Irreligion in Bangladesh

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Irreligion in Bangladesh is rare and uncommon publicly. [1] A Gallup survey conducted between 2014 and 2015 found that approximately less than 1% identified as convinced atheists in the poll. [2] Bangladesh has 165.2 million people as of the 2022 census. [3] [4]

Contents

Persecution of irreligious people

Many secularist or irreligious bloggers who supported the anti-Islamist protests came under attack following the protests. [5] Amnesty International noted with concern the rise in communal violence against religious minorities, including attacks on Hindus. [6] [7]

In early April 2013, the police began arresting bloggers for hurting religious sentiments. Four bloggers, Subrata Adhikary Shuvo, Russell Parvez, Mashiur Rahman Biplob and Asif Mohiuddin (who was still recovering from his wounds), were arrested within days of one another. The blog, Amar Blog, was also taken down. [8] A religious group called Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh called for the hanging of the bloggers. [9] Asif Mohiuddin's blog was shut down by the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, and he was jailed for posting "offensive comments about Islam and Mohammed." [10] [11] The secular government arrested several other bloggers and blocked about a dozen websites and blogs, as well as giving police protection to some bloggers. [12]

International organisations, including Human Rights Watch, [13] Amnesty International, [14] Reporters without Borders [15] and the Committee to Protect Journalists [16] condemned the imprisonment of bloggers and the climate of fear for journalists. Worldwide protest and demonstrations were held on in 2013 to put pressure on the Bangladeshi government to free the arrested bloggers. Several humanist groups (including the IHEU, the Center for Inquiry, the British Humanist Association, American Atheists and the Secular Coalition for America) called for their release, among others including [17] Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin, Hemant Mehta, Maryam Namazie, PZ Myers, Avijit Roy, Abu Ahammad, Ajoy Roy, Qayyum Chowdhury, Ramendu Majumdar and Muhammad Zafar Iqbal. [18]

Taslima Nasrin, an author and self-described atheist, used to criticise rising religious fundamentalism and government inaction in her newspaper columns and books. In early 1992, mobs began attacking bookstores stocking her work. The same year she was assaulted at a book fair and her passport was confiscated. In July 1993, her novel Lajja was banned by the government on the claims that it created misunderstanding among the communities. On 23 September 1993, a fatwa was issued for her death. After international pressure, her passport returned in April 1994. She travelled to France and returned via India. On 4 July 1994, an arrest warrant was issued for hurting religious feelings and Nasrin went underground. On 3 August, she was granted bail, but she fled to Sweden and remained in exile. In 1998, she visited her critically ill mother in Bangladesh. In 2005, she moved to India and applied for citizenship. [19]

In 2003, Bangladeshi author Humayun Azad wrote a book about an Islamic fundamentalist group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh collaborating with the Pakistani army during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. Azad received numerous death threats from fundamentalists until his death the next year. [20] In May 2015, Humayun Azad's son, blogger Ananya Azad, was repeatedly threatened with death after publishing critiques of Islamist fundamentalism. [21] He was subsequently forced into exile in Europe. [22]

On 15 January 2013, Asif Mohiuddin, a self-styled atheist blogger (rational, gentle and Anti-Islamist), was stabbed near his office in Dhaka. He survived the attack. [23] On 15 February 2013, Ahmed Rajib Haider, a prominent anti-Islamist blogger, was found murdered by a machete outside his Dhaka home. [24] Mohiuddin, a winner of the BOBs award for online activism, was on an Islamist hit list that also included the murdered sociology professor Shafiul Islam. [25]

On the night of 7 March 2013, an atheist blogger Sunnyur Rahaman was attacked by two men who swooped on him and hacked him with machetes while shouting "Allahu Akbar". He came under attack around 9:00 pm near Purabi Cinema Hall in Mirpur. By the support of local police he was rushed to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital with wounds in his head, neck, right leg and left hand. [26]

