Dhaka, 25 January 2024,
Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh has issued a statement condemning BRAC University for ending part-time lecturer Asif Mahatab’s engagement and demanding his immediate reinstatement. The statement—signed by Ameer Allama Shah Muhibbullah Babunagari and Secretary General Allama Shaykh Sajidur Rahman—also urges the government to refrain from formulating and implementing the Transgender Rights Protection Act 2023 (Draft). In the statement, Hefazat leaders denounced what they termed “transgender ideology” as “accursed” and “faith-destroying,” calling it a “mental distortion.”
The intervention follows the controversy surrounding Mahatab, who publicly tore a page from a Grade 7 History & Social Science chapter about a gender-diverse character during a Dhaka seminar—an act that drew widespread attention and debate over curriculum content.
Hefazat-e-Islam has a longstanding record of opposing women’s equality measures in Bangladesh. The group’s 2013 mobilisations pushed a 13-point agenda that called, among other things, for restrictions on women’s freedom of movement, a ban on mixed-gender public interaction, and blasphemy laws, according to rights monitors.
Its founding phase has likewise been linked to resistance to women’s rights reforms: The Guardian reported the group formed in 2010 in opposition to plans to give women equal inheritance rights and later demanded bans on gender mixing and sculptures.
Hefazat’s former ameer Shah Ahmad Shafi also drew heavy criticism for remarks belittling women’s education and employment, including comments targeting women garment workers—captured in widely circulated video and reported by The Daily Star.
While Hefazat frames its position as defense of religious values, rights groups and analysts have long warned that the movement’s demands would roll back women’s and minority rights; recent coverage continues to note the group’s street power against reforms expanding women’s equality.
Source:
Kalbela — “আসিফ মাহাতাব ইস্যুতে হেফাজতে ইসলামের বিবৃতি” (Jan 23, 2024): kalbela.com
Amnesty International — “Bangladesh: Investigate deaths in protest clashes…” (May 7, 2013): Amnesty International
Human Rights Watch — Blood on the Streets: The Use of Excessive Force During Bangladesh Protests (Aug 1, 2013): Human Rights Watch
The Guardian — “Bangladesh’s radical Muslims uniting behind Hefazat-e-Islam” (Jul 30, 2013): theguardian.com
