Saqlain Rizve
On December 14, 2023, Shahriar Shihab was returning home through the University of Dhaka after paying tribute to the martyred intellectuals killed by the Pakistani military on the same date in 1971 during the Liberation War. Suddenly a group of 20-25 young men surrounded Shihab and began to assault him.
“At one point, they grabbed my beard and accused me of being a member of Bangladesh Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (JI). Then they slapped me. It was absurd,” said Shihab, the organizing secretary of the Bangladesh Students’ Union, Private University Unit, and a student at Prime University in Dhaka.
“I’m a leftist activist involved in leftist student politics. However, as a practicing Muslim, I keep beards, and they tagged me as a Shibir member,” he told The Diplomat.
It was one example among many of how Bangladesh’s leftists are often conflated with larger political forces. In Shihab’s case, his activism demanding accountability from Bangladesh’s then-government saw him wrongly labeled an Islamist.
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