Didn’t this Muslim cleric realize that Islam is tolerant and peaceful? How did he come to misunderstand Islam so spectacularly? “Cleric, students charged with ‘athesist’ [sic] blogger’s murder,” from AFP, January 29 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
Bangladesh police have charged seven students of an elite university and a cleric over the murder of an allegedly atheist blogger who was critical of Islam and Islamic groups.
The students are accused of hacking to death Ahmed Rajib Haider, 35, near his home in Dhaka in February last year, days after he helped launch a campaign against Islamist leaders accused of war crimes.
Police also charged an imam from a Dhaka mosque with instigating the murder by allegedly preaching that it was legal to kill atheist bloggers who campaigned against Islam.
“They killed him for his blasphemous writings against Islam and the Prophet Mohammed,” Dhaka police deputy commissioner Masudur Rahman told AFP.
“The students used to go to the Mohammadpur mosque to listen to the sermons of the imam. They were inspired by his sermons to carry out the attack on the blogger,” he said.
The body of Haider, better known by his Bengali online identity Thaba Baba, was found with hatchet wounds to the head in what police said was an apparent attempt to behead him.
Six out of the seven men — all of whom are students of the prestigious and private North South University — and the imam have been arrested and are being held in jail, Rahman said.
Haider’s killing was the second attack in Dhaka against bloggers critical of Islam, after the stabbing of a self-styled “militant atheist” by three unidentified men in January last year.
After Haider’s death, Bangladesh’s Islamic parties started to protest against other campaigning bloggers, calling a series of nationwide strikes to demand their execution, accusing them of blasphemy.
The secular government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina reacted by arresting four bloggers including the “militant atheist” who was allegedly attacked by the same group of students accused of the murder.
The government also blocked about a dozen websites and blogs to stem the furor over blasphemy, as well as stepping up security for the bloggers….

Champ says
Critical of islam? Undoubtedly he wrote the Truth about islam and company and how violent they truly are. Sadly, being hacked to death proved his point.
islam: religion of brutality and bloodshed
Jay Boo says
If it were actually possible to insult the depravity called ‘Islam’
hacking someone to death in name of religion would be the ‘insult’.
Steffen Larsen says
This is the North South University, whose website has very, very little to say on anything except secular education. There’s a prayer room, and the code of conduct refers to the creator. That’s about it.
http://www.northsouth.edu/
Sovereign Man says
I have a theory on religion and beliefs in that they evolve similarly to organisms – mental viruses if you will. The strongest systems of thought are the ones that are best at propagation, and shutting down competing thought.
Islam seems to be the most successful strain yet; it not only takes over the host with unequaled single-mindedness of purpose and simplicity, but all actions required to be taken by the host reinforce it (5-times daily prayer, abstinence from all earthly pleasures, etc.), and it commands the host to destroy other systems of though. Like in nature, only the strongest survive, and I can only imagine how many other religions and belief systems have existed over the millennia that did not advocate violence and self supremacy, only to be destroyed by newer, more virulent strains.
However, like especially deadly plagues, ultra-violent mind diseases either bring about their own extinction or eventually cause resistance in the host. In the case of Islam, this resistance comes from ignorance of the Koran. However, the latent foundation is still there in the minds of people born into Islam, and the violent aspects can be re-activated easily.
The only hope of mankind is that many strong ideas and belief systems are inherently non-violent – such as Christianity. But there is no question that Christianity is on the decline, and Islam is on the rise. Nihilism is no match for a strong belief, and the West is dire need of a strong ideal to counter Islam with. Under Reagan, the ideas of liberty and opportunity were used to unite the West to battle communism.
What will counter Islam? Certainly turning the other cheek, however noble that is, will not work when a crocodile is determined to eat you.
gravenimage says
Sovereign Man wrote:
I have a theory on religion and beliefs in that they evolve similarly to organisms – mental viruses if you will. The strongest systems of thought are the ones that are best at propagation, and shutting down competing thought.
……………………………………..
This is not an original idea—it is the “Meme” concept. But democracy (and I mean democracy with safeguards for minorities and the individual, not just mob rule) has been quite successful in the civilized world, and it *does not* work by shutting down competing thought—just the opposite, in face.
You are, in fact, experiencing this ‘meme’ right now on the Jihad Watch comments.
