Islami Chhatra Shibir

ICS, BICS

12/12/2006

Islami Chhatra Shibir is the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest Islamic political party in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Although ICS is a "legal" Islamic organization, and a member in good standing in the International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations, Islami Chhatra Shibir is an extremely violent group which has been linked to many terrorist acts of mass murder.

Islami Chhatra Shibir was founded in 1941, along with the establishment of its parent group, the Jamaat-e-Islami. Like its political parent, the ICS is an Islamic fundamentalist organization that seeks to establish an Islamic theocracy in Bangladesh. The ICS has its main base of power in the universities of Bangladesh, most notably at Chittagong and Rajshahi. Furthermore, the group has a great deal of influence in the large madrassas, or religious school system throughout Bangladesh.

Despite claims of legitimacy from the group, the Islami Chhatra Shibir is undoubtedly a murderous terrorist gang. And while the group has been linked to a number of larger terrorist organizations inside and outside of Bangladesh, it is known for intra-Muslim fighting. There have been many raids perpetrated against other student organizations on university campuses. The ICS's main academic rival has been the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student wing of the Awami League, a political opponent of Jamaat-e-Islami. Clashes between the BCL and ICS have caused numerous deaths, most notably in July 2000 when ICS members murdered six BCL activists in a shooting attack in Chittagong. Outside of Islamic educational institutions, the ICS has been blamed for many civilian terrorist attacks throughout Bangladesh like this one that killed 21 people.

Many news sources allege that Islami Chhatra Shibir is primarily a recruiting forum for Bangladeshi terrorist groups such as Harakat ul-Jihad-e-Islami and Jamatul Mujahideen. Some view ICS as a front for Jamaat-e-Islami terrorist operations, but the most popular political party has its own terrorist organization - Hezb-ul Mujahideen.

Like all Bangladesh and Pakistani terrorist organizations, the ICS has been directly linked to international Islamic groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda - both of which are financed by Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI. So the bottom line is, with the dramatic rise of fundamentalist Islam around the world, and with the dramatic rise in the price of crude (terrorism's fuel), Islamic militancy in Bangladesh has exploded over the past decade.