This is the third time in a year—the third time a secular blogger has been accosted on the streets of Bangladesh and brutally hacked to death with machetes. This time, according to The Washington Post, it was Ananta Bijoy. He was young, like the other two, and Al-Qaeda, which claimed responsibility for at least one other murder, may be behind this one as well:
Ananta Bijoy Das, a Bangladeshi writer known for advocating science and secularism, was hacked to death by masked men wielding machetes while on his way to work Tuesday morning.
Das died instantly in the attack, police in Sylhet city told the Associated Press. He is the third Bangladeshi writer to be killed in less than four months.
Though police did not offer a motive for the killing, they mentioned to Al Jazeera that Das has written about science and the evolution of the Soviet Union. He was also a blogger for Mukto-Mona, or “free mind,” the site launched by prominent author Avijit Roy, who was killed at a Bangladeshi book fair in similar fashion in February.
“Mukto-Mona … is about free thinking and is about explicitly taking on religious fundamentalism and particularly Islamic religious fundamentalism. [Das and Roy’s] names have been on lists of identified targets,” Sara Hossain, a lawyer and human rights activist in Dhaka, Bangladesh, told the BBC.
The sad part is that there appears to be little we can do, for even protesting to the Bangladeshi embassy is likely to be futile. As the WaPo reports:
But among Bangladeshi liberals, there’s little confidence that attacks on secular writers will be punished.
“The culture of impunity that has spread over the last few years clearly has very damning results,” Arifur Rahman told IHEU after Washiqur Rahman was killed. “… The word ‘Nastik’ (atheist) has been vilified in Bangladesh (and the rest of the Muslim world); they are seen as sub-human, it is OK to kill them.”
h/t: Jelger
Such a puny and cowardly god, that Muhammad, that he must send street thugs to do his dirty work. Why won’t the dog show his face?
b&
Yep, we should keep saying this.
Weak puny god.
A god that needs this kind of behaviour is not much of a god.
Not much of a god at all.
More correctly, you should have written, “Such a puny and cowardly god, that Allah….” Muhammad is his prophet.
Muslims may hate to admit it, but there’s absolutely no doubt about Muhammad’s divinity. He serves the exact same role in Islam as Mercury and Jesus (in his role as the Logos) do: messenger of the gods, the intermediary between Heaven and Earth.
And he even flew a flying horse into the sunset, fer chrissake! How much more bleedin’ obvious can it get!?
b&
Religion of Peace™.
You beat me to it…
Not Peace but Pieces, it seems. Really upsetting.
GB, your input would be welcome in the thread that begins here:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/05/14/canada-proposing-to-use-hate-crime-laws-against-israel-boycotters/?cpage=1#comment-1189903
I had neglected to subscribe to that post!
He was a brilliant organizer and editor of the one and only openly secular and rationalist periodical of our country : Jukti ( Rationality), fought pseudoscience and extremism until the very end..a great loss..; looks like it is becoming a monthly affair in Bangladesh. AQ branch alreadly claimed responsibility and they have list of 84 blogger in their target list..
Very sad.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/12/third-atheist-blogger-killed-in-bangladesh-after-knife-attack
The other thing I find so distressing about Bangladesh is how liberal Muslims are constantly saying it’s the atheists own fault this is happening because they provoke the extremists. What the atheist bloggers write is protected speech according to their constitution, but in pandering to the Islamists, the government enacted a blasphemy law, and declared Islam the state religion.
It’s the same thing that Western “liberals” have been saying about Charlie Hebdo and Pamela Geller.
b&
Exactly, except in Bangladesh’s case, the government has caved to the Islamists. It’s always framed as “both the atheists and the Islamists are destroying our peaceful society”. There’s a complete failure to recognize the difference between words on blogs and murder in the streets.
I tried to comment on one such opinion piece in a newspaper a couple of weeks ago. I kept my comment completely reasonable, and only about four sentences long, but it didn’t make it past moderation.
Yes, you are right, it is very frustrating. In 1971 during our liberation war against Pakistan, Islamist groups had collaborated with the Pakistani army to do all sort of heinous crimes, that also included systematic killing of intellectuals; and in late 70s when they regain their former power under the auspices of military junta, everything has changed. It took 40 years to bring them to justice, which the current government is trying to do. However they are very careful not to contradict moderate Islamists. And that is the weakness the Islamist parties are exploiting. For example the prime minister and four of her personally talk to the Father of murdered American-Bangladeshi blogger Avijit Roy, but no one issued any statements in the media. All these killings are in the same manner brutal use of machetes, targettind heads. The last three murder took palce in front of crowd . Very disturbing indeed. Yet Bangladeshi writers are not silenced. There is big online community of writers vowed to carry on the legacy.
