Fatwas Are Swords Of Damocles For Bangladeshi
Authors ..... .....
Bangladeshi Author Professor Humayun Azad Was Declared Murtaad
(Apostate) And Brutally Attacked .....
http://www.bangladeshobserveronline.com/new/2005/03/01/editorial.htm
Bangladesh Observer, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Tuesday, March 1, 2005
The Brutal Attack On Humayun Azad
By Dr. A.H. Jaffor Ullah
A year ago, late Professor Humayun Azad, a noted linguist and leading
freethinker of Dhaka University was brutally attacked on February 27,
2004 in front of Bangla Academy where he was attending the Book fair.
In that attack, the assailants wanted to chop off Prof. Azad's head.
However, because of the presence of many book fair-goers the assailant
could not do their job. In the process, though, they injured him with
repeated chops in the neck and head areas resulting in his comatose
condition. For a few days, his well-wishers thought he would not
return from his long slumber. By surprising everyone, Prof. Azad's
senses came back and he took a slow road to rehabilitation, which
required a number of plastic surgeries on his face to efface the
brutal mark of the attack he received on that fateful day.
As I have mentioned, it took several weeks before Prof. Azad could sit
and talk. The attack resulted in a loss of considerable amount of
blood. Naturally, he was very infirm and visibly shaken due to the
personal injury. At the insistence of Dhaka University faculty, the
government sent him to Bangkok for further treatment. After his
return, most of his friends heaved a sigh of relief thinking that
worst was over. Little did they know what was coming!
Prof. Azad was a broken man after the attack. After all, he was a
proud son of the soil. The physical attack did destroy his ego and
tell me why it should not do such terrible damage to his self-respect.
Prof. Azad was a bold person who never shied away from speaking his
mind. His forthrightness and fearless approach to truth seeking put
him in collision course with the obscurantist Mullahs, Jamaatis, and
other fringes of Bangladesh polity.
Prof. Azad taunted the loser of 1971 freedom struggle, the Jamaatis,
through his satirical novel "Pak Saar Jamin." Days before his attack,
one of the elder leaders of Jamaat had openly showed his disdain for
Humayun Azad. To them, Azad was a murtaad or apostate. Therefore, he
was an easy game for fundamentalist goons. Goaded by Maulana Delwar
Hossain Saydee, an MP and a member of the inner circle of Jamaat-e-
Islami and the four-party alliance government, a handful of assailants
came to Ekushey Book Fair. They knew the author loved to mingle freely
with his readers. Azad was a free spirit who thought no harm could
ever come to him. But how wrong was he. This brutal attack did him in
by robbing his free spirit.
As I wrote earlier, Dr. Azad's pride was long gone and he was
devastated by the tenor of the attack. No man wanted to see a
disfigured face of his in the mirror. It probably was too painful for
him to see that the attack had left permanent scar on his face. Azad
was a very sensitive human being. It is almost a prerequisite for a
writer of his caliber to be too sensitive about everything - his
persona, look, and deportment - you name it. Seeing one's disfigured
face or permanent scar, artificial tooth, is not all that pleasant.
These have caused much anguished in him. I felt it as I read his swan
song that was published in late July 2004 in Dhaka's vernacular
newspaper Janakantha.
I had the opportunity to translate that evocative article of Azad into
English. It was written using a profoundly complex language with a
profusion of metaphor. After the translation was done right before his
trip to Munich, Germany, the piece was e-mailed to him in Dhaka for
his approval. He Okayed the translation, which was published by Mukto-
mona, a freethinkers' forum in the cyberspace. In that piece, Prof.
Azad made a fine prognosis of the tortuous path Bangladesh is treading
now. He was alarmed by the spate of bomb blasts, attacks on
intellectuals. He was petrified by the ferocity of the attack. His
family started to receive non-stop barrage of menacing phone calls,
his son was almost kidnapped, and he could not bear it all.
Under this dire circumstance, he reluctantly had accepted a fellowship
to visit a university in Munich, Germany. Prof. Azad never did recover
from the pernicious attack done by the shadowy fundamentalist goons.
His infirmity got the upper hand and he breathed his last immediately
after reaching Munich in the beginning of August 2004.
