Secular blogging in some parts of the world is proving to be an extremely dangerous occupation now.
Bangladesh, for instance, was just the scene of yet another hacking death of a blogger whose more liberal and peaceable point of view was found somehow murderously offensive.
Last week’s lethal machete attack on Washikur Rahman in Dhaka, by two unnamed youths, is the second such assault in Bangladesh’s capitol city in as many months.
Before that, Rahman’s fellow secularist blogger Avijit Roy was also butchered on one of its busy streets, the knife attack on Roy and his wife perpetrated by a gang of disgruntled males with claims that the couple’s live-and-let-live philosophy violated their Islamic beliefs.
Internationally, the incidences of violence directed toward journalists and bloggers in general has been greatly increasing during the past decade, but the threat to liberal-minded Bangladeshi reporters is particularly serious.
In fact, Amnesty International has now declared that country as one of the most dangerous in the world for its overt hostility to freedom of the press, warning the risks there are especially high for those who are blogging secular opinions.
"The horrifying murder of a blogger this morning must be a wakeup call to the authorities on the need to create a safe environment for journalists and activists to express their views," the organization said, following the news that Washikur Rahman had just been slain.
Oddly enough, most Muslim extremists who use violence to silence freethinking writers are functionally illiterate themselves -- not even able to read the holy book their radical clerics are preaching intolerance from, let alone “religiously objectionable” blog posts and articles.
It’s truly sad though that these homicidal haters can’t read. Because, if they could, then they’d be able to comprehend that slaughtering their unarmed fellow citizens is not avenging but offending the good prophet Muhammad.