K M, are the perpetrators caught and punished?
For the crimes committed during the 1971, all major figures were tried,and still going on.. leading to the lot of unrest in the country.
Last blogger who was killed about month ago,the two of three killers was caught on the spot by the locals, from them police learned that islamist are recruiting these young men from universities to madrasas (religious schools)and the creating these sleeper cells, who are in position to target 84 known secular bloggers. Whenever they are getting the chance they are acting on it..( these bloggers are in that list);
After Avijit died Ananta Bijoy applied for Swedish visa,it was invited by Swedish PEN, but the visa was denied, if not may be he was alive today..Like Avijit Roy, US-Bangladeshi blogger who founded the MUKTO MONA blog site, Ananta Bijoy Das was also very promising..
Thank you for that information, though it’s profoundly depressing. I wish the world was paying as much attention to these bloggers as it did to the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
Please don’t mention Charlie Hebdo and Pamela Geller in the same sentence!
Do some Googling before you do it again.
We had this discussion the other day. Ms. Geller is a Birther nutjob, yes. But she’s solidly on the right side of the free speech question today. Whether or not she is tomorrow is something we’ll worry about tomorrow.
b&
I can wait. My guess is sooner or later she’ll give me a chance to say “told ya so”. We shall see…
When she does — and she likely will — it’ll be every bit as irrelevant as when she did so in the past.
b&
It will be absolutely relevant to any comparison of her with Charlie Hebdo. She would love to be regarded in the same light as Charlie Hebdo. She is not.
Once again, free speech must be free most especially for those whom you most wish would shut up, or else it’s not actually free.
b&
I don’t disagree with that. IMO she uses free speech when it suits her agenda.
Enough.
We all use free speech when it suits our agendas.
The question is whether we support the freedom when we find another person’s speech abhorent.
I’m okay with abhorrent. I have a problem with inciteful: speech which manipulates others to do the speaker’s dirty work for him/her, including that which could or does lead up to violence. The speaker who incites bad behavior should be held accountable, along with the idiot who allowed himself/herself to be so manipulated.
Meanwhile, our school systems should be teaching our children enough critical reasoning skills to recognize when they’re being manipulated — by individuals or by groups, face to face or online or through mass media.
I’m particularly wary of religious leaders who “suggest” that “so-and-so” is subhuman, undesirable, or otherwise ever-so-subtle labled for targeting. At least fatwahs are blatant, I’ll give them credit for that.
Yeah, I probably should have posted that somewhere more general. It’s just taken me this long to consolidate the concept into words and be able to present it. Sorry about that.
As I said, we shall see.
Every time I post a comment on Facebook advocating for women’s rights, atheism, or Elizabeth Warren’s position on the banking industry I’m trying to incite my readers to come over to my side of things and act in ways that support my cause. Some people see this sort of thing as a threat, my Mormon friends for example who think I’m trying to get people to do the dirty work of destroying their faith.
I do not like that slope you want us to stand on.
You make a good point. I’m referring to instances of violence, including what some might perceive as verbal violence, i.e., bullying, i.e., the sort that leads the victim to suicide, for example.
I’m afraid I don’t know how to phrase the concept better. I only hope you understand.
Inciting people to do good is good. Inciting people to do harm is harmful. Inciting people to do bad, if not harmful, is annoying and requires maturity and a thick skin to deal with or ignore.
Maybe that covers it?
K. M., I hope that list doesn’t include you!
Mr Trudeau, whom did he punch down?
That’s a bingo!
Indeed; good point.
You beat me to it.
Indeed.
“Certainly this is a tragedy…BUT…he only brought it on himself with his puerile, needless, and offensive provocation.”
– Generic Apologist
Hear, hear!
How do the police know he died instantly? I’d think it’d be pretty unlikely to die instantly from a knife attack.
Are they trying to whitewash the murder? “Well, it wasn’t so bad. He didn’t suffer.”
I a agree, but it was machetes which action intentionally is like broad axes (to cut through thick brush). Axes has been long standing weapons, whether it is due to their ability to incapacitate or to make fast kills. (I don’t know.)
Painful and terrible in any case.
I a … a … stutter? (Stupid keyboard.)
I think machetes at actually considered a subset of “knives”. They are big, I know, but still. Instant death seems pretty far-fetched.
My turn to acknowledge a typo: “…*are* actually considered…”
To be fair, this may simply be a clumsy translation of some stock police phrase meaning “dead at the scene” or something similar. The Post didn’t get it directly from the cops; they’re just reporting what the local AP stringer filed.
You only have seconds if you cut an artery and a machete is likely to get one.
