In Ujalia, a village in Feni, the isolation of Mohammad Kibria’s family can be measured in ordinary transactions.
Some neighbours no longer speak to them. People who owe them money have stopped paying. Relatives who have nothing to do with Kibria’s religious organisation have found themselves drawn into the dispute. Around the village, posters have appeared urging residents to avoid people associated with Hezbut Tawheed.
It has been this way for about two and a half months, Kibria told Daily Waadaa.
“They don't speak to us. They don't conduct transactions with us. Even money that is owed to us, they are not paying,” he said.
There are only three or four Hezbut Tawheed families in the area, according to Kibria. But the boycott, he said, has extended to people outside the organisation simply because they are related to members.
The pressure has not remained entirely social. Kibria said anonymous accounts on social media have threatened members with death.
“Of course I am worried,” he said. “They are still carrying out this propaganda. They are threatening us through fake IDs. They are threatening to kill us.”
The dispute in Ujalia is part of a wider confrontation that has moved from arguments over Islamic doctrine into villages, mosques and national politics. Hefazat-e-Islam, an influential network of clerics and madrasa leaders, is campaigning for the government to ban Hezbut Tawheed.
It accuses the organisation of promoting a distorted and extremist interpretation of Islam and has alleged links to militancy.
Hezbut Tawheed denies those allegations. Its leaders say the organisation has committed no crime that would justify a ban and that the campaign against it is making members more vulnerable to harassment and violence.
In Ujalia, local authorities have tried to contain the dispute. Kibria said two or three meetings were held at which the opposing sides agreed that each would be free to follow and promote its own beliefs.
The agreement did not end the campaign.
Posters continued to appear, he said. Some instructed residents not to associate with Hezbut Tawheed members, attend their social activities or allow them to propagate their beliefs. Social-media posts continued as well.
The distinction between members and nonmembers has sometimes become blurred.
Mohammad Enayetullah lives in the same village and is a local BNP activist. He says he has never belonged to Hezbut Tawheed. His paternal cousin does.
There was already a dispute within the extended family, Enayetullah told Waadaa. Eventually, the disagreement became entangled with the conflict surrounding Hezbut Tawheed, and he found himself identified with an organisation he says he does not follow.
One night, according to Enayetullah, people attacked and ransacked his house. He said 50,000 taka in cash and about two bhori of gold were taken. He filed a written complaint with Feni police.
“I don't do Hezbut Tawheed,” he said. “But they put the Hezbut Tawheed label on me and wanted to kill me.”
For the organisation’s leader, Hossain Mohammad Salim, accounts like these are evidence that the current campaign cannot be understood simply as a theological disagreement.
“We are not merely anticipating attacks,” he said. “We have already been attacked.”
Hezbut Tawheed has encountered violent opposition before. In Noakhali in 2016, two of its members and a local man were killed during a clash over the construction of a mosque. More than 150 people, including police officers, were injured.
Salim says members are again being attacked or harassed in markets, villages and neighbourhoods. Threats have restricted his own movements, he said.
“I cannot move around freely,” he said. “I cannot even go to the markets. I am being attacked.”
Hezbut Tawheed says it has reported threats to police, district administrations and the Home Ministry and has filed cases over some incidents.
Waadaa contacted Police Headquarters for comment about the allegations of threats and attacks but did not receive a response.
In Dhaka, the headquarters of Hezbut Tawheed is easy to pass without noticing. It occupies a corner in a relatively quiet part of the city, but there is no sign outside identifying the building.
Members say that is intentional. A sign, they fear, could make the office easier to attack. Inside, the organisation does not conceal its origins.
Portraits of Muhammad Bayazid Khan Panni, who founded Hezbut Tawheed in 1995, and his father hang on the walls. There are references to the Panni family’s zamindari background. The office is modest, but the photographs and family history give it the appearance of an institution shaped as much by inheritance as by ideology.
Panni came from the Karatia zamindar family of Tangail. He established Hezbut Tawheed with the stated purpose of restoring what he regarded as the original teachings of Islam.
Over the next three decades, the organisation developed positions on religious authority and public life that placed it at odds with many mainstream Islamic scholars and groups.
Panni has since died. The organisation is now led by Hossain Mohammad Salim, who is married to Panni’s younger daughter.
Hefazat-e-Islam argues that the differences go much further than disagreements over religious practice.
Azizul Haque Islamabadi, Hefazat’s joint secretary general, described Hezbut Tawheed as “an extremist organisation” and said there were “several reasons it should be banned.”
