27th February, 31st March, and now 12th May. These aren’t a random collection of dates, but three dates since the start of the year that GC has reported about a secular Bangladeshi blogger critical of Islam who has been butchered to death in their country.

Ananta Bijoy Das was attacked by masked men with machetes in Sylhet on his way to work. Das was a regular columnist for Mukto-Mona, the Bangladesh free thinking blog which is often highly critical of Islam.

Four masked men attacked him, hacking him to death with cleavers and machetes, said Sylhet Metropolitan Police Commissioner Kamrul Ahsan, according to CNN.

The founder and editor of Mukto-Mona, Avijit Roy was the first victim this year. He was also hacked to death when returning from a function, whilst with his wife who luckily survived the incident.

All this people have done is write about the vices of religion, one of which is the needless violence against unbelievers, which somehow just triggers more attacks.

I would think if someone was saying bad things about your religion, refraining from acts that would give them more cause to complain is what you would do.

But then you can’t complain much when you’re dead, can you?

Imran Sarker, who heads the Blogger and Online Activists Network in Bangladesh, surmised it poignantly. “He was a voice of social resistance; he was an activist. And now, he too has been silenced.”

It is this odious privilege that people think should be given to religion, to be exempt to the same kind of circumspection anyone would apply to any other sphere of life- that makes it so unappealing to secular, humanist thinkers like Roy and Das.

Thankfully, incidents like this would just harden the resolve of such free thinkers, of which we’re not devoid of even in Ghana; to keep challenging the bigotry and close mindedness of religious principles. Every attack on a free thinker just proves all that we say about religion.