TITLE:
Religious Nationalism in Digitalscape: An Analysis of the Post-Shahbag Movement in Bangladesh
AUTHORS:
Mohammad Javed Kaisar Ibne Rahman
KEYWORDS:
Religious Nationalism, Social Media, Post-Shahbag Movement, Bangladesh
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.10 No.5,
May
20,
2022
ABSTRACT: Social media can be seen as an emerging
frontier where new forms of social relationships create collective
consciousness or popularize new/old thoughts and ideas among Internet citizens,
especially among the younger generation. Social media undoubtedly plays an
important role in the emergence of nationalism in various countries, but has
also contributed to religiously motivated communal violence around the world,
especially in Bangladesh. These online platforms have also contributed to some
powerful political movements, for example: the Arab Spring, Egyptian
Revolution, Black Lives Matter (BLM), or the Shahbag movement in Bangladesh.
These social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, are often used to share
thoughts and perspectives, and often serve as tools to construct “truth.” In
Bangladesh, Islam is the religion practiced by most citizens, while there is a
strong dispute over the country’s nationalist base. One group of people wants
to establish a religion-based nationalism, while the others want to hold on to
their historical cultural practices beyond religious identity. Social media has
become an important platform for this debate these days. This paper analyzes
how social media contributes to religion-based nationalism in Bangladesh and
how it tries to (re)shape nationalist ideas in the country. The paper observes
a large number of social media sites to understand how social stigmatization of
some discourses such as secular (dhormoniropekkho), atheist (nastik), shahbagi, etc. can construct a form of “truth” against them to establish
counter-religious thinking in the country. The paper reflects the logic and
sentiments of the people who want to establish religious tradition as a common
nationalist platform in the country through in-depth interviews. The research
used the methods of online observation and offline interviews to explore the
connection between online and offline and its impact on thoughts about
nationalism in everyday life.