Bangladesh: Secular - v- Islamist?

[carl]

This is an anti-Muslim Spring movement, it has nothing to do with freeing oppressed peoples, instead those commiting the violence want to oppress the people of Bangladesh....

Places like Bangladesh are a good bellweather to see whether Islamist extremism is gaining or waning.

I have only read a very few articles on this so access what I have to say with that in mind.

It seems it is an anti-Islamist rather than anti-Muslim movement. The really interesting thing is that the trump card the Islamists normally play, the holier than thou card is being vitiated. The two things that are doing that are personal vengeance and sort of an anti-collaborator sentiment. Those two things are a pretty powerful counter to the Islamists' normal arguments. When they say 'Allah is with me.' and are met with 'You collaborated with the Pak Army and killed my uncle.', they aren't so persuasive.

The demonstrators in Shahbag square don't want the Islamist leaders to lighten up, they want them dead, specific Islamist leaders to be killed. That seems a bit unusual.