Al-Shams

The Al-Shams was a paramilitary wing of several far-right, islamic parites in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), that with the Pakistan Army and the Al-Badr, is held responsible for conducting a mass killing campaign against Bengali nationalists, civilians, religious and ethnic minorities in the Bangladesh Liberation War. The group was banned by the independent government of Bangladesh, but most of its members had fled the country during and after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, which led to Bangladesh's independence.

Very little is known about the structure and composition of the group. Newspaper coverage from that period indicate that it was an organ of the razakar para-military force. Jamaat-e-Islami was the largest islamic party, at that time. It seems that other islamic factions, including Nezam-e-Islami and Muslim League, established the Al-Shams (meaning "the Sun"), as a response to Jamaat-e-Islami's strong influence on the military junta. Jamaat's paramilitay, Al-Badr, was a close ally of the occupation army, and Al-Shams wanted to compete for that status.