Himself a famous victim of what he called "The Virus of Faith"

Avijit Roy, Free Inquiry

AR wrote just weeks ago,

One of my recent publishers, Jagriti Prakashani, timed the publication of my book Biswasher Virus (Bengali for The Virus of Faith) to coincide with the book fair of 2014. 

As soon as the book was released, it rose to the top of the fair’s best-seller list. 

At the same time, it hit the cranial nerve of Islamic fundamentalists. 

The death threats started flowing to my e-mail inbox on a regular basis. 

I suddenly found myself a target of militant Islamists and terrorists. 

A well-known extremist by the name of Farabi Shafiur Rahman openly issued death threats to me through his numerous Facebook statuses [sic]. 

In one widely circulated status [sic], Rahman wrote, “Avijit Roy lives in America and so, it is not possible to kill him right now. But he will be murdered when he comes back.”

Bangladesh authorities arrest radical Islamist Farabi Shafiur Rahman

In The Guardian today,

A former physics student at a top university, Farabi was detained in 2010 after he joined Hizbut Tahrir and was arrested again after the murder of another atheist blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, in February 2013, but was released on bail.

Just another story of secularism betrayed by democracy into the hands of theocracy, clericalism and bigotry.

Avijit Roy and Bangla Desh

He was a hero to many Bangladeshis, but few if any in the west will be declaring that they are Avijit in the way so many of us announced we were Charlie after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. 

But there are lots of Avijits outside the west, genuinely brave individuals who put their lives on the line to uphold values and freedoms that we take for granted: Ahmed Rajib Haider, another Bangladeshi atheist who was killed because of what he wrote; Raif Badawi, a Saudi Arabian blogger who has been flogged in public and is in prison for “insulting Islam”; Karim Ashraf Mohamed al-Banna, jailed for three years in Egypt, again for “insulting Islam” by simply declaring he is an atheist; Kacem El Ghazzali, who lives in exile after death threats in his home country of Morocco – the list is long and depressing.

The attacks in Paris and Copenhagen shocked the west, but killing people for expressing their views is almost routine elsewhere. 

According to a report by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, “Non-religious people are being targeted by ‘hate campaigns’ in countries around the world.”

Make no mistake.

The problem is especially, though not only, one of Muslim violence and intolerance.