Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Lucy C. Creevey, “Ahmad Bamba 

1850–1927.” In Studies in West African Islamic History.

Vol. 1, The Cultivators of Islam, edited by John Ralph 

Willis (London: Frank Cass, 1979); Donald B. Cruise 

O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal: The Political and Eco-

nomic Organization of an Islamic Brotherhood (Oxford, 

U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1971).

Bangladesh

 

(Official name: People’s 

Republic of Bangladesh)

Bangladesh (Hindi: land of the Bengalis) is a 

country in South Asia bordered by i

ndia

 on all 

sides but the extreme southeast, where it shares 

a border with Myanmar (Burma). Situated at the 

northern end of the Bay of Bengal, it straddles the 

delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna 

Rivers, which leaves much of the country subject 

to destructive annual floods. The population is 

estimated to be 154 million, of whom about 83 

percent are Muslim and 16 percent are Hindu. 

This makes it the fourth largest Muslim country 

in the world, after Indonesia, p

akistan

, and India. 

Even though Bangladesh’s official state religion is 

Islam, it is also the Muslim country with the largest 

Hindu minority population. Most of the Muslims 

are Sunnis who follow the h

anaFi

 l

egal

 s

chool

.

Two major Muslim social classes can be differ-

entiated: the nobles (ashraf) who migrated from 

northern India (especially from nearby Bihar) and 

use the Urdu language to set themselves apart, 

and the commoners (ajlaf) who belong to the 

indigenous Bengali population. Most of the Hin-

dus are affiliated with the Scheduled Castes, for-

merly called Untouchables or Harijans (children 

of God). Many Bengali Hindus, especially those 

belonging to the upper castes, migrated to India 

after the 1947 partition, and they now reside in 

the Indian state of West Bengal.

Bangladesh is part of what had formerly been 

the northeast Indian province of Bengal. For 

much of its history, this had been a densely for-

ested frontier region that fell beyond the reach 

of direct Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim rule. In 

K  86  

Bahrain

---

eastern Bengal, people lived mostly in small hunt-

ing and gathering communities and adhered to 

local tribal religions. In the western region, small 

states rose and fell, the most important being the 

Pala dynasty (ca. 750–1159), which subscribed to 

Buddhism, and the Sena dynasty (ca. 1095–1223), 

which followed Brahmanic Hinduism. The first 

Muslims in Bengal were Afghanis, Persians, and 

Turks who came into the area as conquerors dur-

ing the reign of the d

elhi

  s

Ultanate

 (1206–87). 

Local Muslim states arose subsequently in the 

western part of Bengal, but full-fledged Islamiza-

tion did not begin until the m

Ughal

 

dynasty

 won 

control of the region during the reign of a

kbar

 (r. 

1556–1605).

c

onversion

 of the Bengali populations to Islam 

did not occur by the sword, as has been alleged. 

Historian Richard Eaton argues that Mughal elites 

in Bengal (the ashraf) did not promote Islam as a 

state religion; they maintained a social and cultural 

distance from the native population. Widespread 

conversion in Bengal began only in the 17th cen-

tury as a result of several factors: 1) the gradual 

eastward shift of the Ganges River, which opened 

up forest lands to the outside world and to intense 

agricultural development, 2) the influx of pioneer 

holy men who built mosques and shrines that 

formed the nuclei of hundreds of new agricultural 

communities and spread Islamic influence to the 

indigenous peoples, and 3) economic prosperity 

under Muslim rule brought about by the region’s 

integration into the world economy through 

the export of textiles. These socioeconomic and 

cultural factors not only resulted in religious 

conversion in a region where the Hindu religion 

had also only recently been introduced, but they 

also gave Bengali Islam a distinctive stamp. Hindu 

gods and scriptures were not rejected but adapted 

to Islamic understandings of God, the prophets, 

and their holy books. At the same time, Islamic 

doctrines and practices were recast into Hindu 

forms. The divine name a

llah

, for example, was 

used interchangeably in Bengali Islamic literature 

with the Sanskrit terms for Hindu gods, such as 

Great Person (Pradhanpurusha), the One With-

out Color (Niranjan), and God (Ishvar). The 

prophets, particularly Muhammad, were called 

avatars, a Sanskrit designation for the Hindu god 

Vishnu’s different manifestations. Bengal Muslims 

were also familiar with the popular Hindu epics 

the  Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Amalgama-

tions of Islamic with Hindu beliefs and practices 

cut across communal boundaries and produced a 

distinctive Bengali religious literature as well as 

devotional movements such as that of Satya Pir, 

who was venerated as a Sufi saint by Muslims and 

as a god by Hindus. Sufi orders and the venera-

tion of Muslim saints at their shrines continue to 

play an important role in the popular religion of 

Bengal today.

While Mughal officials struggled to solidify 

their control of Bengal by forming an Urdu-speak-

ing elite oriented westward to the imperial courts 

in Delhi, Agra, and Lahore, and as more and more 

Bengalis became Muslims, Europeans appeared 

on the scene to compete for access to the region’s 

economic wealth. The Portuguese appeared first 

in 1517, followed by the Dutch in 1602, the Brit-

ish in 1650, the French in 1690, and the Danes in 

1755. It was the British, however, who prevailed, 

ruling Bengal first through the agency of the 

English East India Company (1757–1857) then 

directly through the British Crown in the era of 

the Raj (1857–1947).

Foreign colonial presence gave rise to two 

important kinds of movements in Bengal: reli-

gious revival movements among both Hindus and 

Muslims and anticolonial nationalist movements. 

The two major religious revival movements among 

Muslims were the F

araizi

 

movement

, which advo-

cated strict adherence to the F

ive

 p

illars

 of Islam, 

and the Tariqa-i Muhammadiyya (Muhammadan 

Movement) inspired by s

ayyid

 a

hmad

 b

arelWi

 (d. 

1831), which sought to establish a community 

governed by the 

sharia

. Both of these 19th cen-

tury movements were reacting to the decline of 

Muslim influence, which they hoped to reverse 

by purifying Islam of what they perceived to be