An online Bangladeshi bookseller has pulled the books of an American – Bangladeshi writer after receiving death threats from a radical Islamist from Chittagong, says a report posted on Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).
The author, Avijit Roy is a naturalized American from Bangladesh. He pioneered the popular Bangladeshi online blogging site, Freethinker, and rose to prominence with his books on philosophy, scientific thought and human rights issues.  Following death threats posted to Facebook by Farabi Shafiur Rahman, an Islamist extremist allegedly linked to the hardline Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, Roy’s publisher Rokomari.com stopped selling his books.
This is not the first threat to come from Rahman, a student at Chittagong University. Earlier he and others of his ilk had targeted blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider, for his advocacy of war crimes tribunals to try the perpetrators of genocide during the War of Liberation of Bangladesh in 1971. Haider invited the wrath of Islamists by being critical of Jamaat Islami and its student wing, of which Rahman is a member. Rajib was hacked to death by Islamists.
Rahman’s FB post made a reference to Haidar, and warned the chairman of Rokomari.com that he could go the Haidar way. It branded secularists and atheists as “nothing but insects” and said “it is best that insects should die”.
The warning through FB post did not exclude Avijit Roy either, and held out a warning of killing him whenever he returned to Bangladesh. “Avjit Roy lives in America and so, it is not possible to kill him right now. He will be murdered when he comes back”, the Islamist wrote,
Farabi Shafiur Rahman also accused Roy of defaming Islam and the Prophet Mohammed and blamed Rokomari.com chairman Mahmudul Hasan Sohag of “promoting atheism” by selling Roy’s books.
His Facebook post specified the office address of Rokomari.com and called upon “Islamist friends” in the adjacent locality to attack. He also told Sohag that he would suffer the fate of Ahmed Rajib Haider,  popular as Thaba Baba, who was hacked to death last year by machete-wielding Islamic militants.
Roy has denied the allegation levelled against his books. “My books are mostly on modern science and philosophy. These are not the books criticizing religious scriptures or any particular religion. They are mainly scientific books having references from reputed journals, books and newspapers,” he told  ucanews.com, a Bangkok -based portal, in an email.
The Publisher appears to have taken the threat seriously though, and listed Roy’s books under the category “Out of Print”.
This left Roy fuming and IPT quotes him as saying “This is not fair. These books have not been banned by the State or by a government. Because someone is threatening, how can you withdraw these books?”
Islamists have been in a state of disarray ever since the Bangladesh government had set up War Crimes Tribunals and these judicial bodies have been delivering justice without fear or favor.  For instance, Ashrafuzzaman Khan, presently a resident of New York, was convicted last November in absentia on 11 counts related to 18 murders.
After blogger Ahmed Rajib Haidar was killed, Rahman went on line with the threat that any Imam who leads the funeral prayer for Haidar would also be killed. “Those who have spent their whole lives insulting the Prophet are not Muslims and cannot have Janaza Prayer read. Thaba Baba’s corpse should be fed to the animals in Dhaka Zoo”. Police picked him up immediately but he was released after a while.
The criticism is that Rokomari has caved in without blinking.  Now the company is said to be planning to keep off any book that has potential to kick up a controversy.
“Without contacting me or my publisher, they just went to this guy’s page and started apologizing”, Roy laments while his friends are organizing their own boycott of Rokomari, and have set up a Facebook support group.  
Roy has appealed to the Bangladesh government to conduct “proper investigations on this criminal mind” and “do whatever is necessary to put him behind bars”.
 -POREG TEAM