Prof. Humayun Azad was already a marked man when his publisher printed
the first run of his book "Pak Sar Jamin" (Bless the pure land). The
ire of fundamentalists fell on him right away because the author had
unmasked the masquerading mullas who suddenly had become the greatest
patriots in the land through the hard work of Khaleda Zia and her
party machinery. The conspiratorial politics that led to the
assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on August 15, 1975 had started
the Islamization of Bangladesh. The party BNP is a direct result of
this cantonment intrigue. In the guise of "multiparty democracy," an
army General had unleashed the Islamists who were barred from joining
the politics. The brutal assassination of that army General led to the
entry of a charlatan army General who also pushed the nation towards
the path of fundamentalism.
In 15 years time from 1976 through 1990, the nation changed her
demeanor from secular to quasi-religious state. Prof. Azad was keenly
aware of this transformation. He wanted to mock the mullas who were at
the forefront of this vital transformation and who were the real
engine of this societal metamorphosis. Naturally, he had to pen
something on this. And he did. In a way, his writings did him in. The
obscurantist mullas hated his guts and they gave fatwas, which
certainly "inspired" young jihadis who came with full force to
decapitate him on February 27, 2004.
Who is the loser now that Prof. Azad is gone from Bangladesh forever?
The nation lost a freethinker, undoubtedly. The Dhaka University is
sore loser because Prof. Azad died a bit prematurely. In Bangladesh
there is a severe crisis going on in the field of freethinking. The
void left by his death would be difficult to fill. There is already a
dearth of true freethinking scholars in the academia in Bangladesh.
That is the reason I say that it was a great loss for the campus.
Prof. Humayun Azad would have walked the corridors of art faculty
right now. To our knowledge, his was a healthy person. Nonetheless,
the brutal attack that he took on that night made his world topsy-
turvy. He was never the same again. I point finger at the resurgence
of religious fervor that resulted in his premature death. The Bangla
culture took a severe blow from fundamentalist camp on that fateful
night. It is an utter shame that the government failed to protect a
courageous son of the soil.
As I was writing this piece on February 22, 2005, I read in the
Internet that a bunch of Madrassah students was arrested near Savar
who were found carrying bomb-making paraphernalia. It seems as if Dr.
Azad's prognosis was correct after all. He clearly pointed finger at
the wrongdoers. Bangladesh has created a monster out of Madrassah
students. Instead of receiving proper education, many of them had been
indoctrinated into Talibanism. The present government turned a blind
eye to the developing problem. The government's view was that all of
these were a part of propaganda. The proverbial chickens have come
home to roost and they don't even get it right.
On this anniversary day of the brutal attack on Prof. Humayun Azad,
let me say that the humanity was raped in Bangladesh on February 27,
2004. We all know that the stealth evil force killed a dozen or so
leading intellectuals in the fag end of our freedom fight in December
1971. They could not efface freethinking and progressivism from this
deltaic land. Now they think they could do the same. Their fang should
be surgically removed so that future Humayun Azads of Bangladesh could
voice their opinion against obscurantism and monolithic views which if
allowed to grow would devour this society.
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http://www.telegraphindia.com/1021014/asp/foreign/story_1290376.asp
Telegraph
Monday, October 14, 2002
Taslima sentenced to a year in jail
Dhaka, Oct. 13 (PTI): Controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen
has been sentenced to one year imprisonment by a court for casting
aspersions on Islam, a media report said today.
A court in Gopalganj sentenced the self-exiled writer yesterday for
hurting religious feelings in her books, including Lajja (Shame), the
daily Ittefaq reported.
Nasreen, 40, who has drawn flak from Islamists for her writings, was
sentenced to jail by magistrate Shah Alam if she returns to
Bangladesh, three years after the case was filed by one Dabiruddin
Azad.
The physician-turned-writer fled Bangladesh in the early nineties
after her novel Lajja, which described persecution of Hindu community
by Bangladesh's Muslim majority, triggered protests by Islamists and
was banned. She has since been staying in India and Europe. Her latest
novel Utal Hawa (Gusty Wind), was also banned this year. She was
living in Calcutta till last month.
Taslima is the second Bangladeshi writer forced to live in exile to
avoid harassment and repression. Daud Haider, a renowned poet had to
leave Bangladesh in the early seventies during the Sheikh Mujib's rule
in a similar situation when fundamentalist launched a movement for his
alleged blasphemous comments.
Haider now lives in Germany.
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