{"id":24738,"date":"2025-07-04T20:48:58","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T19:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/muktangon.blog\/en\/?p=24738"},"modified":"2025-07-04T20:48:58","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T19:48:58","slug":"from-shahbagh-to-karbala-rhetoric-revisionism-and-the-return-of-the-mob-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/muktangon.blog\/en\/iconusclustus\/24738","title":{"rendered":"From Shahbagh to Karbala: Rhetoric, Revisionism, and the Return of the Mob [1]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cMob means an opportunistic group that nurtures vengeful, directionless, revolutionary pretensions.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u2014 Mahfuz Alam, Special Adviser to the Chief Adviser<\/p>\n

Let us begin with Mahfuz Alam\u2019s own postscript \u2014 a sentence that reads like it\u2019s been pulled from a thesaurus and passed off as philosophy. It is intended, one assumes, as a capstone to his moral framing of Bangladesh\u2019s so-called \u201cJuly revolution.\u201d But this single line \u2014 vague, self-congratulatory, and strategically abstract \u2014 is far more revealing than its author might have intended. It does not define the mob; it betrays the mob of meaning.
\nIn Alam\u2019s universe, a mob is not defined by who they are or what they do \u2014 but by who they threaten. And so begins the rhetorical sleight-of-hand: a redefinition of history, morality, and memory, with the aim of shielding the Interim Government\u2019s foundational moment from scrutiny. But in trying to separate July\u2019s student uprising from mobocracy, Mahfuz performs a quiet substitution: he lifts the moral crimes of the present and lays them upon the past.<\/p>\n

The Mob Is Always the Other<\/strong>
\nWho does Mahfuz include in his invented taxonomy of mobs? It\u2019s instructive:
\n\u2022\tThe 1971 violence against Biharis.
\n\u2022\tThe early repression of anti-Mujib student voices.
\n\u2022\tFifty-three years of attacks on religious minorities \u2014 but with no attribution.
\n\u2022\tThe People\u2019s Courts.
\n\u2022\tThe \u201896 People\u2019s Stage.
\n\u2022\tOctober 28
\n\u2022\tShahbagh.<\/p>\n

This is not analysis. It is a political Rorschach test \u2014 what shows up as \u201cmob\u201d in Mahfuz\u2019s inkblot are the struggles that confront the forces he is now aligned with. Especially chilling is his treatment of Shahbagh \u2014 the spontaneous secular uprising that demanded justice for war criminals. In Mahfuz\u2019s telling, it becomes \u201cmob justice,\u201d no different from communal riots. A movement rooted in the memory of the 1971 genocide is flattened into a faceless frenzy, and those who chanted for accountability are smeared as enemies of law and order.
\nThe target here is not violence. The target is secular justice. It is Shahbagh, not Jamaat, that must be vilified. The People\u2019s Stage, not Hefazat. Those who chanted \u201c\u09ab\u09be\u0981\u09b8\u09bf \u099a\u09be\u0987,\u201d not those who denied the genocide ever happened. The past is rewritten not by changing its facts, but by changing the terms through which we speak of them.<\/p>\n

Mahfuz\u2019s Performance of Philosophy<\/strong>
\nTo be fair \u2014 and we must be fair \u2014 Mahfuz is not writing as a firebrand. He is performing reason. His tone is measured, his vocabulary full of abstractions: \u201csocial fascism,\u201d \u201crule of law,\u201d \u201ccross-ideological dialogue,\u201d \u201ceffective democracy.\u201d But beneath the surface, these are not coherent arguments \u2014 they are rhetorical prosthetics, meant to give ideological gravity to what is, in fact, a deeply contradictory posture.<\/p>\n

Let us take his central assertion: that July\u2019s student uprising \u2014 led by Students Against Discrimination (SAD) [2] \u2014 is a morally distinct event, separate from all \u201cmob\u201d activity before or after it. But what did SAD represent? At its core, a meritocratic backlash against affirmative action for marginalized groups. It emerged from elite anxiety, not structural empathy. Consider SAD-aligned mob actions involving storming a police station when authorities refused to arrest a young man without formal charges \u2014 an act Mahfuz publicly endorsed. And yet later the same Mahfuz would caution the public against such vigilante behavior, now pleading for \u201crule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which Mahfuz speaks truth? The one who condones extra-legal force when it aligns with his group, or the one who denounces it when it suits the image of the state? This is not dialectics. It is contradiction in its most cynical form \u2014 what Wittgenstein might call senseless disguised as profundity.<\/p>\n

The Power of Omission<\/strong>
\nBut perhaps Mahfuz\u2019s silences are more telling than his words. Not once in this lengthy post does he mention:
\n\u2022\tThe return of Jamaat-e-Islami figures to public legitimacy post-July.
\n\u2022\tThe attacks on book fairs, shrines, and women since the IG came to power.
\n\u2022\tThe re-Islamization of the cultural-political space.
\n\u2022\tThe role of elite transnational forces \u2014 including Yunus himself \u2014 in engineering the transition.<\/p>\n