More:
Islam seems to be the most successful strain yet; it not only takes over the host with unequaled single-mindedness of purpose and simplicity, but all actions required to be taken by the host reinforce it (5-times daily prayer, abstinence from all earthly pleasures, etc.), and it commands the host to destroy other systems of though.
……………………………………..
This doesn’t explain why in shear numbers Christianity is almost twice as successful as Islam, considering that it doesn’t force its ‘hosts’ to do any of those things.
More::
Like in nature, only the strongest survive, and I can only imagine how many other religions and belief systems have existed over the millennia that did not advocate violence and self supremacy, only to be destroyed by newer, more virulent strains.
……………………………………..
Species survive in a whole range of ways in nature, from spawning massive numbers of progeny to symbiotic relationships to brute force.
In your weltanshauung, it would not be possible for songbirds or rabbits or even humans to survive at all—just tigers and sharks and piranha fish.
More:
The only hope of mankind is that many strong ideas and belief systems are inherently non-violent – such as Christianity. But there is no question that Christianity is on the decline, and Islam is on the rise.
……………………………………..
This is questionable. Christianity appears to be in some decline in the West—not so in the “third world”, where is it flourishing.
More:
Nihilism is no match for a strong belief, and the West is dire need of a strong ideal to counter Islam with. Under Reagan, the ideas of liberty and opportunity were used to unite the West to battle communism.
……………………………………..
I very much agree with you here—there is altogether too much nihilism and self-loathing in the West. The insane thing is that Western civilization actually has a great deal to be proud of.
More:
What will counter Islam? Certainly turning the other cheek, however noble that is, will not work when a crocodile is determined to eat you.
……………………………………..
It is a canard that Christians are not allowed to defend themselves—Christians did so at Poiters, at Lepanto, and at the Gates of Vienna.
But yes—we need a great deal more pride in our culture and accomplishments. Given Hollande’s horrific suggested suicidal program in France that they toss out French culture and embrace that of the “Arabs”, it is clear that we face an uphill battle.
Sovereign Man says
I suppose you are right about the meme thing. I have been thinking along these lines for a while, but never looked too much into what others have been writing. Modern philosophy tends to be dominated by unoriginal socialists, moral relativists, and nihilists, and I prefer to reason out things on my own.
In regards to the rabbit thing, remember I said “The strongest systems of thought are the ones that are best at propagation” – Islam is very good at this, Mormonism another. Humans are an exception to the animal kingdom in many ways. Also, my “theory” is more of an allegory; human nature is impossible to categorize and apply absolutes to.
You are right about Christianity growing in the Third World; I’m not sure about the overall growth rates, but in the West rational forms of it are definitely in decline. There is growth among certain “Christian” cults and denominations like the Pentecostals and Evangelicals that I find worrying.
I know well the history of the Islamic invasion of Europe. I think that the defense of Europe was at odds with the central message of Christ, but it was an entirely rational course of action to take. A lesser belief system would simply have folded.
I am not a literal believer in the whole biblical story, or the Resurrection, but I try to follow the teachings of Christ, especially the Golden Rule. I also value the Judeo-Christian heritage that allowed the West to flourish.
In all, the whole situation is annoyingly predictable, and has historically happened too many times to count. I wish kids these days would get some grounding in Western history, but it isn’t likely to happen. A good place to start, accessible to all, would be Kenneth Clark’s Civilization series from the BBC in 1969. I’m relatively young (under 30) and NONE of what I learned from that series was taught in school or the University programs I took.
gravenimage says
Thanks so much for your thoughtful reply, Sovereign Man.
You wrote:
I suppose you are right about the meme thing. I have been thinking along these lines for a while, but never looked too much into what others have been writing. Modern philosophy tends to be dominated by unoriginal socialists, moral relativists, and nihilists, and I prefer to reason out things on my own.
…………………………..
You are certainly right about the appalling state of what passes for modern philosophy, Sovereign Man. That is, in fact, a big part of the problem in the West right now. A culture can only absorb so much irrationality and false moral equivalence before it is seriously harmed by it.
More:
You are right about Christianity growing in the Third World; I’m not sure about the overall growth rates, but in the West rational forms of it are definitely in decline. There is growth among certain “Christian” cults and denominations like the Pentecostals and Evangelicals that I find worrying.
…………………………..
Maybe so—but I an *far* more concerned about the influx of Muslims into the West.
