Singapore, July 25 — Bangladesh has witnessed a rise in hardline religious rhetoric across online platforms and public discourse following the 2024 protests that ousted the country’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, paving the way for greater political space for Islamist actors, a report has stated.
The repatriation of two Bangladeshi construction workers from Singapore earlier this month over extremist social media posts has brought renewed attention to concerns over the spread and wider acceptance of hardline religious views in Bangladesh.
These developments come after the 2025 arrest of 36 Bangladeshi migrant workers in Malaysia over alleged links to the Islamic State and a nationwide terror alert issued by Bangladesh police in April 2026, a report in Singapore's ‘The Strait Times’ newspaper detailed this week.
After being repatriated from Singapore, the two Bangladeshi workers were detained by police upon their arrival in Dhaka on July 8. Subsequently, a Dhaka court placed them in police custody as investigations continue on their possible links to militant organisations, Bangladesh state prosecutor Muhammad Shamsud Doha told The Straits Times.
The Bangladesh police have not named any specific organisations connected to the men and allegations have not yet been subjected to any judicial determination.
“Singapore’s Internal Security Department (ISD) said on July 17 that Tayani Md Risad, 25, had expressed support for radical Islamist writer and preacher Shafiur Rahman Farabi, while Islam Sahedul, 37, had posted inflammatory comments on the Israel-Iran conflict and described Muslims who opposed Islamic law as infidels. ISD found no indication of attack plans or terrorist activity in Singapore, but deemed their views harmful to social cohesion,” The Strait Times report mentioned.
According to Iftekharul Bashar of the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, educated but unemployed or underemployed Bangladeshi youth may be particularly susceptible to extremist narratives due to a sense of “relative deprivation” — the feeling that their education and aspirations have failed to deliver the social status and opportunities they were promised.
Highlighting the youth employment challenges in Bangladesh, the report said, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates place the country’s youth unemployment rate at around 17 per cent in 2025, while World Bank data showed nearly one in five young people aged 15 to 24 were not in education, employment or training in 2024.
While widespread economic frustration does not automatically translate into radicalisation, Bashar argued that it can contribute to a deepening sense of grievances that extremists seek to exploit.
He added that “social isolation and political disillusionment” can increase vulnerability, while “algorithms, peer networks and encrypted platforms” accelerate the circulation of extremist content.