Bangladesh’s eleven-party Islamist alliance was created to unite the country’s religious forces, minimise electoral competition and present Jamaat-e-Islami as the natural leader of a consolidated political bloc. It survived long enough to contest the February 2026 parliamentary election. Once the votes had been counted and the seats distributed, unity became considerably less sacred.

Islami Andolan Bangladesh had already withdrawn before the election, after disagreements over seat-sharing. Bangladesh Khelafat Andolan subsequently distanced itself from the coalition’s activities, and on July 25 Khelafat Majlis formally declared that the electoral arrangement had completed its purpose and it would henceforth organise its own programmes. Jamaat nevertheless continues to insist that the alliance remains intact, including parties that have asked not to participate in its programmes or have their names displayed on its banners. It is a distinctive interpretation of political unity: the allies remain united provided Jamaat is permitted to speak on their behalf after they have left. The fragmentation does not indicate that Bangladesh’s Islamist moment is ending. On the contrary, it reveals that Islamist politics has become sufficiently important for its competing factions to fight over who will control it. What is disintegrating is not political Islam but Jamaat’s attempt to establish a monopoly over its electoral representation. The alliance had always contained serious ideological and institutional contradictions. When it was announced in October 2025, it brought Jamaat together with seven smaller parties, including Islami Andolan Bangladesh, Khelafat Majlis, Bangladesh Khelafat Majlis, Bangladesh Nezam-e-Islam Party and Bangladesh Khelafat Andolan. The Liberal Democratic Party and the student-led National Citizen Party joined in December, followed by the Amar Bangladesh Party, turning the coalition into an eleven-party arrangement. The numerical inflation concealed the imbalance within it. Jamaat possessed the disciplined organisation, national structure, money and cadre network; most of its partners contributed religious credentials, local constituencies or additional names for the coalition’s letterhead. The objective was electoral arithmetic rather than ideological reconciliation. Jamaat needed a broad Islamist front to prevent rival religious parties from dividing the vote, while smaller parties expected seats, visibility and a share in the political opportunities produced by the new order. The election exposed who had gained most from the transaction. Jamaat won 68 parliamentary seats. The National Citizen Party secured six, Bangladesh Khelafat Majlis two and Khelafat Majlis one. The remaining participants failed to win any. The resulting resentment was summarised with unusual clarity by Touhidur Rahman Mondal Raju, a Khelafat Majlis leader in Rangpur. While the alliance continued to campaign jointly on national issues, he observed, Jamaat was independently announcing candidates for all eleven city corporations. The smaller allies had been reduced to spectators while Jamaat converted collective mobilisation into its own permanent electoral machinery. This was the structural weakness at the heart of the coalition. Jamaat understood the alliance as a vehicle through which it could lead Bangladesh’s Islamist forces. Several of its partners understood it as a temporary arrangement among parties that would remain politically autonomous. Once Jamaat had emerged from the election with 68 seats and began preparing for the next contests, the distinction was no longer theoretical. Hamidur Rahman Azad, Jamaat’s assistant secretary general and coordinator of the alliance, dismissed reports of a rupture, arguing that not every party could attend every programme. This might have explained an occasional empty chair. It was less persuasive after one party formally withdrew and another requested that its name no longer be used. The attempt to preserve the fiction is politically understandable. Jamaat’s strength after the election derives not only from the seats it won but from its claim to represent a larger religious constituency. The eleven-party label suggested that other Islamist forces had accepted its leadership, allowing Jamaat to present itself as the centre around which political Islam in Bangladesh would inevitably organise. The departures expose a less convenient reality. Jamaat may be the strongest Islamist electoral organisation in the country, but it does not command the entire Islamist landscape. Beyond formal party politics lies the extensive qawmi madrasanetwork, religious scholars, clerical associations and movements capable of mobilising crowds without winning a single parliamentary seat. The most important of these is Hefazat-e-Islam. Hefazat is not an electoral party, and this is partly the source of its influence. It does not need to negotiate candidate lists, defend parliamentary compromises or explain why one ally received 68 seats and another received one. Its power comes from the qawmi madrasas, their teachers and students, and the authority their clerics exercise over religious discourse. Jamaat may count votes; Hefazat can help decide whether voting for Jamaat is religiously permissible. In February 2026, Hefazat chief Allama Muhibbullah Babunagari declared that voting for Jamaat was haram and described opposition to the party as a jihad. His objection was not that Jamaat was too Islamist but that it represented the wrong Islam. Jamaat’s ideology derives from Syed Abul A’la Maududi and treats Islam as the foundation of a modern political system to be captured