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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Muslim group after murder of Islamocritical writer: “Target Down here in Bangladesh.”

Feb 28, 2015 11:43 am By Robert Spencer

Avijit RoyIslamic 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….

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Filed Under: Bangladesh, blasphemy, Featured, free speech Tagged With: Avijit Roy


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Comments

  1. Dookert says

    Feb 28, 2015 at 12:13 pm

    The religion of peace, yup. I’d say if anything I side more with Bill Maher in my political ideology compared to most of your readers Mr. Spencer. Every problem in the world today, surprisingly, cannot be deduced back to and blamed on Obama. I am not a check boxing conservative who buys every single talking point the right wing spits out. I think for myself and realize that most of the answers to societies problems in a democracy are more down the middle. On islam though, I am thoroughly united with you, it is a plague.

  2. obsidian says

    Feb 28, 2015 at 12:52 pm

    He should have known better than spout atheism in a Muslim society. Who did he think he was offending, Christians?

    Middle of the road is also known as “The T’ain’t” neither one or the other but right smack dab between two stinky places.

    • Bamaguje says

      Feb 28, 2015 at 3:11 pm

      Indeed, what was Avijit Roy thinking when he left the safety of America to dare Islamists in their Bangladesh den, even after he had been threatened?
      He was well aware of the Charlie Hebdo massacres.

  3. Georg says

    Feb 28, 2015 at 12:59 pm

    I have a similar dislike of Reza Aslan and I agree that his vitriol against non-Muslims stems from a realization that his arguments are bunk and are increasingly being considered as such (especially since all it takes to consider his ideas bunk is consideration… how worrying for Aslan).

    Although I’m an agnostic/atheist (I always hate how those words come across as angry, because I’m not angry in the slightest) I was very shocked, and offended even, by the title of his pathetic book “Zealot”. How dare he characterize Jesus as a “zealot”, especially given his Islamic faith and constant histrionics whenever a kuffar voices any unorthodox Muslim opinion? Muhammad was a ruthless marauder who made Jesus look exactly like the person he was- a supremely evolved arbiter of morality.

    I’ve had some conversations with Christian and Muslim friends about evolution, and I still can’t understand why it’s a concept which is necessarily exclusive to God… It seems to me whether God exists or not, evolution has occurred and is occurring (as can be demonstrated with the recent Ebola virus). It seems about as polemical as pointing to the moon.

  4. Angemon says

    Feb 28, 2015 at 3:04 pm

    Muslim apologists like to muddy the waters and talk about the numerous schools of islamic jurisprudence, and how they differ from one another. Is there any school who doesn’t teach that those who criticize islam, muhammad or allah are to be put to death?

  5. Sam says

    Feb 28, 2015 at 5:42 pm

    I still insist Islam is a religion of peace although I have never seen it peaceful. It is like evolution as I have never seen an ant becoming an elephant.

    We humans believe crazy things in life despite the truth screams to our face daily.

    I believe though Islam has truly surpassed any false belief system in terms of so many followers for so many centuries despite its total fake and evil nature.

    Maybe there is Allah, ha?

    • SKK says

      Feb 28, 2015 at 6:12 pm

      In my view, Islam is a political platform with the name of Allah. How can it be a religion of peace?

      However, it is not impossible to reform Islam. Several things need to do. Some of them are:

      1) In their prayer, they pray only for Muslim world. That needs to be changed to humanity.

      2) They believe in Quarbani (killing animals for Allah). This needs to be stopped in order to keep the soft heart of the Muslim world.

      2) Muslims believe that they are the best creature of Allah. This believe needs to be changed. The synonym of the word ‘infidels’ may be dirty animals. That’s how they treat the rest of the world.

    • sharon says

      Mar 1, 2015 at 9:45 pm

      Yeah, and he or it is laughing at us fighting with each other don’t ya think ?

  6. Papa Whiskey says

    Feb 28, 2015 at 6:38 pm

    “The jihadis have nothing to fear.”

