Lady
Justice, a stainless-steel statue of a blindfolded woman holding the scales of
justice, was removed from Bangladesh’s Supreme Court premises recently due to
intense pressure from Islamist hardliners. Though the country is ostensibly ruled
by secular law, the influence of radical Islam has been rapidly and
dramatically increasing of late. Hefazat-e-Islam, a vast Islamic organization,
had, through angry, swelling protests, recently pushed for the removal of the
statue. The group avows that any art depicting living beings or the human form
is proscribed by Islam. Islamists oppose idol worship, with the obvious
exception of Muhammed, and considered the presence of the Lady Justice statue
to be anti-Islamic. This makes some “sense,” given that radical Islamists
prefer dead beings and hiding human forms, especially female ones.
Mrinal
Haque, the statue’s sculptor, said the removal was shocking to him, and called
it an “injustice,” even comparing his feelings about the statues removal to
those that he experienced upon the death of his mother. A handful of brave
students marched down a street at nearby Dhaka University after Lady Justice
was deposed, however police stymied them with barbed-wire fences and volleys of
tear gas. Yet another government had acquiesced to feral thugs.
Two
days after the statue was removed, Bangladeshi authorities partially reversed
their earlier decision, decreeing that the statue be put back up in a remote
Supreme Court annex building, where it is unable to be seen from the street.
Hefazat-e-Islam maintains that the statue represents Themis, the Greek goddess
of justice, an assertion Mr. Haque denies. Apparently, both parties are
uncomfortable with justice. Not a good sign.
Hefazat-e-Islam’s
leader, Shah Ahmad Shafi, expressed his frustration with the move: “It was not
an issue whether Themis would be in front of the Supreme Court or at the back
side of the Supreme Court,” Shafi said. “The issue was whether Themis would
exist or not, whether this symbol would be removed from Bangladesh forever.”
To
radical Islamists, it is never about location or compromise. It is about the (your)
right to exist. Which, to them,
doesn’t exist. It is about Western culture’s removal from…the face of the
Earth…forever. It is no wonder they wanted a
statue bearing the scales of justice
removed. They don’t believe in either.
Hefazat-e-Islam has subsequently
issued a demand for all
representational statues to be removed from public spaces on a nationwide
basis.
To be fair, we hear in the States
are also busily removing statues of historical figures and cow-towing to the
whims of the Muslim minority.
Someone once said: “The wheels of
justice turn slowly...”
And in the wrong direction.
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