Desk report
Jamaat-e-Islami Amir Shafiqur Rahman believes that 99 percent of the country’s people will be fine if the politicians are fixed. He said, if the rulers of the country are not fixed, then it is not possible to fix anyone.
The Jamaat Amir said this at a view-sharing meeting organized by Dhaka Metropolitan North Jamaat with the Christian community at Senpara Christian Church in Mirpur in the capital on Friday night.
Shafiqur Rahman said, “I can say with responsibility and believe that 99 percent of the country’s people will be fine if the politicians are fixed. If the rulers of the country are not fixed, then it is not possible to fix anyone. Many say don’t do this, don’t do that, his workers say what have you done, I don’t know? The leader is involved in crime, when he speaks well of his workers, the workers laugh like owls.”
Without naming anyone, Shafiqur Rahman said that he still sees a kind of ‘reckless attitude’ among many in society and politics.
The Jamaat Amir referred to Bangladesh as a country of unique harmony. He said, ‘Bangladesh is a small country. It is a flower garden. In this garden, basically, we people of four religions live. We will live together, that is the demand of all of us. But sometimes some miscreants enter our garden and want to mess up the flowers, destroy the beauty. They want to destroy the solidarity that we have with each other. We hate it intensely.’
About the leaders and workers of his party, Shafiqur Rahman said to the leaders of the Christian community, ‘You know our colleagues. I hope everyone will agree that our colleagues have nothing to do with the social misdeeds that are visible in front of people.’ He said, ‘Even so, we will say this, we have mistakes. If someone catches us in a mistake, we are grateful to him and try to correct it. “But we never condone any such social evil. That is our policy.”
Jamaat Ameer Shafiqur Rahman claimed that no one from his party was involved in any social crime including religious violence in the country. He said, “In 2014, I made a public statement and wrote a letter to the United Nations that all the violence that has taken place in this country from 1972 to 2014 was religious or communal. Let the United Nations conduct an investigation on its own initiative. I said, we will provide all-out cooperation. If the investigation reveals that any of our people are involved, guilty, we will hand them over to justice. The United Nations did not do this. Why did it not do it, maybe they did not like our short letter.” The Jamaat Ameer sought the overall cooperation of all classes of people in establishing a humane Bangladesh.
The meeting was chaired by Reverend Martin Adhikari, senior pastor of Mirpur Baptist Church, and Jamaat’s Dhaka Metropolitan North Ameer Mohammad Selim Uddin was the special guest. Church co-treasurer David Halder, Thomas Singh, church co-pastor John Sarkar, director James Pradeep Biswas, Sameer Baroi, David Biswas, Dilip Singh, Adri Baroi, Sushri Adhikari, Sutap Singh, and others spoke. The meeting was also attended by Metropolitan North Secretary Muhammad Rezaul Karim, Mirpur Baptist Church General Secretary Babul Kumar Saha, Mirpur Baptist Church pastor Reverend Prince Kiran Bain, co-editor Manoj Baroi, treasurer Asit Mitra, Baptist Church Women’s Committee President Prabhati Folia, and editor Anima Baroi.
