Twenty people, mostly foreigners, were killed in an attack on a cafe in Dhaka that was claimed by the Bangladesh affiliate of the ISIS franchise. Government troops stormed the Holey Artisan Bakery in an upscale district of the capital 12 hours after it was seized by jihadist gunmen. Accounts are unclear if hostages were killed in the rescue operation, but at least some were apparently hacked to death by their captors—the favored method of jihadists in Bangladesh. Local media reported the gunmen tortured anyone who was unable to recite the Koran. After all this, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had the temerity to say: "It was an extremely heinous act. What kind of Muslims are these people? They don't have any religion." (BBC News, BBC News, NYT)
Oh, the hell they don't. Religious extremists commit some atrocity… and the religious establishment tries to portray them as atheists. Utter denialism. It seems that in Bangladesh, as in Egypt, an increasingly authoritarian but ostensibly secularist regime is trying to win Islamist support. The ideology behind this terror is political Islam. Call it what it is.
Bangladesh commutes death sentence in 2016 terror attack
The High Court division of the Bangladesh Supreme Court on Oct. 30 commuted the death sentence of seven militants to life imprisonment for their involvement in an attack on a Dhaka cafe in 2016. This reduction in sentence comes seven years after the defendants were sentenced to death. (Jurist)