Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Bangladesh, a south Asian Muslim-majority country has received scholarly attention for growing religiosity, religious intolerance, Islamization, and extremism. Many scholars have pointed out that political expediency and state-led promotion of religion in public lives have shifted the nature of Bangladesh, a country emancipated as a secular entity in 1971. This article argues that these narratives fall short of conceptualising the context upon which religious forms of politics takes place. I argue that politics in a country is not devoid of certain conditions and conditions emerge within a concept that sets the discourse of politics in Bangladesh or any country. The article conceptualises the politics of Bangladesh through an Islamic concept Ummah or global brotherhood of Muslims and demonstrates that localization of this global religious concept in major party platforms and state have set the current political condition in Bangladesh.