On 26 February 2015, Avijit Roy, the founder of the Mukto-Mona blog, and his wife were attacked in Dhaka with machete-wielding assailants. Roy died on his way to the hospital. His wife was also seriously injured and lost a finger. [27] [28]

On 30 March 2015, blogger Washiqur Rahman was killed in a similar attack in Dhaka. The police arrested two suspects near the scene and recovered meat cleavers from them. The suspects said they killed Rahman due to his anti-Islamic articles. [29]

On 12 March 2015, another blogger Ananta Bijoy Das was attacked and murdered by masked men wielding machetes. Ananta Bijoy Das was the editor of the science magazine Jukti. [30]

List of prominent irreligious Bangladeshis

See also

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Humayun Azad was a Bangladeshi poet, novelist, short-story writer, critic, linguist, columnist and professor of Dhaka University. He wrote more than sixty titles. He was awarded the Bangla Academy Literary Award in 1986 for his contributions to Bengali linguistics. In 2012, the government of Bangladesh honored him with Ekushey Padak posthumously for his contributions to Bengali literature.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission</span> Independent commission of the Bangladeshi government

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) is an independent commission founded under the Bangladesh Telecommunication Act, 2001. The BTRC is responsible for regulating all matters related to telecommunications of Bangladesh. The chairman of the commission has the status of a judge of the Bangladesh High Court. Md. Emdad-Ul-Bari is the chairman of the commission.

The People's Republic of Bangladesh went from being a secular state in 1971 to having Islam as the state religion in 1988. Despite its state religion, Bangladesh uses a secular penal code dating from 1860—the time of the British occupation. The penal code discourages blasphemy by a section that forbids "hurting religious sentiments." Other laws permit the government to confiscate and to ban the publication of blasphemous material. Government officials, police, soldiers, and security forces may have discouraged blasphemy by extrajudicial actions including torture. Schools run by the government have Religious Studies in the curriculum.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">2013 Bengali blog blackout</span> Online protest in Bangladesh

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.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ansarullah Bangla Team</span> Terrorist organisation in Bangladesh

The Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), also known as Ansar-al Islam Bangladesh or Ansar Bangla is a pan-Islamist militant organization in Bangladesh, implicated in many terrorist activities including attacks and murders of atheist bloggers from 2013 to 2015. The organisation was outlawed by the Ministry of Home Affairs on 25 May 2015, days after the Ashulia bank robbery. The group has also been linked by the Detective Branch of Bangladesh Police to Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party.

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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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Asif Mohiuddin</span> Bangladeshi blogger and activist (born 1984)

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bonya Ahmed</span> American-Bangladeshi blogger and activist

Rafida Bonya Ahmed is a Bangladeshi-American who is a writer, blogger, and humanitarian activist. In 2020, she founded the educational channels Think Bangla and Think English on YouTube. Along with her husband Avijit Roy, she was attacked and badly wounded by machete-wielding Islamic extremists at the Ekushey Book Fair in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2015, and Roy was killed.

Attacks by Islamist 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.

