Slain freethinker Avijit Roy was little worried about being attacked during the visit to his homeland this February. But he could not avoid it. Two books were launched in this year’s Amar Ekushey Book Fair. The US citizen also wanted to meet his parents.
Despite being under the threat of extremists for long, Avijit was also hopeful observing that there are many like-minded people around the world who would uphold the spirit of humanism and secularism. He was an advocate of atheism, science and metaphysical naturalism.
Blogger-scientist Avijit came to Dhaka on February 16 along with his wife Rafida Ahmed Bonya, who was critically injured in the attack on February 26 on Dhaka University campus, while their only daughter remained in the US. He earlier visited Bangladesh in 2012. His body was donated to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
Author of 10 books and an e-book, Avijit wrote around 600 blogs on his Mukto-Mona (freethinker) platform and for other websites. His books cover issues ranging from the beginning of the universe to science of religion, and from love, homosexuality to psychology.
The writer became a target of radical Islamists first in 2008 following the publication of Obisshasher Dorshon (The Philosophy of Disbelief), but faced massive threats in 2013-14. Rokomari.com, a Bangladeshi e-commerce site, dropped the book from its catalogue after its owner received death threats from extremist Shafiur Rahman Farabi.
He started Mukto-Mona as a Yahoo group in 2001, and launched the blogsite the following year. In his version, it is an “Internet congregation of freethinkers, rationalists, sceptics, atheists, and humanists of mainly Bengali and South Asian descent.”
Avijit was born in September 1971 in Assam as his father, retired DU teacher Prof Ajoy Roy, joined the Liberation War leaving his family there. He studied in Udayan School and Dhaka College, and completed graduation in mechanical engineering at Buet. He later joined there as a lecturer. He achieved masters degree and PhD from the National University of Singapore.
US citizen Avijit worked at a software engineering firm as a biomedical engineer. His concentration was brain modelling. In collaboration with other scientists, Avijit invented “Integrated microchip sensor system for detection of infectious agents” in 2011 and “Apparatus, system and method for processing, analysing or displaying data related to performance metrics” the following year.
Avijit supported and campaigned for the 2013 Shahbagh movement that demanded death penalty for all war criminals. When seven Bangladeshi “atheist” bloggers were arrested for blasphemy the same year, Avijit worked closely with international freethinkers’ platforms to ensure justice for the bloggers. He also lambasted the law enforcers and media portraying the bloggers as “crooks in the public eye,” and criticised the government for harbouring well-known criminals instead.
Avijit said after his book Bishwasher Virus (Bengali for The Virus of Faith) had ben released in 2014, it rose to the Book Fair’s bestseller list, but at the same time, “hit the cranial nerve of fundamentalists.”
He wondered when extremist Shafiur Rahman Farabi had been granted bail even after issuing a death threat to the imam of a mosque for administering the funeral prayers of blogger Ahmed Rajeeb Haider, killed allegedly by fanatics on February 15, 2013, and numerous progressive persons. He also criticised the role of daily Amar Desh for spreading made-up stories on Rajeeb to instigate radical Muslims demanding blasphemy law be enacted to “hang atheist bloggers.”
In a post, the slain blogger wrote: “I am an atheist, but most of my close friends are Muslims. I have no wrath towards them. I join them when they celebrate. I feel hurt when they are oppressed ... I did it earlier and will continue to do so in the future. This is what I have learnt as a humanist.”
Avijit defended the practice of atheism, calling it a “rational concept to oppose any unscientific or irrational belief.”
Careful study of Qur’an, Hadiths and other Islamic resources for years, “I know that like other ancient books, these scriptures also contain lot of errors and weird misconceptions in embryology, biology and medicine.”
He said Qur’an, as a whole, has a whole lot of ambiguity and meaningless statements.
For example, occasionally it tells that we are created from earth (11:61), sometimes it claims from dry clay (15:26,28,33, 17:61, 32:7), sometimes “from nothing” (19:67), sometimes “NOT from nothing” (52:35), sometimes from wet earth (23:12), or from mire (38:71), sometimes from water (25:54, 21:30, 24:45), sometimes from dust ( 3:59, 30:20, 35:11) or even sometimes from dead (30:19, 39:6) etc..“So which one is true?” he wrote in a blog.
He and his blog Mukto-Mona observed Blasphemy Day on September 30, also known as Blasphemy Rights day. This day is dedicated to those who are systematically being persecuted, harassed, or killed for their simple expression of Freethought (more precisely, for their "blasphemous" views towards religion), Avijit wrote in a blog.
"I founded this ‘blasphemous site' Mukto-Mona in the year of 2001, with a singular intention: To debate and discuss on controversial, but utterly important issues. Only with this principle, I thought, can the construction of a progressive, rational and secular society be possible in mainstream Bangladesh and South Asia ... We will celebrate the day as Mukto-Mona Day from now on," Avijit wrote in 2013 about the platform.