First, they came for the cartoons…

A disturbing report from Bangladesh, from an anonymous, but well-placed source:

FARJANA KHAN GODHULY/AFP/Getty Images

Prothom Alo, the largest circulation daily newspaper in Bangladesh, is under attack from the right-wing fundamentalist groups. The immediate trigger was a joke published in a humor and satire supplement on September 17.

The joke:

A man: What is your name?
Boy: Babu.
Man: You should say “Mohammed Babu”. What’s is your father’s name?
Boy: X.
Man: You should say “Mohammed X”. What is that in your lap?
Boy: Mohammed cat.

Although the joke was published strictly as humor and without incendiary intent, it raised a firestorm of protest from Islamic fundamentalists, who demanded that the paper be banned and its publisher and editor be arrested.

The cartoonist, a 20-year old freelancer, was arrested, and the government banned all the copies of that edition of the supplement.  

Prothon Alo‘s management recognized that publishing the joke was a mistake. The next day, the editor apologized on the front page of the paper and asked readers to pardon the error. On September 19, the apology was repeated. In addition, the sub-editor of that humor section was terminated for carelessness. However, these steps have not satisfied the fundamentalists, who have continued to aggressively press their demands. On the 19th reports began circulating that the government was yielding to the demands and intended to arrest the paper’s editor Matiur Rahman, a winner of the Magsaysay Award winner and an icon of the free press in Bangladesh, on September 20.

Ironically, Rahman has been a strong supporter of the current government and its reform efforts. Advocates of press freedom and individual rights in Bangladesh are concerned that if Matiur Rahman can be arrested, anyone in the country is vulnerable to attack by the fundamentalists.

(More background on this story here from Bangladeshi expat blogger Rezwan at Global Voices Online.) So far, it doesn’t appear that Rahman has been arrested, and the state clerisy is coming to his aid, if not quite his defense.

But make no mistake: This story isn’t about hurt feelings; it’s about raw political power. While, like FP contributor Jalal Alamgir and the U.S. State Department, I have my misgivings about military rule in Bangladesh, the fundamentalists are showing their true colors here. It’s a familiar pattern in Muslim countries ruled by authoritarian governments: Religious conservatives use religion cynically to embarrass the regime and whip up populist sentiment. Over time, they can force the government to make accommodating moves and concede elements of governance to the clerics. And the state can’t exactly stand up for the principle of freedom of speech, because it’s usually no great shakes on that score, either. This is bad news for Bangladesh. The way to break this cycle? Patient and deep democratic reforms and economic liberalization—not precipitous free and fair elections, which is what gave us Hamas in Palestine and Iranian-backed Shiite militias running Iraq.