Whenever Bangladeshis with smartphones hear the name Amir Hamza, two rather unlikely words may spring to mind: Rashmika Mandanna.
Bangladesh has 122.26 million mobile internet subscriptions, according to August 2026 figures from the telecom regulator. Meanwhile, government survey data suggest that smartphones have reached 75.1% of households. That is an enormous potential audience for the strange entertainment provided by the country's politicians.
And few have supplied quite as much material as Mufti Amir Hamza.
The Jamaat-e-Islami lawmaker, Islamist preacher and occasional connoisseur of South Indian cinema achieved an internet immortality when a video circulated of him admiring the actress Rashmika Mandanna, apparently taking special notice of her facial features, or what became popularly known as her perfect “face-cutting”.
It was, let’s say, an unusual meeting of worlds. The pulpit had discovered the glamour industry and the preacher had developed an interest in aesthetics. And the internet, which rarely misses an opportunity to embarrass a public moralist, was delighted.
Hamza subsequently defended his remarks against criticism. The episode was sufficiently memorable to attract newspaper coverage in December 2024.
Then came his adventures in economics. Asked about the BNP government's first national budget, Hamza appeared to have some difficulty with its numerical dimensions, casually dispensing with zeros as though they were optional decorations.
And he did that in a country struggling with inflation and public debt. Perhaps the treasury should have tried his numerical nonchalance so that the national deficit could have been abolished by deleting a few digits.
But these were relatively harmless embarrassments. The Rashmika episode was comic and the budget episode was absurd. Hamza's latest difficulty is neither.
The Kushtia-3 MP is now facing allegations involving purportedly intimate audio and video recordings. Their authenticity, the identities of those involved and the underlying allegations remain forensically ‘unverified’ and Hamza has rejected the affair as a conspiracy against Islamic scholars.
But the problem for Hamza and his party Jamaat is not merely whether the allegations are eventually substantiated. It is that a party which has made public morality central to its political identity must now explain how seriously it takes that morality when one of its own preachers is accused with quite credible evidence.
And that is a rather more difficult sermon to deliver.
The trouble began on November 6, when Rashed Khan, political assistant to Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, claimed on Facebook that he possessed recordings implicating Hamza in a personal scandal.
Rashed is becoming something of a one-man opposition inspection department. His political observations, frequently delivered through his verified Facebook page, are seldom calculated to win friends in Jamaat or the National Citizen Party.
He is certainly not the opposition's favourite government functionary.
Rashed claimed that Jamaat chief Shafiqur Rahman had known about the allegations before the election but nominated Hamza anyway. He also alleged that party leaders had advised Hamza to avoid smartphones.
Rashed subsequently claimed that journalists could not reach Hamza, who had apparently stopped answering calls.
Hamza did eventually respond. Speaking at a religious gathering in Bogura, he rejected the controversy as a conspiracy against Islamic scholars. He invoked the treatment of religious figures under the former Awami League government and suggested Indian involvement, without presenting supporting evidence.
India, it seems, has become an exceptionally versatile explanation for domestic embarrassment. There is, however, a complication.
On November 10, fact-checking organisation The Dissent had examined the circulating audio recordings using several technological tools and found no evidence of artificial intelligence manipulation.
The examination did not establish the identity of the speaker, the recordings' original source or the circumstances of the conversations. Nor does the absence of detected AI manipulation prove the allegations of sexual misconduct.
Hamza still deserves a fair opportunity to respond. So does anyone else whose private life has been dragged into this political contest.
But Jamaat cannot reasonably treat every uncomfortable allegation as an attack on religion. An allegation against a preacher is not necessarily an allegation against Islam.
The two are not interchangeable, however convenient the confusion may be.
Jamaat's predicament is particularly awkward because it is not an ordinary political party.
The BNP sells nationalism and its claim to political legitimacy through a number of previous completed tenures. Jamaat offers religiously grounded moral authority, primarily.
Its appeal rests partly on the suggestion that its members possess a discipline and ethical seriousness missing from the country's less pious political establishments. Hence they are the most ‘incorruptibles.’
The difficulty begins when morality becomes a product sold to voters but not consistently enforced upon its salesmen.
Consider Gazi Nazrul Islam.
In July, Jamaat expelled the Satkhira-4 MP after intimate footage involving him and a young woman circulated online. Nazrul maintained that the woman was his second wife. Jamaat said an internal investigation had established moral misconduct and expelled him under Article 62 of its constitution.
That decision demonstrated that Jamaat could act against one of its own lawmakers. It also established an uncomfortable precedent. If an investigation was necessary for Nazrul, why should Hamza not receive the same scrutiny?
This is not an argument for automatic expulsion. It is an argument for consistent standards.
The larger problem is political hypocrisy, or at least the danger of appearing hypocritical.
Jamaat's leaders have every right to defend Hamza against unsubstantiated accusations. They also have a responsibility to investigate credible complaints.
But they cannot credibly demand moral accountability from the rest of Bangladesh while treating questions about their own members as conspiracies requiring no examination.
The party has already shown, in Nazrul's case, that it recognises the importance of internal discipline. Now it must show that the principle survives the inconvenience of another prominent preacher.
A secular politician who behaves badly betrays a public obligation. A religious politician who behaves badly, if misconduct is proven, risks betraying both that obligation and the moral authority upon which his political appeal rests.
Its leaders need not prejudge Hamza. They need only resist the temptation to prejudge everyone questioning him.
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Faisal Mahmud is the Managing Editor of Daily Waadaa