Maududi's son vows to give publications

Farooq Maududi, son of the man who founded Jamaat-e-Islami in India in 1941, yesterday promised to provide the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) books and publications in his library to help build a case against the party's Bangladeshi counterpart.
The case is for the genocide and crimes against humanity Jamaat-e-Islami perpetrated during the 1971 Liberation War while opposing Bangladesh's birth, eminent war crimes researcher Shahriar Kabir told The Daily Star.
The library's collection comprises essays of Farooq's father, Syed Abul A'la Maududi, and other publications of Jamaat-e-Islami, added Shahriar, also the executive president of Ekatturer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee.
He said Farooq made the commitment in a meeting with the committee at their central office in the capital's Mohakhali.
“In fact, we had collected the book on the history of Al-Badr (a paramilitary force created in 1971 to commit murder and genocide in Bangladesh) from his library and gave it to the tribunal two years back for use as reference,” he said.
Shahriar hopes that Farooq's library would have books and documents on Jamaat-e-Islami's decision regarding their activities in 1971 and perception of other religions and viewpoints that helped create the ideological ground for the genocide.
However, Barrister Tureen Afroz, one of the ICT prosecution lawyers, said, “It is difficult to say, without looking at the documents, how much of it can be used as evidence.”
A strong critic of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami's religion-based politics, Farooq pointed out in yesterday's meeting the need to be more vocal about banning Jamaat as a political party, for its terrorist activities and for using religion for political purposes.
In an interview with The Daily Star on Saturday, Farooq said Jamaat should not do politics in Bangladesh and it was no different from its Pakistani counterpart.
Jamaat-e-Islami first introduced in South Asia fundamentalist ideas such as Islamic state and Jihad.
After the partition that separated Pakistan from India in 1947, Jamaat-e-Islami split into two factions -- Pakistan and Hind. Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan got banned twice, in 1959 and 1964, for its communal role.
During the Liberation War, Syed Abul A'la Maududi was the central leader of Jamaat-e-Islami in both West and East Pakistan while Ghulam Azam led the party in the East.
In independent Bangladesh, Jamaat-e-Islami was banned but the ban was lifted in 1979 by the then president Ziaur Rahman and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami came into being.
The formal investigation into Jamaat's alleged war crimes began on August 18 after several verdicts of ICT put the spotlight on its role in 1971.