‘Religion Cannot Be Used as a Political Weapon’: Governing Islam in Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina

Bangladesh’s political history has been shaped by shifting relationships between religion and the state. These shifts range from the secular ideals of its founding constitution to later periods of Islamisation and renewed commitments to secularism. Under Sheikh Hasina, a central political challenge was not so much choosing between secularism and Islam but reconciling constitutional secularism with the electoral and symbolic importance of Islam in a Muslim-majority society. Hasina consolidated an increasingly authoritarian political order and used legal restrictions, coercive measures, and control over dissent to limit opposition. She framed her government as both the guardian of Islam’s ‘true’ teachings and the defender of the nation against extremism. This enabled the Awami League to cultivate religious legitimacy while delegitimising Islamist challengers as threats to both religion and the state. This paper examines these dynamics through the concept of state-managed Islam and suggests that it offers a useful framework for understanding how the Hasina government sought to govern religion while maintaining political dominance. State-managed Islam refers to a mode of governance in which the state seeks to monopolise the political expression of religion by incorporating, regulating, and disciplining religious groups and institutions while denying autonomous religious actors the capacity to compete for political authority. The paper demonstrates that Hasina’s government neither secularised politics nor pursued Islamisation. Instead, it combined constitutional secularism with Islamic legitimacy through a coordinated strategy of constitutional, institutional, discursive, and coercive governance. Constitutionally, the government restored secularism through the Fifteenth Amendment while retaining Islam as the state religion. This created a constitutional framework that sought to reconcile secular principles with the expectations of a predominantly Muslim population. Institutionally, it recognised Qawmi madrasa qualifications, expanded state-funded model mosques, strengthened Islamic Foundation programmes, and cultivated alliances with influential clerics. This drew in previously autonomous religious groups into closer relationships with the state. Discursively, Hasina repeatedly invoked Qur’anic principles, the Medina Charter, and the Awami League’s Islamic legacy to argue that secularism was compatible with Islam, while portraying her government as the guardian of ‘true’ Islam. At the same time, the government selectively repressed Islamist groups, including Hizb ut-Tahrir, Hefazat-e-Islam, and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, when they challenged state authority. It used counterterrorism measures, legal restrictions, and the International Crimes Tribunal to define the boundaries of legitimate religious politics. The paper suggests that state-managed Islam enabled the Awami League to reconcile electoral legitimacy, religious authority, and executive control without abandoning either secular constitutionalism or Islamic symbolism.