Maulana Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, a renowned Bangladeshi Islamic scholar passed away in a hospital in Dhaka on August 14, 2023. He was said to have suffered a heart attack. Some of Sayeedi’s devotees suspected that he was slow poisoned to death by the ruling authorities. Upon the news of his death, hundreds of thousands of people flocked around the hospital raising various Islamic slogans. Millions of followers desired to offer the Janaza, the final rites, for Sayeedi in Dhaka but the ruling authority did not allow it, fearing that such a perceived mammoth gathering could pale the program for Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s mourning it was observing on August 15, 2023. At many places, the police clashed with Sayeedi’s followers.
The Coalition for Human Rights & Democracy in Bangladesh (CHRD Bangladesh) joins millions in Bangladesh and around the world in mourning the death of this great Islamic scholar of the South Asian subcontinent and praying that he gets the choicest place near his Creator.
Maulana, (also known as Allama or Shaykh, a title of a high Islamic knowledge), Sayeedi was given a death sentence by the controversial war crimes tribunal in 2013 for his alleged involvement in collaboration with the Pakistan military in Bangladesh in 1971. The resulting protest against the verdict saw the death of 78 people in clashes with the police, and the Supreme Court was forced to commute the death sentence to life imprisonment. The politically motivated sentence was also protested by Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other international rights groups.
Sayeedi was politically aligned with Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and was one of its Vice-Presidents. He served as a parliamentarian from 1996 to 2006. In a condolence message, the JI stated that “a grave injustice has been done to him,” further adding that he was “one of the leaders of the world Islamic movement and an internationally renowned mufassir Quran (authority on the Quran). Professor Mujibur Rahman, the top JI leader, claimed that “a huge number of non-believers have embraced Islam” after listening to his sermons and lectures.
It was believed that he became a victim of the Sheikh Hasina regime’s war against the Islamist party and its leaders, in compliance with the dictated agenda of its sponsor India. About 130 people were sentenced, and nearly a dozen executed, under the regime’s political program to crush Islamic ideology in the country of more than 90% Muslims. The persecution of the Islamists, who are otherwise peaceful and non-violent, continues under the Hasina administration, at times creating false situations and staged attacks on minorities and their religious sites by the ruling elements.
CHRD Bangladesh continues to condemn the persecution of Islamic leaders and urges the authorities to desist from such anti-Islamic and anti-national activities which are hurtful to the majority Muslim population, and not to mention, are violations of human rights and religious freedom.