009, the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina banned a pan-Islamist group, Hizb ut Tahrir, for “destabilising” the country.

Last year it launched a plan to integrate hundreds of Islamic religious schools into the mainstream secular education system in a revamp costing $70 million.

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WASHINGTON: The United States on Tuesday called on Bangladesh to allow non-governmental organizations to continue providing aid to members of a minority group who have fled to Bangladesh to get away from violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
“The United States is deeply concerned by the Government of Bangladesh’s stated intent to shut down non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have been providing critical humanitarian aid to Rohingya residing in Bangladesh,” US State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said in a statement.
More than 800,000 Rohingya Muslims live in Myanmar, but they are not recognized by the government as one of its ethnic groups. Deadly sectarian riots and a subsequent government crackdown in the region led many Rohingyas to flee to Bangladesh, which also does not accept them.
Bangladesh last week told three NGOs to stop providing food and other humanitarian aid to Rohingyas because the assistance could encourage more people to try to cross the border from Myanmar.
Ventrell said the US continues to monitor the tensions in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and has urged the government of Myanmar to reach a peaceful resolution to the conflict.