through an organised party. The Deobandi-oriented qawmi establishment claims the authority of traditional scholarship and regards Maududi’s political theology with deep suspicion. The difference may appear esoteric to outsiders who classify all beards under the same heading. In Bangladesh it determines control over madrasas, mosques, clerical legitimacy, street mobilisation and the right to define what constitutes authentic Islam. The collapse of Jamaat’s electoral alliance is consequently being accompanied by an alternative effort at consolidation. In July, representatives of seven qawmi-oriented Islamic parties met under Babunagari’s chairmanship at the Jamia Azizul Uloom Babunagar Madrasah in Chittagong and agreed in principle to cooperate. Several had contested the parliamentary election as members of Jamaat’s alliance. They are now exploring a different alignment under the religious influence of an organisation whose chief warned that a Jamaat government would destroy the roots of Islam. This is not a minor rearrangement among interchangeable parties. It is a contest between two sources of Islamist authority. Jamaat offers organisation, electoral reach and parliamentary power. Hefazat offers seminaries, clerics and the ability to confer—or withdraw—religious legitimacy. The smaller parties can manoeuvre between them, extracting political concessions from one and doctrinal protection from the other. The confrontation between Hefazat and Hizb-ut-Tawhid indicates that the competition is spreading beyond electoral arrangements. On August 1, speakers at a Hefazat gathering in Noakhali allegedly accused Hizb-ut-Tawhid of religious deviation and issued threats to bury, evict or drive its members from Bangladesh. The following day, Hizb-ut-Tawhid organised a protest in Dhaka, accusing Hefazat of inciting violence through misogynistic and inflammatory rhetoric. The dispute is another reminder that the expansion of Islamist politics does not necessarily produce Islamist solidarity. It produces competition over followers, institutions and religious authenticity. Each organisation must establish not only that it represents Islam, but that its rivals do not. This dynamic may make the political landscape more fragmented, but it does not automatically make it safer or more moderate. Rival Islamist groups rarely compete by becoming more liberal than one another. They compete by demonstrating greater doctrinal purity, denouncing compromises and portraying opponents as heretics, opportunists or insufficiently committed to the Islamic order. Jamaat now faces pressure from two directions. As a parliamentary party, it must broaden its appeal, participate in conventional politics and reassure voters who do not want Bangladesh transformed into a clerical state. As the principal Islamist organisation, it must defend itself against rivals accusing it of ideological deviation and electoral opportunism. Every attempt at moderation risks surrendering religious ground to Hefazat; every attempt to recover that ground risks exposing the harder face Jamaat has worked to make respectable. Hefazat faces the opposite problem. Its strength lies in remaining outside direct electoral accountability, mobilising around religious demands and allowing associated parties to contest for office. Building a coherent political bloc would increase its leverage, but it would also force the qawmi camp to negotiate the same mundane questions that fractured Jamaat’s alliance: seats, candidates, leadership and the division of spoils. The smaller parties are therefore unlikely to produce effortless unity under a new patron. Their dispute with Jamaat was partly ideological, but it was also about power. Replacing an electorally dominant Jamaat with a clerically dominant Hefazat will not eliminate personal ambitions or institutional rivalries. Bangladesh’s Islamists agree more readily on what they oppose than on who should command them after victory. For the country’s secular and democratic forces, there is little reason for satisfaction. The failure of the eleven-party alliance may divide the Islamist vote in future elections, but it also creates several competing centres of radical mobilisation. Jamaat will use its parliamentary presence and national organisation; Hefazat will use the qawmi network and the street; smaller parties will shift between coalitions; organisations such as Hizb-ut-Tawhid will struggle for their own space in an increasingly aggressive contest over religious legitimacy. The political danger does not depend upon one Islamist bloc becoming strong enough to control everything. It can also emerge from multiple organisations competing to impose their doctrines, mobilise followers and intimidate rivals. Fragmentation may restrain their electoral coordination while intensifying their rhetoric and social reach. The eleven-party alliance failed because it was never the expression of a unified Islamist movement. It was a temporary bargain created for an election, dominated by the only participant capable of winning on a large scale. Jamaat collected the seats; its partners discovered that they had helped construct someone else’s power. What follows will not be a retreat of political Islam but a struggle over its ownership. Jamaat remains the strongest electoral actor, but Hefazat controls a religious network that cannot be absorbed by parliamentary arithmetic. Between them stand a collection of smaller parties searching for relevance, leverage and a leader who will share more than campaign banners. Bangladesh’s Islamists have not ceased marching in the same direction. They are fighting over who walks in front.