ABSTRACT
During the struggle for Bangladeshi independence Muslims slaughtered fellow Muslims, invalidating the previously held notion that shared religion alone was sufficient to hold Pakistan together. On 16 December 1971, Bangladesh became a sovereign independent state, following nine months of guerrilla warfare and armed intervention by India at the very end. The war was sold to West Pakistanis not as a fratricidal war, however, but rather as a jihad, a holy war, against infidels (Sobhan, 1994: 71).
