In eight months, four bloggers have been killed for practising their right to speak. They expressed views that a handful deemed controversial and undesirable, even though countless others across the world, including people in this country, shared their thoughts. They were not so much anti-religion as they were pro-humanity, engaging in intellectual debates which challenged the norms and hoped to improve how society worked.
The response to this debate was not any type of proportional rebuttal. They were not confronted with coherent and thought-out responses to prove why they might be wrong. They were not even greeted with slurs and insults. Instead, their very lives were extinguished in a series of shockingly similar assaults. The only difference was that the attackers became bolder, as each crime went unpunished, culminating in a murder inside someone’s own home.
Halfway across the world, in a supposedly civilised nation that sets the standard for the less fortunate, those same eight months have seen 205 mass shootings. They might not have garnered the same level of attention as Columbine or Sandy Hook, following which empty promises to fix the system were made, but they did happen.
Once again, the pattern was the same. Public outrage would follow each incident, followed by well-intentioned attempts to change things that would finally end in the same toothless platitudes. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. It gets the blood stains out after all.
Through it all, the anger always comes back. The protests continue, whether they are in Shahbagh or in Washington, DC. People hold on to hope, that most painful and malignant of cancers, thinking, surely, this will be the last time this brutality happens. The knives and the gun-shots need to be confined to the history books.
But history repeats itself and, in doing so, the harsh truth begins to come out. The biggest tragedy is not that individuals are dying -- it is that the world is more willing to accept that violence than try to change. Human lives are expendable, but ideas are not. That is our greatest failure.
The Second Amendment cannot be changed. Never mind the fact that it was enshrined in the US constitution over two centuries ago. The right to bear arms is an integral part of life even though it can end in unwarranted death. Of course, the situation is much more complex than what liberals would have us believe and a blanket ban on weapons is no real solution.
However, that should be no reason to end the discussion completely. The world has changed significantly since the US constitution was first thought up and to deny that evolution is equal parts foolish, stubborn, and destructive. Attempts at limiting ammunition, regulating the 3D printing of guns, and strengthening background and mental health checks should not be ridiculed as being un-patriotic and, therefore, unworthy.
Similarly, talking about how religious misinterpretation has caused irreparable damage to communities should not be a death sentence. Bangladesh owes its existence to a culture that criticised and fought the status quo when it became unjust. Much like the US, it is a very different country to the one that entered the world in the winter of 1971. These changes not only consist of shifts towards a more developed nation, but also of challenges that have sadly gone unsolved.
Ideas and ideals come from a specific point in time where they are the best solution to contemporary problems. They are utopian because they are tangible answers to concerns of the age. However, if we refuse to acknowledge that those concerns have since changed, we risk turning the answers into a dystopian system of oppression. The longer this practice goes unopposed, these archaic norms will become more sacred and casualties will continue to be just another superfluous statistic.