More:
I know well the history of the Islamic invasion of Europe. I think that the defense of Europe was at odds with the central message of Christ, but it was an entirely rational course of action to take. A lesser belief system would simply have folded.
I am not a literal believer in the whole biblical story, or the Resurrection, but I try to follow the teachings of Christ, especially the Golden Rule. I also value the Judeo-Christian heritage that allowed the West to flourish.
In all, the whole situation is annoyingly predictable, and has historically happened too many times to count. I wish kids these days would get some grounding in Western history, but it isn’t likely to happen. A good place to start, accessible to all, would be Kenneth Clark’s Civilization series from the BBC in 1969. I’m relatively young (under 30) and NONE of what I learned from that series was taught in school or the University programs I took.
…………………………..
Good for you for studying history! This is something that is much lacking today in the West. There is actually—along with the “politically correct” dreck a great deal of excellent historical scholarship today, but the average student is lacking in even basic knowledge of their history and culture.
This is another of the major problems in the West today.
And while my generation—I am about twenty years older than you—learned almost nothing about Islam in school, at least we weren’t bombarded with Taqiyya and the whitewash of Islam, as so many students are now.
Westerners actually should take a great deal of pride in our history. But all too many are not just self-critical—which can be a good thing, and lead to important reforms like the abolition of slavery and universal suffrage—but are actually filled with suicidal self-loathing.
And Islam is poised to take advantage of this weakness in the West.
Really, the West is clearly superior to Islam in every way—intellectually, technologically, and especially morally—but the modern trend of Western self-hatred could cause it to fall, unless we can turn the tide.
Salah says
What would they do to a muslim tearing up the qur’an?
http://crossmuslims.blogspot.ca/2014/01/egyptian-muslims-tear-up-quran.html
gravenimage says
Bangladesh: Muslim cleric and students charged for hacking “atheist” blogger to death for insulting Islam and Muhammad
………………………………………….
This just goes to show that even after all my years of being exposed to the bloody barbarism of Islam that my main frame of reference is the civilized world—I had to read this headline twice to make sense of it, even though it is written very clearly.
Reading “blogger” and “hacking” together, for just a split second I thought that the students had “hacked” his web site—not that they had literally hacked the poor man to death.
*Good God*.
More:
Didn’t this Muslim cleric realize that Islam is tolerant and peaceful? How did he come to misunderstand Islam so spectacularly? “Cleric, students charged with ‘athesist’ [sic] blogger’s murder,” from AFP, January 29 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
Bangladesh police have charged seven students of an elite university and a cleric over the murder of an allegedly atheist blogger who was critical of Islam and Islamic groups.
…………………………………………
“Elite university”—so much for the idea that poverty causes “extremism”. And note: this bloody slaughter was led by a Muslim cleric—hardly someone who is likely to be “misunderstanding” Islam here.
Also, the label “atheist” would just be a descriptive term in the West—here it is clearly an epithet. It is actually fairly unlikely that the victim was an actual atheist—any critic of Islam, even devout Muslims, can be so characterized.
More:
The students are accused of hacking to death Ahmed Rajib Haider, 35, near his home in Dhaka in February last year, days after he helped launch a campaign against Islamist leaders accused of war crimes.
…………………………………………
Accusing thugs of war crimes = Haram. Hacking someone to death for daring to criticize those suspected of war crimes = perfectly Halal.
And *this* is what makes him an “atheist”—because everyone knows that war crimes are perfectly Islamic. After all, how many war crimes was the “Prophet” himself guilty of?
More:
Police also charged an imam from a Dhaka mosque with instigating the murder by allegedly preaching that it was legal to kill atheist bloggers who campaigned against Islam.
“They killed him for his blasphemous writings against Islam and the Prophet Mohammed,” Dhaka police deputy commissioner Masudur Rahman told AFP.
“The students used to go to the Mohammadpur mosque to listen to the sermons of the imam. They were inspired by his sermons to carry out the attack on the blogger,” he said.
…………………………………………
Can you even imagine such “sermons”—really, Kutbahs—being offered in a Christian church? Of course not…
More:
The body of Haider, better known by his Bengali online identity Thaba Baba, was found with hatchet wounds to the head in what police said was an apparent attempt to behead him
…………………………………………
This poor man—and note the attempt to behead him, which is the favored manner of slaughter in the Qur’an and other canonical texts of Islam.
