The mortal danger of free thought in Bangladesh

Free speech in Bangladesh is legal but risky. A week ago, writer Avijit Roy, a U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi origin, was hacked to death as he walked home from a book fair with his wife, also a writer. Assailants ambushed the pair on a crowded Dhaka street, leaving Roy dead and his wife severely wounded. The attackers left behind two blood-stained meat cleavers at the scene.

A previously unheard of militant Islamic group claimed responsibility for the attack, taking to Twitter to accuse Roy of “crimes against Islam.” On Monday, Bangladeshi security officials arrested one suspect, a Muslim blogger. The FBI continues to investigate.

“This was not just an attack against a person, but a cowardly assault on the universal principles enshrined in Bangladesh’s constitution and the country’s proud tradition of free intellectual and religious discourse,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington.

Roy, an outspoken critic of religious extremism, visited Bangladesh often from his home in Alpharetta, Ga. His Bengali-language blog, Mukto-mona (“Free Mind”), featured articles on scientific reasoning and religion. The website has been shut down since Thursday’s attack.

Roy’s murder highlights the growing tension between Bangladeshi secularists and traditional Islamic groups. Secularists have urged authorities to ban religion-based politics, while Islamists are pressing for blasphemy laws. Although governed by secular law, Islam is the state religion of Bangladesh, and about 90 percent of its citizens are Muslim. Bangladesh houses the fourth largest Muslim population in the world, following Indonesia, Pakistan, and India.

Although Islamic-fueled violence is relatively rare in Bangladesh, Roy is not the first writer/blogger to die at the hands of militants. In 2013, still-unidentified aggressors killed another blogger near his home in Dhaka. In 2004, a prominent writer and teacher at Dhaka University was seriously injured in an attack while returning from the same annual book fair Roy attended Thursday evening.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.