Muhammad Yunus is being targeted in this way because he signed a statement protesting against the prosecution of gay people in Uganda. Yet gay activists in the U.S. such as Chris Stedman and Theresa Sparks prefer to attack those who call attention to the plight of gays in the Islamic world, thereby running interference for the oppressors.
“Bangladesh targets only Nobel prize winner, claims he is ‘un-Islamic,'” from Sapa-AFP, October 24 (thanks to Twostellas):
After being accused of “sucking blood” from the poor, Bangladesh’s only Nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus faces a new state-backed hate campaign seeking to paint him as un-Islamic and a spreader of homosexuality.
Following years of attempts to discredit his legacy as a pioneer of micro-finance – since copied the world over as a development tool – the hounding has turned more personal and dangerous.
The perceived crime of the 73-year-old was to sign a joint statement along with three other Nobel laureates in April 2012 criticising the prosecution of gay people in Uganda.
Little remarked at the time, it has since been seized on by the Islamic Foundation, a government religious body, and amplified through tens of thousands of imams on its payrolls.
Protests have been held, leaflets calling him “an accomplice of Jews and Christians” have been distributed, and a “grand rally” has been called for October 31 in the capital Dhaka to denounce him….
In 2011, he was forced out of the board of his beloved Grameen Bank by the central bank in a move widely believed to be orchestrated by the prime minister who accused him famously of “sucking blood from the poor”….
The Islamic Foundation is part of the Ministry of Religious Affairs with a mandate to promote Islam.
Director General Shamim Mohammad Afzal told AFP that it was his “moral responsibility” as a Muslim and head of the organisation to take a stand against the man nicknamed the “banker to the poor”.
“His statement has gone against the Koran and Hadith,” Afzal told AFP, referring to the traditions of the Prophet Mohammad.
In speeches to clerics all over the country, Afzal has told them of their religious duty to protest Yunus’s stand on homosexuality. One imam told AFP that he had been pressured to join rallies against his wishes.
The imam, who works in a southern district and asked not to be named, said clerics were asked to hold banners and distribute leaflets printed by the local Islamic Foundation office.
“Yunus has become an apostate for supporting homosexuality. He must publicly apologise, or we’ll force him to leave the country like Taslima Nasreen,” Maolana Moniruzzaman Rabbani, an organiser of anti-Yunus campaign, told AFP….
Bangladesh is 90 percent Muslim. Although it is officially secular, Islam is the state religion.
Homosexuality is a crime punishable by a maximum life term but prosecutions are rare….