What is left unsaid tells us everything about what is being protected. The enemy, in Mahfuz\u2019s framing, is always behind us \u2014 in the shadow of Mujib \u2014 and never beside us, wearing new faces, muttering old prayers, and entering the halls of power.<\/p>\n

Karbala, Reversed<\/strong>
\nIn perhaps the most manipulative move of all, Mahfuz invokes Karbala \u2014 the ultimate symbol of sacrifice, betrayal, and pious resistance in Islamic memory. “We have not crossed our Karbala yet,” he writes. But who is Yazid in this tale? Who is Hussain? What is this revolution that aligns itself with martyrdom while holding power?<\/p>\n

Karbala was not a struggle to enter power through back channels, nor to forge cross-ideological alliances with tyrants. It was a refusal. A refusal to bow to empire, to coercion, to compromise. Mahfuz\u2019s Karbala is not the real Karbala. It is theatrical mourning for a revolution that never had its own ethics. [3] <\/p>\n

The Mob of Meaning<\/strong>
\nIn the end, what Mahfuz offers is not a defence of justice \u2014 but a pseudointellectual firewall for a political order that dare not speak its name. His post is dense with terms, but hollow in coherence. \u201cSocial fascism,\u201d \u201cMujibism,\u201d \u201cmobocracy,\u201d \u201crule of law,\u201d \u201ccross-ideology\u201d \u2014 they whirl past like carnival mirrors, each one bending the truth a little more. But the real danger is not just the contradictions. It is the replacement of moral clarity with aesthetic confusion. He does not want us to see clearly \u2014 he wants us to marvel at the haze.<\/p>\n

And so, we must respond not merely by opposing his definitions, but by naming his method: the rhetorical laundering of reactionary politics through the language of revolution. To reject this is not to cling to the past. It is to defend the very possibility of a future where language once again aligns with justice.<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1] Written in response to a Facebook status of Mahfuz Alam (Thursday July 3, 2025, 8:10 PM), Dr. Yunus\u2019s special adviser<\/p>\n

[2] Their definition of \u201cdiscrimination\u201d is shaped by a neoliberal, meritocratic worldview. Erasure of structural inequity (ethnic, regional, gendered, class-based) is baked into their narrative. What appears as \u201cprogressive student protest\u201d was seeded in reactionary anxieties. This regressive core infects how they later align with \u201crule of law\u201d and \u201caccountability.\u201d Their critique of Hasina was not from the left, but often from the center-right or culturally conservative periphery.
\n[3] Mahfuz = Islamist Conduit | Yunus = Neoliberal Enabler; This division is philosophically and operationally useful. Mahfuz serves as a bridge between elite technocratic governance (Yunus) and street-level Islamist sympathy. His use of \u201cKarbala,\u201d \u201csocial fascism,\u201d and targeted omission of Jamaat is not accidental \u2014 it signals careful alliance-crafting. My framing helps me watch Mahfuz not merely as a confused youth voice or a political poet, but a node in a triangulated ideological project: Islamism \u2194 Neoliberalism \u2194 Youth Nationalism, all converging in the IG\u2019s legitimacy play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Mahfuz Alam\u2019s hands, the word \u201cmob\u201d becomes a political mirror \u2014 reflecting only those struggles that threaten the new order. From Shahbagh to the People\u2019s Courts, he retrofits secular justice movements into spectacles of irrational rage, while carefully omitting the rise of Islamist forces now embedded in power. His rhetoric isn\u2019t argument \u2014 it\u2019s choreography, built from contradictions and cloaked in abstraction. But the real danger isn\u2019t what he says \u2014 it\u2019s what he replaces: memory with manipulation, ethics with performance, revolution with revision. When Mahfuz speaks of Karbala, he isn’t invoking resistance \u2014 he’s rehearsing a morality play for a regime in need of a conscience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22361,"featured_media":24739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5472,5475,5476,5474],"ppma_author":[5509],"class_list":["post-24738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bangladesh-politics","tag-mob","tag-mobocracy","tag-revisionism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/muktangon.blog\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Trial_remix_04Jul25.png?fit=1536%2C1024&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pghjur-6r0","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"authors":[{"term_id":5509,"user_id":22361,"is_guest":0,"slug":"iconusclustus","display_name":"Iconus Clustus","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e7cd19a9fbea2c265aed923f249aad95f3bf8f897de7c4b3706b8f28521b029f?s=96&d=retro&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/muktangon.blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/muktangon.blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/muktangon.blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muktangon.blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22361"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muktangon.blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24738"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/muktangon.blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24742,"href":"https:\/\/muktangon.blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24738\/revisions\/24742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muktangon.blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/muktangon.blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muktangon.blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muktangon.blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24738"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muktangon.blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=24738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}