Bangladeshi university professor hacked to death in Rajshahi
AFM Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, was a professor of English at Rajshahi University in the west of the country.
He was attacked with machetes by unidentified assailants while on his way to the university from his home.
Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes.
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Deputy police commissioner Nahidul Islam told AFP news agency that Siddique had been involved in cultural programmes, and had set up a school at Bagmara, a former bastion of outlawed Islamist group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).
Members of JMB were arrested over an assault on an Italian Catholic priest late last year.
Earlier this month a Bangladeshi law student who had expressed secular views online died when he was hacked with machetes and then shot in the capital, Dhaka.
The four bloggers killed last year had all appeared on a list of 84 "atheist bloggers" drawn up by Islamic groups in 2013 and widely circulated.
There have also been attacks on members of religious minorities including Shia, Sufi and Ahmadi Muslims, Christians and Hindus. And two foreigners, an Italian aid worker and a Japanese man, were also shot dead late last year, in seemingly random attacks.
The so-called Islamic State group has said it carried out many of the attacks - but this has not been independently verified.
Bangladesh is officially secular but critics say the government has failed to properly address the attacks.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36119151
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Bangladesh is officially secular but critics say the government has failed to properly address the attacks.
The United States is also officially secular, but what is happening in Bangladesh is just another example of when a religion, any religion, feels it has the right to decide if other people different then they are have the right to live because they believe in secularism or atheism. These attacks are being carried out by Islamics, but it is not too much of a stretch to see them happening in the United States someday if we stop defending our secularism from those who would have us become an officially Christian nation. An official national religion, even Christianity, would threaten the existence of all other religions and even non-religions. We should look at Bangladesh as an example of what we can become if we allow religion to overtake our rule of law and the Constitution, as it is being threatened to be by at this very point in our history. An official national religion, even Christianity, would lead us to the same end. The end of American freedom. We would be no different then any nation currently ruled by any other religion.
The United States should reach out and offer asylum to atheists across the world who are targets of religious violence. What would we have to lose? They are typically highly educated, and come with zero potential for religious extremism.
I could not possibly agree more. Atheists are persecuted and in some parts of the world tortured or put to death like in the Dark Ages. As a group they deserve protection from religions constantly trying to shove their ideology down everyone's throats and placing their religion above their country.
in some parts of the world
Mostly Islamic parts ...
It's what happens if ANY religion gains complete control over the government and becomes the government. In ANY part of the world.
Within the past few decades its been all about Islamic regions . Can you deny that ?
Mostly. Though there have been religious attacks on people of other religions throughout the world that have have nothing to do with Islam. North Ireland and the violence against the Sikhs in India come to mind right off the top of my head. Religious violence is not confined to Islam by a long shot. It's just the current rage in terrorism, but it's not like they're the only ones recently or the ones who invented it. Also many religions have hated and persecuted Secularists and atheists throughout history, mostly with no intervention or help from any other group, religious or otherwise. To blame this on Islam alone is absurd. We are one of the groups that is easiest to hate without anyone defending us except ourselves, as most people do believe in one form of a god or another and many people, even some of the most so-called religious, hate and despise us.
The article indicates that it is not just atheists who are persecuted, it is also people of faiths other than those who did the attacks. The inability or refusal of the government to maintain its stance of secularism is probably because of the fear-mongering that the attackers perpetrate. I see a growth of that problem in the USA as well, where threats and attacks are made by followers of a certain religion demanding that their principles be adhered to over and above constitutional rights such as freedom of speech and expression. And the government and institutions such as universities are by fanatical application of PC and the passing of certain laws and court judgments and making new rules cowering to those demands.
I see a growth of that problem in the USA as well, where threats and attacks are made by followers of a certain religion demanding that their principles be adhered to over and above constitutional rights such as freedom of speech and expression.
I see that too. Evangelical Christianity.
And the government and institutions such as universities are by fanatical application of PC and the passing of certain laws and court judgments and making new rules cowering to those demands.
That I don't see so clearly.
Yes, Randy, Evangelical Christianity and whatever other faiths proselytize and/or punish those who abandon those faiths.
Common ground. I like that.