The writer, a thin young man who fears the growing interweaving of religion and politics in Bangladesh, knows his turn could come next.
The writer, a thin young man who fears the growing interweaving of religion and politics in Bangladesh, knows his turn could come next. What happened earlier this week, when the second secularist blogger in less than a month was hacked to death in the streets of the capital, made it clear he wasn't safe.
"Anytime they can hit me or my like-minded friends," said Ananya Azad, a 25-year-old blogger who has written pieces that were critical of Islamic fundamentalism and politics driven by religion. He quit his job as a newspaper columnist and stopped writing blogs in recent months after receiving numerous threats, but still posts critical comments on Facebook.
Ananya says he's thinking about fleeing the country and spends much of his time indoors these days. "They don't hesitate to kill in the name of their beliefs," he said. "I'm an easy target for the fanatics."
Bangladesh, a majority Muslim nation long seen as insulated from the most fervent strains of militant Islam, has seen that reputation crack amid an increasingly bloody divide between secular bloggers and conservative Islamist groups.
In many ways, the divide is clear: The bloggers want authorities to ban religion-based politics, while the Islamists are pressing for blasphemy laws so that nobody can undermine Islam's holy book, the prophet or basic pillars of being a Muslim.
In a crowded nation of 160 million, whose recent political history has been dominated by a bitter power struggle that regularly spills into street violence, many fear that religion could further destabilise the situation. Islam is Bangladesh's state religion, but the country is governed by secular laws based on British common law. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has repeatedly said she will not give in to religious extremism.
Yet over the last decade or so, extreme interpretations of Islam have steadily gained ground here. "These attacks are not stray incidents," said Abdur Rashid, a retired army general and expert on national security. "They are well planned and strings are being pulled in some quarters eager to control the future of Bangladesh."
He believes Islamist political parties are orchestrating the attacks to further polarise the country and expand their influence. "Some political parties, which have a distant desire to come to power in Bangladesh, are either directly or indirectly connected with this radicalisation process," he said.
The past few weeks have seen a spike in radical attacks. First, a prominent Bangladeshi-American blogger and writer, Avijit Roy, was hacked to death by unidentified attackers in late February while he was walking with his wife. Roy bled to death while his wife, also a blogger, was critically injured.
On Monday, 27-year-old Oyasiqur Rahman Babu was attacked in daylight as he left his house. Unlike Roy, who had been on the radar of radical Islamists and had regularly received death threats, Babu was a low-profile online activist.
Also Read: 2 in police custody for murder of blogger in Bangladesh
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