    Au contraire. They will have something to fear if they try conclusions with the likes of me — something .45 inches in diameter, that weighs 230 grains and moves out at around 850 feet per second.

    !لن استسلم Mark that well.

    • Brian Hoff says

      Mar 1, 2015 at 7:17 am

      When the whole world is under Islam you will be ban from haveing weapon it you use your gun you will be band than criminal and than outlaw.

      • Angemon says

        Mar 1, 2015 at 2:42 pm

        Brian Hoff posted:

        “When the whole world is under Islam you will be ban from haveing weapon it you use your gun you will be band than criminal and than outlaw.”

        And here we have a look into the mind of Brian Hoff, the Islamophobia peddler. When (not if, but when) the world is under islam, non-muslims won’t be allowed to pwn weapons. This is standard islamic orthodoxy, it’s merely the execution of the conditions depicted in the Pact of Umar – non-muslims aren’t allowed to own weapons, lest them rebel against the humiliations enforced by muslims:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XmxgKznqpo

        Muslim apologists try to spin it into a positive thing. It usually goes like this: “non-muslims under islam are granted a special status and are exempt from military service”. That’s false. Muslims simply don’t trust non-muslims with weapons because they fear rebellion.

  7. Kush says

    Mar 1, 2015 at 6:43 am

    Roy should have considered what happened with Taslima Nasrin, an anti-Islam writer, before deciding to go back to Bangladesh. Taslima was kicked out of that country for writing anti-Islam books and she never dared to go back into that den of muslim extremists.

  8. RonaldB says

    Mar 1, 2015 at 2:32 pm

    Perhaps one ought to choose one’s fights: either fight Islam specifically, or fight the concept that god needs an organization (religion). In other words, attack Islam specifically, or attack the concept of religion. But, it’s a losing proposition to attack Islam as an extreme example of religious dogma.

    The counter to the argument of the benefits of atheism to religion is always communism. Communism is an atheist creed that claims to be a system of government, has its own dogma totally unfounded by facts or science, and enforces its dogma, when possible, through censorship, secret police, prisons, and assassinations. Some people claim that communism itself is a religion, but that begs the question…can you have a religion without god, and if so, criticism of religion as opposed to atheism is meaningless.

    It’s more than obvious by now that Muslim society is not reformable by outsiders. It cost thousands of lives of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan in our fruitless nation-building instituted by idiot George Bush. It may or may not be susceptible to change by insiders. Sissi of Egypt has the best chance of liberating an Islamic country from Islam, and his possibilities for success are extremely dicey. The fallacious delusion of being able to address reason in a Muslim country cost Roy his life.

    Hopefully, in the future, bright, enlightened critics like Roy will focus on maintaining good borders, and keeping all Muslims out, as the best way to criticize Islam and carry out his beloved fight against religion, a fight which is perfectly safe inside the United States.

  9. Davegreybeard says

    Mar 1, 2015 at 6:38 pm

    Papa Whiskey says
    “They will have something to fear if they try conclusions with the likes of me — something .45 inches in diameter, that weighs 230 grains and moves out at around 850 feet per second.”

    Well Papa, I’d keep that baby “Cocked ‘n Locked” cuz their coming for you and guys like you straight away.

    I’d also suggest you make contact with your local police dept. The police are the ones at the “pointy end of the spear” and will see first contact with the Jihadis.

    I might add that you would be doing us all a service if you could educate some of them in passing..

  10. Matthieu Baudin says

    Mar 2, 2015 at 2:01 am

    Bangladesh today, Britain tomorrow? With a government asleep how will the people of Britain find enough rocks to hide under; more than sixty million rocks needed! Still, the British held out against the Luftwaffe; but then again they had a government and a common identity in those days.

  11. M S case says

    Mar 2, 2015 at 6:56 pm

    How long??? another American writer killed and nobody does anything. HOW SAD!!!

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