The modern-day grisly murder came about this week in Dhaka. Multiple assailants made their way into a rental building and hacked to demise Xulhaz Mannan, a gay rights activist, and Tony Majumder. In keeping with reports, the attackers shouted “Allahu…

The modern-day grisly murder came about this week in Dhaka. Multiple assailants made their way into a rental building and hacked to demise Xulhaz Mannan, a gay rights activist, and Tony Majumder. In keeping with reports, the attackers shouted “Allahu Akbar” earlier than leaving the scene. A set affiliated with al-Qaeda claimed obligation for the incident.

Simply days before, a professor of English within the city of Rajshahi changed into stabbed inside the neck via a student. A word from the Islamic kingdom’s online media organization hailed the killing, announcing it changed into the result of the instructional’s “calling to atheism.” government expressed doubts that transnational terror businesses had an instantaneous function in any of those murders. Still, it’s no simple that Bangladesh is inside the grips of a surprising and nearly systematic purge of outspoken secularists by self-appointed Islamist vigilantes.

In 2015, five secular bloggers had been killed in separate assaults. Every incident sparked headlines and outrage; however, the grim toll has persisted into this year. Ever in view that a hit listing of secularists become posted in 2013, fringe Islamist businesses have made it acknowledged that bloggers and secular activists who communicate out towards faith or in the desire of atheism will be under threat. This has been compounded by top Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government’s incapacity to rein in extremist violence in a rustic with a long record of extrajudicial murder and impunity.

“The first mistake by using Ms. Hasina’s authorities turned into to yield to hardline Muslim views on the supposed horrors of atheism or homosexuality rather than standing up for pluralism and secularism,” writes financial times’ journalist Victor Mallet. “The second one became the sustained attack by way of security forces and the judiciary on authorities warring parties, together with editors and liberal and Islamist politicians.” He adds: “The truth is that the authorities face a tough undertaking in preventing terrorists, who are generally local radicals impressed via international manufacturers consisting of [the Islamic State], however, is making the task nonetheless more difficult by way of persecuting its legitimate warring parties and riding them underground.”

Caught within the dragnet are an increasing number of the embattled set of activists, scientists, free-thinkers, Hindus, and humanists, endangered with the aid of Islamist enmities and now not sufficiently protected by using a state that has distanced itself from the cause of vocal atheists. Below are only some extracts of what some slain bloggers wrote. (a far more collection of posts and essays in Bengali can be determined through hyperlinks in those websites.)

I have a profound hobby in freethinking, skepticism, philosophy, medical thoughts, and human rights of people,” he had written earlier on his Facebook page. Roy, an engineer with the aid of education, was outspoken approximately his secular perspectives and wrote numerous books. The mum or dad started a scathing extract from considered one of his writings:

If one considers Qur’an as a systematic book then, they must have the ability to show us at least one medical principle this is disclosed within the Qur’an without using any mumbo jumbo phrases and hocus pocus boring tricks of a problem with the confusing translation of the Qur’an… furthermore, if a really perfect e-book written by using a great God having the aim to reveal a scientific idea, it should now not were so vague and metaphoric, but accurate and medical sufficient that it could be installed a physics /chemistry/biology textbook without the need of any trade. Now, not an unmarried verse within the Holy Books includes even one clinical term, like an atom, electron, cloning, relativity theory, uncertainty principle, etc.

Washiqur Rahman, a 27-12 months-old blogger, turned into murdered outside his Dhaka home via a trio of guys armed with machetes just weeks after Roy’s death. A banner on Rahman‘s FB page was declared at the time #IAmAvijit, in solidarity and his slain colleague. A poetic lament that Rahman had in advance written turned into circulated inside the wake of his demise:

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today is Bangladesh’s liberation day

The Mullah has freedom, extremists have freedom, Muslims have freedom, the corrupt have freedom, political leaders have freedom, adulates of the political leaders have freedom, rapists are free, the armed forces are unfastened, so-known as civil society is free, intellectuals who aid Islamists, additionally they have freedom, nonsecular leaders have freedom, the garment manufacturing facility proprietors have freedom, the ferry proprietors have freedom.

• Now not free: the farmers and labors
• now not unfastened: indigenous people and minorities
• no longer free: Freethinkers
• not unfastened: all the folks who just want to be human…

Ananta Bijoy Das, some other famous blogger, turned into murdered last May also in Sylhet, a region to the east of the capital. Amongst other matters, Das wrote strenuously on his FB web page towards individuals who believed in secession from the relaxation of Bangladesh:

We must rise in protest in opposition to this anti-innovative regionalism right now. Nice effects cannot be arrived at in an aggressive global via retaining ourselves organized in agencies. No one with a free mind can be indoctrinated in regional fundamentalism or limit themselves within narrowmindedness walls. The world may be vast. However, our properly-behaved hypocrites are still quite primitive; it’s time for them to crawl out of the well and think about our large universe from a brand new perspective.

Niloy Chatterjee, who went by way of the pen name Niloy Neel, was murdered in August in his rental, his body brutally mutilated through his attackers. “His blood [was] spattered everywhere in the books he loved,” stated a Bangladeshi secularist blog. No longer long after the loss of Das’s life, Chatterjee had published a notice on his FB page detailing an incident in which he believed he became tailed utilizing suspicious individuals.