By the time the siege of Holey Artisan Bakery ended in Dhaka on July 2, 2016, six Islamist gunmen had been killed. The rescued hostages were mostly from Italy and Japan -- the two countries that have hardly anything to do with the affairs of Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria.

Italy and Japan have remained aloof from the mainstream world affairs since the end of the Second World War during which Mussolini and Tojo had wreaked havoc in their neighbouring countries and much beyond. It is highly unlikely that the militants killed in Dhaka even knew anything about Mussolini or Tojo.

Bangladesh has the dubious distinction of being in a region that has changed boundaries and names multiple times during the past century or so. Before the division of Bengal by the British in 1905, it was simply Bengal; for six years it remained divided as East and West Bengal. Then it was reunited as Bengal. After the inception of Pakistan it became East Bengal and then East Pakistan.

In 1971, it emerged as an independent country of Bangladesh. Once known for the first Nobel laureate of India, Rabindranath Tagore and his Shantiniketan, Bengal has also endured hardships, famines, massacres, rapes, decimation of intellectuals; and is now emerging as one of the most intolerant places to live.

Though it has become a cliché to blame the British ‘divide and rule’ policy for many evils, it is hard to deny that the division of Bengal into Hindu-majority West and Muslim-majority East Bengal sowed the seeds of perennial Hindu-Muslim strife in the region. In a way that division in 1905 was a rehearsal for the ultimate bifurcation of India that came about in 1947.

Muslim leaders in Bengal such as Nawab Salimullah, Maulvi A K Fazlul Haq and Khawaja Nazimuddin, played an important role in the awakening of a separate nationalist identity in Muslims.

That Muslim nationalist identity came to a rude shock after the creation of Pakistan, when a common religion failed to allay the concerns of East Pakistan dominated by the civil and military bureaucracy based in West Pakistan. Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan were not very fond of Bengali leaders such as Fazlul Haq and Suhrawardy, and had on more than one occasion expressed their displeasure at an emerging and independent Bengali identity as opposed to a Muslim identity that was supposed to bind all Pakistani Muslims together.

Whereas the 40-year period before the creation of Pakistan had seen an assertion of a Muslim identity in Bengal, the 25-year span after 1947 saw a resurgent Bengali nationalism against the efforts to eradicate linguistic diversity and establish a unitary state.

In the struggle against the domination of West Pakistan, Hindu and Muslim Bengalis of East Pakistan were united and duly supported from across the border. The struggle for independence was secular in nature, but the Islamist parties such as the Jamaat-e-Islami and its offsprings in the shape of Al-Badr and Al-Shams, buttressed by the Pakistani establishment, tried to give it a religious tone by claiming that it was a fight to defend Islam and Pakistan, the citadel of Islam.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, though a secular leader, proved to be a dictator in the making only to be toppled and killed with his family by his own Bengali army in 1975, just three and a half years after the creation of Bangladesh. The next dictators, Generals Ziaur Rahman and Hossain Muhammad Irshad, who ruled for 15 years in succession, used Islam to justify their oppressive rule in the same fashion as General Zia ul Haq was doing in Pakistan during almost the same period.

During the last 25 years, the seeds replanted by Zia and Irshad in the preceding 15 years gradually blossomed into thorny bushes. The Islamist parties have gained further momentum by the executions of their leaders for crimes allegedly committed during the War of Independence in 1971. Bangladesh boasts of the second largest Muslim congregation -- Biswa Ijtima -- in the world only to be surpassed by Haj. The secular orientation of Sheikh Hasina Wajid and her government has brought Bangladesh closer to India, resulting in strained relations with Pakistan.

The current upsurge in hate crimes against liberal and secular bloggers, homosexuals, and now against foreigners is a sign of the pangs the Bangladeshi society is going through in the face of a secular but authoritarian government of Wajid on one side, and an increasingly hostile Muslim identity adopted by terrorist organisations such as al-Qaeda, and the so-called Islamic State (IS) on the other. It is reasserted when Myanmar persecutes Rohingya Muslims and Assam in India expels Bengali Muslims back to Bangladesh.

Though Bangladesh has progressed well in terms of other indicators of human development in comparison with Pakistan, it has failed to nurture a tolerant society, thanks to its authoritarian governments both civilian and military.

The fact that India has proved to be an overall secular and tolerant society has much to do with its thriving democracy and its army’s complete lack of interference in political and social affairs. The intolerance and upheavals of different intensity the Muslim countries are witnessing from Dhaka to Damascus are not entirely the result of an American and Israeli conspiracy -- though their partial involvement may be just one element. The Muslim minds across the world are functioning in an absurd way, they refuse to evolve and are too keen to indulge in a self-pitying struggle to dominate the western civilisation. They enjoy the best of the western technology but refuse to upgrade their own intellectual software to accommodate the differences of opinions, and creeds.

Bangladesh needs to reorient its priorities, just as many other Muslim countries need to do -- a complete overhaul of its education system by cracking down on seminaries and modernising its intellectual narrative.

It is becoming increasing clear that terrorist attacks by lone wolves and by couples and groups are not easy to counter, as evident in recent months from San Bernardino and Orlando to Brussels and Dhaka. Muslims across the world have to come to terms with the changing realities of life and immense progress of science and technology that cannot be understood by the centuries old narratives. The earlier Muslims realise it, the better it is for the world.