While Bangladesh and the Middle East are geographically far apart, the plight of minorities in both places has uncanny similarities that strike a stringent observer. As Mirza Ismail, the head of the Yezidi Human Rights Organization International, related: “I see the parallels between the Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh and the Yezidis in the Middle East in general but in Iraq and Syria in particular. As Yezidis, we have faced 74 genocides including the ongoing one by Islamic State. In Turkey, millions of Yezidis disappeared, whether killed or converted to Islam by force. In Iran, the same thing happened. Millions of Yezidis were killed or converted by force and the world was silent.”
Similarly, the Hindus in Bangladesh and Pakistan are facing many injustices. They are presently being ethnically cleansed from the area. Shipan Kumer Basu, the President of the Hindu Struggle Committee, emphasized: “Sheikh Hasina and recently her Transport Minister said they want to make Bangladesh a non-communal state. It’s strange because continuously, minority people are raped and murdered by the present government of Bangladesh. Day by day, Hindus and other minorities are arrested. Every year, 1-2% of the minorities are removed from Bangladesh. This happened under Sheikh Hasina. She is trying to make a non-communal country with only Muslim people.”
Only recently, a minority girl was gang raped while returning home from Siraijgoni District in Bangladesh. 4 people were detained for this rape. It remains yet to be seen if they will be punished. In many instances, the Bangladeshi authorities let the rapist off the hook when the victim is Hindu. In another instance, a 9-year-old Hindu girl was raped and local influential people intervened to save the rapist. And in Chittagong, a Hindu husband and wife were attacked so that the authorities could seize their home. Both of them were injured in the incident and remain in the hospital. These are only a small selection of the atrocities committed against Hindus daily in Bangladesh.
The atrocities implemented against the Hindus of Bangladesh have been ongoing for quite some time. “In 1971, the Hindus in Bangladesh faced a genocide by the state’s Muslims,” Ismail noted. “In 1971, when the Hindu genocide took place in Bangladesh, more than 3 million Hindus were killed and hundreds of Hindu women and girls were kidnapped and used as sex slaves. The violations against the Hindus in Bangladesh and Pakistan continue. The UN and the West are silent because the genocide and crimes against humanity were against Hindus by Muslims.”
The brethren of the Bangladeshi Hindus in India understand the radical Islamist threat very well. Aside from experiencing numerous terrorist attacks on their own soil inflicted upon them by radical Islamist groups, they have watched with concern as their fellow Hindus are brutally being repressed in Bangladesh and Pakistan. For this reason, recently, Ismail led a Yezidi delegation to India: “I am hoping that the Indian government will support our Yezidi case at the International Criminal Court and bring ISIS leaders and supporters to justice. And I am also hoping that India will send humanitarian aid to the displaced Yezidis in Iraq. If India was a permanent member of the UN Security Council, I think the Indian government would have helped the Yezidis for they know what damage” the Islamist ideology would do to the “world’s freedom if they do not put a limit on” the Islamists “brutal actions against the non-Muslim nations around the globe!”
Two Yezidi victims of ISIS, Nihad Alawsi and Hanifa Maa, were part of Ismail’s delegation. Both of them spoke out about the horrors that ISIS inflicted upon their people. Alawsi was an ISIS survivor, who was held captive by the murderous terror group for 15 months. She was impregnated by ISIS and decided that she did not want to keep the child: “Terrorist forces came and killed our fathers, older brothers and trained our young boys to become ISIS and kill their own people. These forces came to destroy my people, treated us in the most brutal ways. These forces came and raped me alongside thousands of other Yezidi girls by force. A child of a criminal, I do not want.”
When ISIS plunged upon Maao’s village, her first concern was to evacuee her father who was disabled and her mother who was sick. She arranged for a car to evacuete them to the mountain and when she found a safe place for them, she planned to come back for her sisters to evacuate them as well but in the meantime, she told them to proceed as far as they could by foot. When Maoo came back for her sisters, it was dark and the area had already transformed into a war zone. She personally witnessed the execution of 42 Yezidi men who refused to convert to Islam. They were all beheaded. She tried to run away but unfortunately, a mortar fell and she was injured in the leg. However, Maoo managed to hide herself under a pile of hay close to a farm house. The next morning, she was able to reach the mountain by foot.
Maoo and her parents managed to stay in the mountain for 10 days until they managed to leave and make it to Northern Iraq. In Northern Iraq, Maoo received a phone call from her captive sister, who was only 13 years old. Maoo put on the speaker phone so that her parents could hear their daughter’s voice to get some comfort. Unfortunately, when they heard that their 13-year-old daughter was raped by a group of ISIS terrorists, Maoo’s father suffered a brain stroke and passed away.
According to Ismail, most of the Western countries have recognized that what the Yezidis suffered was in fact genocide but the UN and these countries have not done much to help the Yezidis: “The US under the Obama administration was able to drop tens of tons of weapons, ammunition and humanitarian aid in ISIS controlled areas by mistake but the US was not able to drop one single parachute load of weapons and ammunition in Mount Shingal for the Yezidis by mistake to fight against ISIS.”
What ideology stands behind the brutal Islamist oppression in both Bangladesh and the Middle East, which promotes the slaughter of minority men and the rape of women and girls? It appears to be the perverted Islamist belief that non-Muslims do not have the right to exist and to be treated with dignity. In the case of the Yezidis, the New York Times reported that an ISIS terrorist stated before he raped a 12-year-old Yezidi girl that Islam permits the rape of unbelievers and that by raping her, he is getting closer to Allah. Throughout the rape, the victim reported that he prayed to Allah. According to the ISIS belief system, if a non-Muslim girl is raped 10 times by a Muslim, she automatically becomes Muslim. Therefore, the rape of Yezidi and Hindu girls is a form of Islamist evangelism and domination. It is a way of spreading the tentacles of radical Islamism across the globe utilizing brute force against women.
Islamism “is an ideology and its project is to convert the entire world to be Muslim,” noted Ismail. “People like the Yezidis, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., we are considered peoples without a holy book, so they are encouraged to kill, convert, rape and take over our lands and property under the Shariah law! The plight of the Yezidis has not improved at all and ISIS has not fallen yet. The name of ISIS has fallen but the brutal actions and violations against the Yezidis continue. We still have more than 3,000 Yezidi young women and girls in captivity. They are subjected to being raped and are servants of ISIS families. Who says that ISIS fell?”
In fact, there are reports that as ISIS terrorists return to their home countries, Asia and the West is at increased risk for a series of ISIS-inspired terror attacks, as demonstrated by the recent wave of terror attacks in Afghanistan, current events in the Philippines and the recent ISIS-inspired terror attack by a Bangladeshi woman in Australia. Given this, Ismail concluded that the fall of ISIS “is only a big lie perpetuated by the international community and the Iraqi government.”
