WHEN ‘POVERTY IS BLISS’…THAT CAUSED THE BANGLADESHIS TO BE BACKWARD

…AND WANTED TO LEAVE THEIR COUNTRY TO FIND A NEW LIFE THERE, AND IN THE PROCESS CHANGE THEIR OWN COUNTRY WHERE THERE ARE NOW MANY BRILLIANT AND EDUCATED ONES LIVING IN THEIR MIDST.

By Mansor Puteh

But their ulamak may have caused them to think so.

Now they have realized their follies and are going out of their country to work in factories with those who are luckier and can afford to study are doing so.

So now we have many of the Bangladeshi men especially who are living outside of their country and all over the world.

The real issue I wish to highlight here is how the early Muslim ulamak may have caused the Muslims in their own countries to become backward because they had preached ‘moderation’ and to lead a virtuous life and simple one, in order that they were not tempted to commit sin.

But alas, this logic may not be logical as the Islam they were preaching to their flock was based on wrong assumption that science and knowledge were not compatible with Islam.

The real and pious Muslims, to them, were those who are like them, who are happy to practice the religion and wait for everything to fall with the call of their prayers and salutations with their palms opened facing the sky.

But such acts had failed to bring much or any joy to them; so they had now become better aquainted with the real virtues of Islam and who could on their own depend on what they think of it without engaging the ulamak who had been trained to study the religious texts to favor their own choices and lifestyles, living like hermits.

So the Bangladeshis are now all over the world creating their own Bangla Cities and communities everywhere they are and often they can become the new centers of Islam in the countries where they are, and sending money to their families and relatives in Bangladesh to encourage them to open new small trading businesses.

Bangladesh is a country that sits on land that is below sea-level and every now and then the Himalaya mountain range will cause water to flow to the country to drown most of it, causing untold hardship which in turn forced many young and able Bangladeshi men to flee from their country to find employment abroad.

In Malaysia there are a few million of them; they comprise of the second largest number of foreign workers in the country after Indonesia and followed by the Myanmars, Vietnamese and Nepalese.

The Indonesians, too suffer from the same problem faced by the Bangladeshi in that they had obediently followed the edicts passed to them by their own ulamak who are much like their counterparts in Bangladesh.

The Bangladeshis now know poverty is not bliss. And many still believe in this concept that they should not better themselves with knowledge and education because they think that these are the sources of sorcery and how they could fall prey to the devil and Satan, which may not be a totally unfounded fear, as it has been proven that many of those who had attained some measure of achievement and wealth can become less subservient to the cause of their religion, despite them wanting to construct bigger and more expensive masjid wherever they can.

And in the end those who do not have much are the ones who cling closer to God and practice Islam more than those who have a lot in the world.

But many Bangladeshis have tried to find the middle path so that they do not fall prey like those who they had seen so they are now becoming more pious and spend some time reflecting on their true calling and do not try to shirk their duties to their religion of Islam. 

But the problems with the Bangladeshis and the other Arabs also stem from the fact that their countries had been attacked by America and its allies in the west, so they had no choice but to react to that and move to the west especially America and Europe and with the Afghans many of who were happy to be living their frugal lives much like what their ancestors had done, living in caves and surviving on whatever they could get their hands on.

Now their country and also the few other Arab ones have been destroyed by America and its Zionist cohorts, that forced them to flee from their remote villages to live more comfortably in the west where they can in the near future play a better role in the society that can in the end cause the American and Zionist Causes to be challenged.

It is therefore, an irony that this has happened. And there are now more Bangla Cities all over the countries in the west and soon, even towns and cities will be taken over by them.

So there may be a good reason why Bangladesh is what it is then with so much poverty that they had deliberately inflicted upon themselves, not that they were not good with education or if their ulamak were careless in trying to get them not to move on and stay where they were, so that now they are millions of them with not much formal education who are forced to leave their country to go elsewhere where they can start new communities of Bangladeshis who are better Muslims than many Arabs especially those who had left their countries in the Middle East but who have chosen to lead the western lifestyle.

And this explains why there are now so many Bangla Cities in the major cities in Europe and also America which had sprouted which can become the focal points of the moderate Muslims that those in the west can better relate to compared to the other Muslims especially Arabs, who had started to become a nuisance to themselves and also to Islam.