The Political History of Muslim Bengal: An Unfinished Battle of Faith

Product Description Bangladesh, the eastern half of earths largest delta, Bengal, is today an independent country of 163 million people. Among the 98% ethnic Bengali population, above 90 percent practice Islam. Surprisingly, Buddhism was the predominant religion of the region until the beginning of the 2nd millennium. In the midst of a long and fierce Brahman-Buddhist conflict, political Islam arrived in Bengal in the very early 13th century. Against the background of the above history, this book tells the story of successive religious and political transformations, touching upon the sensitive subject of Bengali Muslim identity. Encompassing a period of more than a millennium, it narrates a political history beginning with the independent Muslim Sultanate and closing with the 1971 liberation war of Bangladesh. The book concludes by discussing the present day, here termed Authoritarian Secularism. About the Author Mahmudur Rahman is one of the most vocal dissidents against autocracy in Bangladesh. An engineer and MBA by profession, a former energy advisor to the government and former executive chairman of the Board of Investment, he is a well-known author and editor. He has suffered imprisonment and torture in custody for his principled stance on human rights, freedom of expression, independence of the judiciary, and democracy.