More:
Six out of the seven men — all of whom are students of the prestigious and private North South University — and the imam have been arrested and are being held in jail, Rahman said.
Haider’s killing was the second attack in Dhaka against bloggers critical of Islam, after the stabbing of a self-styled “militant atheist” by three unidentified men in January last year.
…………………………………………
So this is not even an isolated incident…
More:
After Haider’s death, Bangladesh’s Islamic parties started to protest against other campaigning bloggers, calling a series of nationwide strikes to demand their execution, accusing them of blasphemy.
…………………………………………
In any civilized polity, the murders of several of these victims would likely lead to their opponents backing off—not here.
And note—these pious Muslims want *the state* to execute these critics. It is perfectly Islamic for individual Muslims to enforce Shari’ah if the Muslim state won’t—that is exactly what is going on here.
More:
The secular government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina reacted by arresting four bloggers including the “militant atheist” who was allegedly attacked by the same group of students accused of the murder.
…………………………………………
In that case, the government isn’t very “secular”, is it?
And what will happen to the pious murderers, in such an atmosphere? I really doubt that they will face any real justice for their bloody crimes.
More:
The government also blocked about a dozen websites and blogs to stem the furor over blasphemy, as well as stepping up security for the bloggers….
…………………………………………
More caving into pressure from the most Islamic—just as in the West. As for “stepping up security”, it didn’t much help Ahmed Rajib Haider…
mortimer says
http://www.ucanews.com/news/police-charge-islamists-over-atheists-murder/70184
Rajib was a prominent blogger popularly known by his Bengali pen name, Thaba Baba. Days before his murder he helped organize a popular secularist movement called Shahbagh Uprising that campaigned for the death penalty of Islamist leaders accused of war crimes during Bangladesh’s liberation war of 1971.
Rajib was found with his THROAT SLIT and machete wounds to the head near his home in Pallabi, northern Dhaka. Police said there was a possibility the attackers attempted to behead Rajib
The suspects are members of Ansarullah Bangla Team, a local Islamic militant group loosely connected with a local al-Qaeda network that aims to make Bangladesh a staunchly Islamic state, police said.
“It was a pre-planned murder,” Monirul Islam, a joint commissioner of Dhaka police, said Wednesday. “The students used to attend the mosque where Rahmani was the Imam and they killed Rajib on Rahmani’s instruction due to anger over his derogatory writings against Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.”
Dr Nazimuddin, Rajib’s father, said the family is satisfied over the progress of the case.
“We can’t get our son back, but we can hope that justice will be delivered in due time,” he said on Tuesday.
Missing Socks says
Yet every left-wing atheist I know is too obsessed with bashing white conservative Christians to ever mention Islam. And if they do criticize Islam, they do so by saying that they’re opposed to all religions. All religions are equally bad, you see. Or they’ll say that Christianity is far, far worse than Islam. A lot of them will even fiercely defend Islam and Muslims from ignorance, hatred, racism, bigotry and Islamophobia and will heap praise on Islam and Muslims – all the while they’re portraying Christians as a bunch of dangerously stupid monsters. They’re hypocrites.
Christianity has already largely been “liberalized”. It’s far more tolerant, moderate, peaceful and progressive than Islam is. It’s Islam that displays the same characteristics of insane fanaticism, intolerance, ignorance, extremism and violence almost everywhere that it’s practiced – as the murder of these atheist bloggers and the reaction from the Bangladeshi government proves. So, if atheists really do want to make the world a better place, then they’ll focus their efforts on Islam. But of course, that will never happen…
fair_dinkum says
its something beyond cowardice.
psychopaths.
and their government has pretty much appeased them with some token action. give them an inch tho..
watch for the backlash and more attacks like this. i bet theyre already naming them ‘blasphemy sites”.
EYESOPEN says
“We can’t get our son back, but we can hope that justice will be delivered in due time,” he said on Tuesday.
I wouldn’t hold my breath…
Dennis Trisker says
I am in contact with friends in Bangladesh. They are Buddhists and they know about Muslim persecution. The persecution of atheists goes on in many countries. In Islamic countries it is worse. This is not the first atheist to be killed for a divergent belief system. The news media criticized the Buddhists on their attitude towards Islam. But they have a better understanding then most of the west.