ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we discuss five cases of blasphemy accusations from Bangladesh. The chapter opens with a presentation of ongoing trends of blasphemy in the Muslim world. After a brief introduction to Bangladesh and its religious demography, we discuss the role of state agents and analyse the construction of ‘the blasphemer’ in Bangladesh. We show that the construction process includes (a) an identification of someone as a blasphemer, (b) a campaign against the alleged blasphemer, (c) secret or explicit ties between state agents and activist groups and (d) media reports. In each of the cased analysed here, state agents play a role in shaping the righteous ‘us’ in opposition to the blasphemous ‘them’.