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References

  1. ↑ Steve Crabtree (31 August 2010). "Religiosity Highest in World's Poorest Nations". Gallup.com . Retrieved 27 January 2014.
  2. ↑ "Losing Our Religion? Two Thirds of People Still Claim to Be Religious". Gallup International. 8 June 2015. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  3. ↑ Population and Housing Census 2022: Preliminary Report (PDF). Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. August 2022. pp. vii. ISBN   978-984-35-2977-0.
  4. ↑ "Census data confirm decline of Bangladesh's religious minorities". Asia News. 28 July 2022.
  5. ↑ ' "Activist, blogger and DW Bobs nominee Avijit Roy killed in Dhaka". Deutsche Welle. 26 February 2015.
  6. ↑ "Bangladesh: Wave of violent attacks against Hindu minority". Amnesty International. 6 March 2013. Archived from the original on 9 March 2013. Retrieved 9 March 2013.
  7. ↑ "Amnesty calls for protecting Hindus". bdnews24.com. 7 March 2013. Archived from the original on 10 March 2013. Retrieved 9 March 2013.
  8. ↑ Emran Hossain (4 April 2013). "Bangladesh Arrests 'Atheist Bloggers,' Cracking Down on Critics". Huffington Post . Retrieved 27 January 2014.
  9. ↑ Sabir Mustafa (6 May 2013). "Hefazat-e Islam: Islamist coalition". BBC News . Retrieved 27 January 2014.
  10. ↑ "Bangladesh gags award-winning blogger". Deutsche Welle. 25 May 2013.
  11. ↑ "Blogger granted bail on health grounds". Reporters without Borders. 7 August 2013. Archived from the original on 21 March 2015. Retrieved 20 April 2015.
  12. ↑ "American atheist blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh". The Guardian. 27 February 2015.
  13. ↑ "Bangladesh: Crackdown on Bloggers, Editors Escalates". Human Rights Watch . 15 April 2013. "the government is abandoning any serious claim that it is committed to free speech," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch."
  14. ↑ "Bangladesh: Further information: Detained editor alleges torture". Amnesty International. 17 April 2013. Blogger Asif Mohiudeen, arrested on 3 April for allegedly posting blasphemous comments online, remains in detention and at risk of torture
  15. ↑ "Call for detained blogger's immediate release". Reporters without Borders. 11 April 2013. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 20 April 2015. Reporters Without Borders condemns the baseless judicial proceedings brought against the detained blogger Asif Mohiuddin, who could be tried and convicted on a charge of blasphemy and "hurting religious sentiments" at his next hearing
  16. ↑ "Attacks on the Press – Bangladesh". Committee to Protect Journalists. February 2014.
  17. ↑ Avijit Roy (8 May 2013). "The Struggle of Bangladeshi Bloggers". Skeptic. Retrieved 6 June 2013.
  18. ↑ "The Struggle of Bangladeshi Bloggers". Skeptic. 8 May 2013. Retrieved 6 June 2013.
  19. ↑ Margaret Bald (2006). Literature Suppressed on Religious Grounds. Infobase Publishing. p. 177. ISBN   978-0-8160-7148-7.
  20. ↑ "Proper probe into death of Humayun Azad demanded". Daily Star. 12 August 2009.
  21. ↑ Hammadi, Saad (28 May 2015). "Bangladeshi blogger named on hitlist warned: 'You will be next'". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  22. ↑ Burke, Jason (23 September 2015). "Militant group publishes global hitlist of bloggers, activists and writers". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  23. ↑ "'Militant atheist' blogger stabbed in Bangladesh". Hindustan Times . Agence France-Presse. 15 January 2013. Archived from the original on 17 December 2014. Retrieved 27 January 2014.
  24. ↑ "Anti-Islamist blogger killed in Bangladesh: police". Agence France-Presse . 15 February 2013. Archived from the original on 18 February 2013. Retrieved 27 January 2014.
  25. ↑ "Bloggers on hit-list posted by supposed Islamist group in Bangladesh". 19 November 2014. Archived from the original on 18 March 2016. Retrieved 20 April 2015.
  26. ↑ "Youth hacked injured at Mirpur". The Daily Star. Archived from the original on 27 June 2015. Retrieved 20 April 2015.
  27. ↑ "American atheist blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh". The Guardian . 27 February 2015. Retrieved 27 February 2015.
  28. ↑ "Atheist US blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh". The Telegraph . 27 February 2015. Retrieved 27 February 2015.
  29. ↑ "Knife attack kills Bangladesh blogger Washiqur Rahman". BBC News . 30 March 2015. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  30. ↑ "Bangladesh blogger hacked to death by masked assailants". Irish Times . 12 March 2015. Retrieved 12 May 2015.
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