American Blogger in Bangladesh Hacked To Death By Islamic Extremists

Another blogger has fallen victim to Islamic extremists. Avijit Roy, a Bangladesh-born U.S. citizen, was hacked to death during a walk with his wife in Dhaka as both were returning from a book fair at Dhaka University. How did he insult Islam? No, it wasn’t a cartoon or a satirical poem. He wrote about religious intolerance so they hacked him to death.

Roy was the founder of the Mukto-Mona (“free mind”) blog which maintained a community of free-thinkers, secularists, atheists and humanists in Bangladesh.

His wife, Rafida Ahmed, is also a blogger and she was seriously injured in the attack. The group, Ansar Bangla 7, claimed responsibility for the attack and said that Roy “was the target because of his crime against Islam.” They waited for Roy near a roadside tea stall and then hacked the couple with meat cleavers.

Islamic parties are on the rise in Bangladesh and have made the adoption of criminal blasphemy laws a priority.

Roy angered many Muslims by defending atheism as “a rational concept to oppose any unscientific and irrational belief.”

Roy’s death followed the killing in 2013 of another blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, who also spoke out against religious extremism.

Roy wrote about the right of every person to follow the religious or secular path that they believed in. For that, these fanatics butchered him in the street.