Statue of Woman Removed From Bangladeshs Supreme Court

The statue personifying justice that was removed from outside the Supreme Court in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in the predawn hours on Friday. Credit Abir Abdullah/European Pressphoto Agency

By JULFIKAR ALI MANIK and ELLEN BARRY
MAY 26, 2017

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Under pressure from Islamic hard-liners, the Bangladeshi authorities in the predawn hours on Friday swiftly and quietly removed a sculpture of a woman personifying justice from outside the country’s Supreme Court building.

The statue had been the target of angry, swelling protests by Hefazat-e-Islam, a vast Islamic organization based in Chittagong, which argued that art depicting living beings was proscribed by Islam.

The decision is a substantial victory for Hefazat, and within hours of the statue’s removal its leaders issued a broader call for statues all over the country to be destroyed or removed from public view. The joint secretary of Hefazat’s Dhaka city unit, Mujibur Rahman Hamidi, said new statues should not be built or displayed, except within the confines of Hindu temples.

“No sculpture can be on the roadside or outside the temple,” he said, in a telephone interview. “If anyone wants to build any statue outside a temple in the future, the Muslims of Bangladesh will prevent it.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/world/asia/bangladesh-statue-justice-supreme-court-islam.html?_r=0