“Not just militancy… they are extremists,” Islamabadi told Waadaa.
In a written statement, Hefazat accused Hezbut Tawheed of promoting what it called an “extremist and misguided ideology” contrary to the fundamental beliefs of Islam.
It accused the organisation of distorting the Quran and Hadith, undermining traditional Islamic scholars and established religious practices and advocating an extreme political agenda. Hefazat has also alleged that Hezbut Tawheed “discourages Friday prayers until the establishment of its purported caliphate.”
Hezbut Tawheed disputes each of these characterisations.
Salim points first to the organisation’s legal record. Since its establishment in 1995, he said, Hezbut Tawheed has not engaged in activity that would provide legal grounds for banning it.
“From the establishment of Hezbut Tawheed in 1995 until today, we have not broken any law,” he said. “There is no such record.”
The organisation identifies itself as Muslim. Salim said its members believe in Allah, the Quran and Muhammad as the final prophet. The disagreements begin, he said, with how those beliefs should be applied.
One of them concerns tawhid.
The term is commonly understood as the oneness of God. Hezbut Tawheed gives it a broader political and social meaning, interpreting it as an obligation to recognise Allah as the ultimate authority in human affairs.
“We say that La ilaha illallah is the key to Paradise,” Salim said. “It means accepting no command other than the command of Allah.”
Another disagreement concerns the relationship between religion and money.
Hezbut Tawheed has made opposition to what it calls the commercialisation of Islam a central part of its message. Salim has written several books on the subject, including Dhormo Byabsar Fande, or In the Trap of Commercialising Religion.
Members say they do not pray behind salaried mosque imams because they regard taking payment for leading prayers as impermissible. The organisation’s leaders believe this position helps explain the hostility toward them among some clerics.
Mashiur Rahman, Hezbut Tawheed’s central joint general secretary and another son-in-law of Panni, said religious work was intended for the welfare of people and should not be converted into a profession for personal gain.
The disagreements extend beyond the mosque.
Hezbut Tawheed supports women’s participation in public life while requiring what it considers Quranic standards of modesty. It also rejects blanket prohibitions on music, cultural activities and sports.
Mukhlesur Rahman Suman, the organisation’s student welfare affairs secretary, said these positions have repeatedly brought the group into conflict with traditional religious leaders.
“We say that earning a livelihood by doing religious work, turning religion into a business, has no legitimacy in Islam,” he said.
In another setting, these could remain disputes among believers over scripture and religious authority. For Hezbut Tawheed members in parts of Bangladesh, however, the argument has entered their homes.
Rehana Khatun lives in Kamura village in Ballah Union of Singair, Manikganj. On August 1, she said, two local mosque imams came to her house. They wanted her to stop promoting Hezbut Tawheed.
Rehana recorded the encounter. In the recording, she said, one of the visitors warned that if she continued her activities and her house was subsequently set on fire, she would not be able to hold him responsible.
“They told me that if you continue the publicity, and if your house is set on fire and burned down, you will not be able to hold me responsible,” Rehana said.
She took the footage to the police. A sub-inspector came to her home to investigate, she said. The two imams arrived as well, along with local elders. According to Rehana, the imams acknowledged during the meeting that they had made a mistake.
Police asked the parties to go to the station and provide undertakings before settling the matter. Rehana said she has retained footage of the original encounter, the police visit and the undertakings.
There has been no fire.
But Rehana told Waadaa that the warning altered relationships around her. People who associated with her were also told to keep their distance, she said. The immediate confrontation was settled; the possibility of renewed pressure was not.
That uncertainty has grown as the demand for a ban has moved higher into Bangladesh’s political system.
The government has been developing ties with Hefazat-e-Islam. Prime Minister Tarique Rahman recently visited the organisation’s amir, Muhibbullah Babunagari. During the meeting, Babunagari presented several demands to the government. One was a ban on Hezbut Tawheed.
The government has not banned the organisation.
But for its members, the distinction between a demand made to the state and its effects outside the state is becoming increasingly important. A prohibition would require government action. The campaign for one can operate without it.
Salim says Hezbut Tawheed has approached the authorities repeatedly, asking for protection and reporting threats to police, district officials and the Home Ministry.
In Ujalia, there is little Kibria can do about the national argument over Hezbut Tawheed’s theology or Hefazat’s demand that the organisation be outlawed. His concerns are narrower.
He wants people to speak to his family again. He wants debts to be paid. He wants relatives who do not belong to Hezbut Tawheed to be left out of the dispute.
And he wants the threats to stop.
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