We have another murder of an intellectual in Bangladesh by suspected Islamic extremists. The Latest and seventh victim was English professor Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, was hacked from behind with machetes as he walked to the bus station from his home in the country’s northwestern city of Rajshahi. These cowards often use machetes and jump writers on public streets to murder them in the name of religion.
We have been discussing the surge of Islamic extremism in Bangladesh, particularly targeting secular writers. Law student and secular writer Nazimuddin Samad, 26, was the sixth such victim recently.
Siddique’s head was almost entirely cut off by the murderers according to reports. Yet, he was not viewed as an anti-Islamic writer or even that political. Yet, police say the attack follows the pattern of other Islamic extremist attacks. Siddique was involved in cultural programmes, including music, and set up a music school. He worked in Bagmara, a former bastion of a banned Islamist group, Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh, and may have earned the ire of Islamic extremists for his teaching of art and music. Recently reports say that a university student has been detained but the reports are conflicted on the reason.
Last year, eight members of banned Islamist group Ansarullah Bangla Team, including a top cleric, were convicted late last year for the murder of atheist blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider in February 2013. Nevertheless, clerics continue to teach young Muslims that they can please Allah by murdering those who have different values or seek secular government.
Hundreds of students of Rajshahi University marched to denounce the killers and to call for the protection of their professors.
Siddique was the fourth professor from Rajshahi University to have been murdered. For those of us who enjoy academic positions in this country, it is easy to forget the daily dangers and sacrifice of our counterparts in places like Bangladesh. Indeed, as so many university and college administrators rollback on free speech in the name of pluralism, it is important to see the importance of maintaining a bright line protecting the right of free speech as the bastion against extremism and orthodoxy around the world.
Siddique is survived by his wife Hosne Ara Sheera and his son Riyasat Imtiaz Sourav and daughter Rezwana Hasin Shatobi. I cannot imagine the pain that this family is experiencing but, as shown by hundreds of marching students, he lived a life that inspired others in a place that is descending into the darkness of religious extremism.
Source: Yahoo
“And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, – we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?” — Henry David Thoreau
This is especially true of news involving Islam.
Would you expect anything less from the “Religion” of Pieces, founded by a mass murdering pedophile? How many times do I have to ‘splain reality to you folks?
Justice Holmes and Olly it sounds as if both of you live in some sort of delusional world that is separate from reality.
I by choice live in a very heavily armed part of the country, and I assure you that people are not on edge. Not at all. Crime is EXTREMELY low. People of course feel very safe, because they can defend themselves and not have to depend on psychopaths in blue that may show up after their help is needed.
Americans have historically defended themselves and it was meant to be that way. All you get with police is a police state and the enforcement of the elites petty edicts on your life at the barrel of a gun.
Justice Holmes – Heinlein won 7 Hugos. Had 4 of his books made into movies. Was considered the Dean of Science Fiction Writers when he was alive. He still has a book in turn-around. Everyone knows it would make a great film. No one know how to make it.
So, Justice Holmes. Are your awards up to snuff?
These Islamic extremists WERE armed and hardly polite. A culture (and by extension its government) that does not value equality and unalienable rights will invariably descend into chaos; that’s IF they have ever risen out of it.
We don’t need no hackers round here.
Murder in the defense of ideas demonstrates just how weak those ideas are.
“Hackers” operate by different methods. Different stroke for different folks.
Theocrats are hazardous to humans no matter what their religion.
An armed society is an armed camp wherein everyone is on edge. It is hardly polite.
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer.
“An armed society is a polite society” ~Robert A. Heinlein
— Just another illustration of what happens to unarmed people.
Horrific deeds done by a horrific doctrine. The scholars who gloss over this meaning are guilty of innocent people who die, such as this man.