Ah. What a relief. 8-(
Sadly, “butters” in the US are working diligently to ensure similar crimes can happen here.
…and the victim can be blamed.
Yes, of course, you are totally right … (no prize for guessing the completion.
CNN:
“Attacks on bloggers critical of Islam have taken on a disturbing regularity in Bangladesh, with yet another writer hacked to death Tuesday.”
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/12/asia/bangladesh-blogger-killed/index.html
From Paris, to Denmark, to Texas, to Bangladesh….
Reblogged this on JerBear's Queer World News, Views & More From The City Different – Santa Fe, NM and commented:
Another horrendous murder and hate crime in Bangladesh. A man killed for expressing his belief in science and secular society. No one should die for being an Atheist!
Bijoy was a courageous man, like the men who were killed before him and like all atheists currently living in Bangladesh and other islamic countries.
It makes me feel so much better that, according to Karen Armstrong, this crime was not caused by ‘true religion’. I wish she would go talk some sense into those A.Q. thugs! She’d give them a verbal whatfor!
Even Al-Qaeda would recoil at the thought of Karen Armstrong explaining True Islam™ to them.
Sub
How terrible.
Correct me if I am wrong, but “Das” is often an Indian name. Might be a “patriotic” element to the killing too …
Das is a fairly common Bengali last name (in both East and West Bengal). East Bengal became Bangaldesh in 1971.
Ah! I see – I know very little about that part of the world! Thanks for the information.
It’s appalling that some people believe that taking someone’s life is a just punishment for freethought …
And it’s lamentable that some people believe that freethought is something that deserves any kind of punishment in the first place!
How can the likes of Karen Armstrong think that punishments for blasphemy and apostasy are anything other than religiously motivated? The “crimes” can’t exist without religion!
/@
Darn, I’ve already said hear, hear here. Well, I’ll say it again, here: hear, hear!
http://iheu.org/third-atheist-writer-hacked-to-death-in-bangladesh-this-year/
That’s appalling! His life was at stake!
What, is Sweden fearing an invasion of atheists?
Another hell hole I’ll cross off my list to visit when I retire. Goodbye Sweden.
Having said that, my own country may not be any different?
It’s everywhere. No place to go. Nowhere to hide. I get the feeling we are caught in the river of human history, just following along wherever our human nature and destiny take us. No real progress, just ebb and flow of violent nonsense over the long haul. (apologies to Steven Pinker).
But it’s not true, of course. There is enormous progress, but it makes these awful outbursts of mental illness seem the more jarring.
Arifur Rahman told IHEU “… The word ‘Nastik’ (atheist) has been vilified in Bangladesh (and the rest of the Muslim world)…”
Hmmm…I thought it was just a small minority of extremists.
Reblogged this on showavery and commented:
I would like to believe that it is ture.
Dear Dr. Coyne
Probably this is not right place to ask you, but I felt the urge to ask with apology;
the last book late Ananta Bijoy had published was the translation of one of Francisco J. Ayala’s book on Evolution. He gave him the permission for free to translate some of his books in Bangla.
But your `Why Evolution is True’ is much more needed for Bangladeshi readers, it is difficult to publish about these topics in Bangladesh. But this year we managed a Bangla translation of the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.
When we ask for permission for your book, the agent ask for advance, which no publishers of Bangladesh are willing to pay, even the translators are not paid.. because of the uncertainly ( as we have pseudo Blasphemy law under the disguise of ICT law, where we can not publish certain things);
Some of the chapters of your book has already been translated in Bangla and available in my blog;
https://kmhb.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/%e0%a6%ac%e0%a6%bf%e0%a6%ac%e0%a6%b0%e0%a7%8d%e0%a6%a4%e0%a6%a8-%e0%a6%95%e0%a6%bf/
I tried to get permission since 2012; But it is difficult. You are a really and inspiring figure for our online community; So would it be possible to give us the permission to translate the book in Bangla for free. So that we can convince a publisher to actually publish the translation. It would be beneficial for so many Bangladeshi readers. Thanks
You should probably send that to Jerry’s U.C. email address (which you can find with a bit of clicking at the top of this page). He doesn’t necessarily see all of the comments on the web site.
Thank you !
There must be some way to collect such brave individuals, get them to Israel, teach them Krav Maga, and then return them home with some ability to defend themselves…
Krav Maga always sounded like the name of some elderly citizen.
“I can’t come out tonight because the whole family is going to the home to visit Krav Maga.”
“Check out the scarf Krav Maga knit me!”
That or the name of a Chinese food dish.
“I’ll have the moo goo guy pan and the Krav Maga. You don’t use MSG, do you?”
The 2015 Krav Maga does 0-60 in 5.7 seconds, I hear.
b&