From Elsewhere: Islam kills freedom

Bangladesh map

 

The statement that ‘Islam kills freedom’ is one that brings out howls of protest from those who appease Islam for political reasons or for reasons of personal gain. It’s also a statement that elicits denials from those who know the square root of sod all about the ideology of Islam. The problem for these groups of people is that the statement is not only true but there is much evidence that it is true. We only have to look at Islamic cultures and nations to verify the statement that ‘Islam kills freedom’ and there is one Islamic nation, one relatively recently created nation Bangladesh, that illustrates that truth perfectly.

Since the creation of Bangladesh in the early 1970’s, Islamic oppression has become steadily worse and increasingly more pervasive. Bangladesh, a nation that was once called East Pakistan and which was carved out of India at Partition in 1947, has become a place of fear and oppression for religious minorities and for free thinkers. Bangladesh is not a place where you want to be a Hindu, Sikh, Christian or an atheist for to be such a thing can invite death at the hands of Muslims.

This article by the exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, and published on the website of the National Secular Society outlines just how bad the oppression has become in Bangladesh. Like so many other places controlled by or influenced by Islam, Bangladesh is a ‘no go zone’ for freedom of thought and freedom of speech.

The National Secular Society said:

Exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, who lives under constant protection, has told AFP that Islamic fundamentalism has destroyed Bangladeshi society.

Nasreen said that in the 1980s she “wrote about Islamic fundamentalists. I said that they should not go unopposed or they will destroy our society, that’s exactly what’s happened now.

“Islamisation started in Bangladesh in the 1980s and in the 80s I was very worried.”

Several fatwas were issued calling for her death for secular writing, and Nasreen has not returned to Bangladesh in over twenty years.

There has been a spate of killings in Bangladesh, with secular writers targeted by Islamists and attacked with machetes.

Nasreen said that the current government had failed to respond strongly enough to the attacks. The father of one murdered writer said the government was showing “silent support” for the killings.

“I am very worried. Bangladesh was born as a secular state but now it’s a kind of fundamentalist state,” Nasreen said to AFP. But now “Islamic fundamentalists are very powerful, they can kill anyone if they want.

“And because those atheist bloggers criticise Islam ― they criticise other religions too ― but because they criticised Islam they were hacked to death and the government didn’t take any action against those killers.”

The writer said that she was used to living under guard with persistent death threats. “I think I’ve got used to it, you have to.

“You cannot think of death all the time, then it’s not a living. If I think of death all the time then I would not have been able to write so many books.

“Of course every time a fatwa is issued I get shocked, I get sad, I get scared and then you know you have to live your everyday life.”

Discussing Islamist attacks on secular writers and the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Nasreen said that “Freedom of expression cannot exist without the right to offend.”

“Many of my books, people say they hurt their religious feelings.

“But I think that if we believe in freedom of expression then we should believe also that everybody should have the right to express their opinions and everybody has the right to offend others and nobody has the right to live their entire life without being offended.”

Nasreen recently published In Exile: A Memoir

Read the source of this piece here:

http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2016/11/bangladeshi-society-being-destroyed-by-islamic-fundamentalism-says-exiled-writer

What the ideology of Islam has done to a number of countries where it rules is horrific. In Islamic nations there is no freedom of religion, no freedom of thought, no freedom of speech or of conscience. Islamic countries are intellectual waste-grounds, mind-deserts that no sensible person would ever want to live in.

However, we must not merely look at places like Bangladesh and think ‘those poor poor people living under so much oppression’ and shrug our shoulders. What happened in Bangladesh could easily happen in more advanced nations. There has been a worrying growth in Muslims using ‘hate crime’ laws and ‘hate speech’ laws to shut down criticism or mockery of Islam and certain high profile Muslims have used these laws to shut down and persecute criticism of themselves and of Islam itself. Muslims and the dangerous Quislings who support and pander to them have in the UK for example brought about a situation where Muslims use ‘hate crime’ laws to settle political scores and where people have been arrested merely for distributing stickers mocking the ideology of Islam Islam is turning Britain from a nation that stood up to fascism and defeated it, into a nation where people are frightened even to tell a joke about this disgusting and dangerous ideology.

When it comes to Islamic oppression of freedom of thought we don’t have the luxury of saying ‘it can’t happen here’ because it does. The problems of Islam will only get worse unless the ideology of Islam itself is seen for what it is, a form of fascism, and tackled accordingly.