Humanists International is an international non-governmental organisation championing secularism and human rights, motivated by secular humanist values. Founded in Amsterdam in 1952, it is an umbrella organisation made up of more than 160 secular humanist, atheist, rationalist, agnostic, skeptic, freethought and Ethical Culture organisations from over 80 countries.
Ila Mitra was an Indian communist and peasants movement organizer of the Indian subcontinent, especially in East Bengal.
Ahmed Sofa was a Bangladeshi writer, thinker, novelist, poet, philosopher and public intellectual. Sofa is considered by many, including National Professor Abdur Razzaq and Salimullah Khan, to be the most important Bengali Muslim writer after Mir Mosharraf Hossain and Kazi Nazrul Islam. A writer by occupation, Sofa wrote 18 non-fiction books, 8 novels, 4 collections of poems, 2 collections of short stories, and several books in other genres.
Shahriyar Kabir is a Bangladeshi journalist, filmmaker, human rights activist, and author of more than 70 books focusing on human rights, communism, fundamentalism, history, and the Bangladesh war of independence. He was awarded Bangla Academy Literary Award in 1995.
Aroj Ali Matubbar was a Bangladeshi self-taught philosopher and rationalist. He was known for his critical perspectives on religion, superstition and traditional beliefs in his writings.
Ajoy Roy was a Bangladeshi professor of physics at the University of Dhaka, but was best known for his prominent role in Bangladesh's human rights activism and freethinking. He was one of the eminent educationists promoting secular humanism in Bangladesh.
Mizan Rahman was a Bangladeshi Canadian mathematician and writer. He specialized in fields of mathematics such as hypergeometric series and orthogonal polynomials. He also had interests encompassing literature, philosophy, scientific skepticism, freethinking and rationalism. He co-authored Basic Hypergeometric Series with George Gasper. This book is widely considered as the standard work of choice for that subject of study. He also published ten Bengali books.
On 4 April 2013 all Bengali blogs were blacked out for an indefinite time to protest the arrest of four bloggers in Bangladesh. The blackout was to back a demand for the unconditional release of the arrested bloggers. A fundamentalist group named Hefajat-e-Islam Bangladesh started a campaign to hang freethinking bloggers, and demanding tough blasphemy laws. In response, the government started monitoring Bengali blog sites and sending letters to their authorities to terminate the alleged "anti-religious" blogs and provide information about the alleged "anti-religious" bloggers. Individual bloggers showed their solidarity with this blackout by changing their profile photos on Facebook and by tweeting with the #MuzzleMeNot hashtag. Different international organizations expressed deep concern about taking free-thinking bloggers into custody. After 92 hours of blackout, blogs returned online by publishing a press release on their central Facebook page.
Ahmed Rajib Haider was a Bangladeshi atheist blogger. He used to blog in the blogging communities namely somewhereinblog.net, amarblog.com and nagorikblog.com and used the pseudonym Thaba Baba.
The Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), also known as Ansar-al Islam Bangladesh/Ansar Bangla is an Islamic organization in Bangladesh, implicated in crimes including some brutal attacks and murders of atheist bloggers from 2013 to 2015 and a bank heist in April 2015. The gang was outlawed days after the bank robbery by the Ministry of Home Affairs on 25 May 2015. The group has been claimed by police to be linked to Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami party in Bangladesh.
The Worldwide Protests for Free Expression in Bangladesh were a series of rallies outside Bangladeshi embassies and consulates to demand the release of four Bangladeshi bloggers who had been arrested on charges of blasphemy. The protests took place on 25 April – 2 May 2013 and were organised by the Center for Inquiry (CFI), American Atheists, and the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Demonstrations were held in Dhaka, New York City, Washington, D.C., London, Ottawa and other cities around the world. Secularists sought to express their solidarity with those jailed for speaking their minds about religion. Protesters drew attention to those who were being persecuted for exercising free speech, seeking to convince the international community to exert influence to have the bloggers set free by the Bangladeshi government.
Irreligion in Bangladesh is rare and uncommon publicly. A Gallup survey conducted between 2014 – 2015 found that approximately less than 1% identified as convinced atheists in the poll. Bangladesh has 169.8 million people as of the 2022 census.
2015 (MMXV) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2015th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 15th year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 6th year of the 2010s decade.
Avijit Roy was a Bangladeshi-American engineer, online activist, writer, and blogger known for creating and administrating the Mukto-Mona, an Internet blogging community for Bangladeshi freethinkers, rationalists, skeptics, atheists, and humanists. Roy was an advocate of free expression in Bangladesh and coordinated international protests against government censorship and imprisonment of atheist bloggers. He was killed by machete-wielding assailants in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on 26 February 2015; the Islamic militant organization Ansarullah Bangla Team claimed responsibility for the attack.
Asif Mohiuddin is a Bangladeshi atheist and secular activist, religious critic and feminist. In 2012, he won The Bobs-Best of Online Activism award from Deutsche Welle, who stated that "Asif's blog was one of the most read web pages in Bangladesh and is known for its strong criticism of Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh's "anti-people politics", his blog was later blocked and banned in Bangladesh by its government. On 15 January 2013, he survived an assassination attempt by Islamic extremists. A few months later, he was imprisoned twice by the Bangladesh Government for posting "offensive comments about Islam and Mohammad". Due to sustained international pressure, Mohiuddin was released, after which he fled from his country to Germany in 2014. In 2015, he received the Anna Politkovskaya Prize for Journalism, awarded by Italian magazine Internazionale.
Attacks by Islamic extremists in Bangladesh took place during a period of turbulence in Bangladesh between 2013 and 2016 when a number of secularist and atheist writers, bloggers, and publishers in Bangladesh; foreigners; homosexuals; and religious minorities such as Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Ahmadis who were seen as having offended Islam and Muhammad were attacked in retaliation, with many killed by Muslim extremists. By 2 July 2016, a total of 48 people, including 20 foreign nationals, had been killed in such attacks. These attacks were largely blamed on extremist groups such as Ansarullah Bangla Team and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The Bangladeshi government was criticized for its response to the attacks, which included charging and jailing some of the secularist bloggers for allegedly defaming some religious groups; or hurting the religious sentiments of different religious groups; or urging the bloggers to flee overseas. This strategy was seen by some as pandering to hard line elements within Bangladesh's Muslim majority population. About 89% of the population in Bangladesh is Sunni Muslim. The government's eventual crackdown in June 2016 was also criticized for its heavy-handedness, as more than 11,000 people were arrested in a little more than a week.
Mukto-Mona is a Bengali language blog for secularists, atheists, and freethinkers. It was founded by Avijit Roy who was subsequently killed by militants in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The attackers are believed to be members of Ansarullah Bangla Team.
Kaberi Gayen is a Bangladeshi academic, author, and social activist known for her outspoken views on the oppression of minorities and gender inequality in Bangladesh.
Quazi Nawshaba Ahmed is a Bangladeshi actress, voice artist, painter, puppeteer, director and a social activist.
Anupama Mukti is a Bangladeshi playback singer. She is most remembered for her superb rendition in 2005 film Hajar Bochor Dhore. She earned prestigious Bachsas Awards and nominated for National Film Awards.
