By Mohammed Iqbal
Publisher & Head of English Department, Khobor Kendra
The victim’s body being forcefully removed from the grave by a mob
The desecration of Nurul Haq Molla’s grave in Goalanda, where his body was dragged from the ground and set ablaze, represents more than a single act of cruelty. It is a chilling warning of what happens when extremism is allowed to fester, when mobs are permitted to believe that religion justifies savagery, and when governments hesitate to act decisively against those who weaponise faith for political and personal power. What took place was not a ritual of piety but a public spectacle of barbarism, a theatre of hatred dressed up in the language of Islam.
The religion itself leaves no ambiguity. The Prophet Muhammad taught that breaking the bone of a dead person is like breaking the bone of the living. The Qur’an proclaims that the killing of one innocent life is as though the whole of humanity has been killed. A dead body, in Islamic teaching, retains its sanctity. A human being, regardless of belief, deserves dignity in life and in death. Those who flung this corpse into the flames did not defend Islam; they desecrated it. They did not stand for faith; they spat upon it.
Behind every mob stands an ideology, and behind that ideology, false scholars. So-called maulanas, intoxicated by their own egos, parade as custodians of Islam while draining it of mercy, justice and knowledge. They revive the very ayyame jahiliyat—the age of ignorance—that Islam came to end. In their hands, the mosque becomes a platform of incitement. Their sermons are not invitations to faith but instructions for violence. They dress up cruelty as devotion, strip communities of compassion, and intoxicate the vulnerable with fantasies of holy war. These men are not teachers. They are charlatans and agitators, ideological arsonists whose every word sows division and whose silence condones murder.
Barbaric act: The same body set on fire in front of a crowd
The danger lies not only in what has already happened but in what will inevitably follow if they are left unchecked. Grave desecration is only the beginning. If mobs are allowed to dictate morality with fire and rope, the living will soon follow the dead. Women will be the first victims, stripped of rights and forced into submission under the pretext of modesty. Minorities and dissenters will be branded heretics and slaughtered in the streets. Even fellow Muslims—those who dare to disagree—will be burned as traitors to the faith. This is the logic of extremism: it does not stop until it consumes everything. The parallels with ISIS in Syria and Iraq are too stark to ignore. What began as small circles of preachers and mobs grew into a death cult that enslaved women, executed men in mass graves, and declared itself a state. Bangladesh has been given its warning. To hesitate now is to invite that nightmare home.
Condemnation, though necessary, is not sufficient. Governments that believe words alone will calm the storm are deceiving themselves. If the state gives extremists space, they will take it as permission. Every compromise emboldens them. Every delay strengthens them. A government that fails to cut their backbone today will one day find itself facing an enemy too entrenched to defeat. That is why the response must be swift, public and uncompromising: arrests, prosecutions, and the silencing of those who incite mobs in the name of religion. No title of “maulana” should shield a man who spreads hate. No robe of scholarship should excuse a sermon of blood.
This is not simply a matter of religious reform. It is a matter of national security. To tolerate extremists is to gamble with the safety of every citizen. And the responsibility does not rest with Bangladesh alone. The international community must recognise that religious terrorism anywhere becomes a threat everywhere. The internet and diaspora networks spread this poison across borders in hours. Countries that provide platforms, visas or funding to extremist clerics are complicit in the violence they later inspire. Freedom of religion is not freedom to terrorise.
The truth is stark but unavoidable: those who burned a corpse in Goalanda did not act as Muslims. They acted as terrorists. They betrayed Islam, they betrayed humanity, and they betrayed the generations yet unborn who will inherit either a society of justice or a wasteland of fear. To remain silent is to collude in that betrayal. To appease them is to hand them the keys to power. This is the hour of choice, and the choice could not be clearer. Either stand with Islam’s true message of dignity and mercy, or surrender to the tyrants of ignorance. Either cut their backbone now, or live to see them rise again, stronger, crueler, and unstoppable.
