DHAKA, July 12 (IslamOnline and News Agencies) - Bangladesh's ex-president, Hussain Mohammad Ershad, Thursday joined forces with a conservative Muslim spiritual leader committed to Islamic rule.

Ershad and Syed Mohammed Fazlul Karim, leader of the religious group, the Islami Jatiya Oikkya Front (IJOF), pledged in a written statement to "establish Islam at state level to...[and] restore permanent peace and freedom to the people."

"The leadership of [opposition leader] Khaleda Zia and [outgoing] Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed is totally unacceptable," it said.

Ershad made Islam the state religion when he was in power in the 1980s. He said he agreed with Karim's views on women in politics and added that his wife - an MP who leads the Jatiya Party faction in parliament - would have to wear a veil, the French news agency AFP added.

Ershad, 72, who suffered from heart problems earlier this year, took power in a bloodless coup in 1981 and ruled for nine years until he was ousted in 1990 in a mass pro-democracy campaign.

Last year, he took the Jatiya Party into a four-party opposition alliance led by Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), but later quit. Before joining the opposition, he was briefly allied to the ruling Awami League party.

The IJOF has criticized the five-year rule of Sheikh Hasina's Awami League government, saying, "its overall action proved it stood against Islam."

"The rule was barbaric, one riddled with corruption and crime," the group said in a statement, AFP reported.

Ershad introduced major developments into the Bangladeshi government. It was during his rule that the country's National Drug Policy was formulated, in which out of 4,000 medicines, 1707 unnecessary or harmful ones were banned. 

Ershad also took revolutionary steps to improve the country's communication system. He was a pioneer of the Jamuna Bridge project in the sense that he took measures such as the collection of levies to build up resources, which aroused the interest of donor agencies and countries to come forward and help build the project

Since Bangladesh is 85% Muslim, Ershad took steps like declaring Islam as the state religion of Bangladesh while safeguarding the rights of all other religions.

Other steps included the declaration of Friday as a weekly holiday in place of Sunday, payment of utility bills of all mosques from the government exchequer, setting up a Zakat Board, and the introduction of interest-free Islamic Bank. Separate trusts were formed for Hindu Temples, Buddhist Pagodas and all utility charges were waived for prayer places of all religions. 

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