Islamic jihadists apparently believe that they can move violently against critics of jihad terror with no fear of adverse consequences; the people who should be defending the freedom of speech are everywhere in retreat. The jihadis have nothing to fear.
“American writer hacked to death in Bangladesh spoke out against extremists,” CNN, February 28, 2015:
In his writings, author Avijit Roy said he yearned for reason and humanism guided by science.
He had no place for religious dogma, including from Islam, the main religion of his native Bangladesh.
Extremists resented him for openly and regularly criticizing religion in his blog. They threatened to kill him if he came home from the United States to visit.
On Thursday, someone did.
As usual, Roy defied the threats and departed his home in suburban Atlanta for Dhaka, where he appeared at a speaking engagement about his latest books — one of them titled “The Virus of Faith.” He has written seven books in all.
As he walked back from the book fair, assailants plunged machetes and knives into Roy and his wife, killing him and leaving her bloodied and missing a finger.
Afterward, an Islamist group “Ansar Bangla-7″ reportedly tweeted, “Target Down here in Bangladesh.”
Investigators are proceeding on the notion that Roy’s murder was an extremist attack. His father, Ajay Roy, filed a case of murder with the Shahbagh police Friday without naming suspects.
No one came to their aid as they were hacked down, a witness said. “I shouted for help from the people but nobody came to save him.”…
To the most devout and to extremists, Roy’s criticisms amounted to blasphemy. He took aim at the sentiment in a blog post headlined, “Happy Blasphemy Day, Happy Birthday ‘Mukto Mona.’”
Some who felt oppressed by religion said he spoke for them.
“Avijit Roy, your voice of reason and your passion for free thinking will never die. You were a voice to so many voiceless,” a fan wrote after his death.
How stark was his criticism?
Very. Roy and the blog’s other critics took off the gloves when it came to religion, particularly Islam.
Roy was a fan of Bill Maher’s harsh reproach of Islam and a critic of Reza Aslan, who has countered Maher’s standpoint.
His blog called Aslan “an Islamic apologist, who obviously feels threatened by the growing Atheist movement in the U.S. and worldwide.”
Roy likened women in burkas to “living zombies,” tweeting out a cartoon of one standing next to a child dressed as a ghost for Halloween.Did he blame religion for violence?
Yes. He began one of his final articles by writing that January’s Charlie Hebdo massacre in France was “a tragic atrocity committed by soldiers of the so-called religion of peace.”
He doled out scathing criticism after another Bangladeshi blogger was hacked to death outside his home in 2013 by assailants with machetes.“The virus of faith was the weapon that made these atrocities possible,” Roy wrote.
But he also criticized Christianity. “So, Pope Francis thinks ‘evolution is real’! And it is still a major headline news in this century,” he recently tweeted….
That’s likely. He regularly attended a February book fair in the Bangladeshi capital, and last year, after he launched “The Virus of Faith,” the death threats began streaming in.
They landed in his email inbox and cropped up on social media.
“A well-known extremist … openly issued death threats to me through his numerous Facebook statuses,” Roy wrote.
His book “hit the cranial nerve of Islamic fundamentalists,” Roy wrote. After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, an online Bangladeshi bookstore pulled it after extremists put pressure on it.
But is seemed the author was safe in Alpharetta.
“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,” the Islamist wrote, according to Roy….