Asif Mohiuddin

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Mohiuddin in Utrecht (English):

Asif Mohiuddin ( Bengali আসিফ মহিউদ্দীন ; born February 24, 1984 in Dhaka , Bangladesh ) is a Bangladeshi blogger and secularist internet activist who has lived in Germany since 2014 because of the threat from Islamists in his home country.

Life

Childhood and youth

Mohiuddin was born to a middle-class civil servant in Dhaka and attended school there. Until about his 13th / 14th Year he was a devout Muslim . Then (to the sorrow of his parents) he increasingly began to question the religious teaching content conveyed to him. Because of the critical questions he asked and his disrespectful answers to the teachers, he was often severely beaten by them. At the age of 16 he read a science magazine in Bengali , which tried to reconcile the miracles described in the Koran with modern natural science and to explain them in a rational-scientific way. He then wrote an article in which he stated that it was scientifically impossible that the Prophet Mohammed rode straight to heaven on horseback. This and other critical to ironic articles in the Bengali newspapers in Dhaka earned him the reputation of a freethinker and critic of religion; on the other hand, this also brought him into contact with other like-minded internet activists.

As a blogger and internet activist in Bangladesh

He earned a degree in computer science in 2008 and started blogging. He wrote articles for the first Bengali-language internet blog in Bangladesh, somewhereinblog.net . There he spread his secularist views. He dealt critically with Sharia law , with women's rights, with the repression of religious minorities (especially Hindus ) in Bangladesh, and later with the rights of homosexuals. In his blog, which he provocatively titled “God - almighty in name only, but powerless in reality”, he openly referred to himself as an atheist . His blog quickly gained thousands of readers in Bangladesh's rapidly growing blogging and internet community. Mohiuddin took part in public discussions with Islamic or Islamist people several times, which were attended by numerous people. These events were initially very constructive and interesting. But when the Islamists noticed that they could not get hold of him on an argumentative level, they stopped the discussions and began to agitate aggressively against him.

Assassination attempt and arrest in 2013

On January 15, 2013, Mohiuddin was attacked near his workplace at an IT company in Motijheel, a district of Dhaka. The four attackers often stabbed him from behind with a kitchen knife, hit him with an iron bar and seriously injured him. According to his statements, an attempt had previously been made to kidnap him in a delivery truck, but this was thwarted by friends accompanying him. Mohiuddin survived the attack. The nearby clinic to which he was initially taken refused to treat the man who was bleeding from numerous stab wounds because he was a "case for the police". Friends who had been summoned took him to Dhaka Central Hospital, where the stab wounds were surgically treated for several hours.

Asif Mohiuddin speaks at the 2015 American Atheist Convention.

On April 3, 2013, Mohiuddin was arrested and charged, along with other bloggers, with disseminating seditious ideas and violating religious sentiments. Shortly before, his blog had also been removed from the network on the instructions of the Bangladeshi telecommunications supervisory authority. This led to a blogger strike in Bangladesh on April 4, 2013, in which at least eight frequently visited websites temporarily shut down and instead left a blank page with a clenched fist holding a pen and the inscription “ Muzzle me not ” (“ Don't miss a muzzle ”). Mohiuddin then spent 3 months in prison. In prison, he was initially threatened by fellow prisoners, but was also protected by other bloggers who were arrested with him. He was released on bail on June 27, 2013.

A little later he was arrested again for ten days and met three of his attackers at the time, several young Islamists from the Ansarullah Bangla group , with whom he discussed intensively for about half an hour. The discussion, which was conducted in a remarkably peaceful manner, was observed and overheard by many prison inmates. Mohiuddin asked his attackers why they had committed the crime. Ironically, he accused them of attacking him from behind instead of from the front, as prescribed in the Islamic scriptures. They replied that they had nothing against him personally, but since Mohiuddin had left Islam, he had to be killed according to Sharia law. If the government did not do this, it would have to be done by other individuals. They would probably try again to kill him after he was released from prison. In Mohiuddin's view, his attackers were not “bad people”, but rather people who had obviously not received a really self-formed opinion, but instead had been brainwashed in the madrasa (in the English quote: “ brainwashed in the madrasa ”). Only through constant argument with the Islamists is it possible to gradually dissuade them from their views.

Escape to Germany

Asif Mohiuddin has lived in Germany since April 2014, initially with a grant from the Hamburg Foundation for the Politically Persecuted and later with the support of Amnesty International . In an interview with Deutsche Welle in April 2014, he stated that he did not feel completely safe in Germany either. A few days earlier, a post had been posted on Facebook in which Facebook readers were asked to travel to Germany to kill him. The post received 1200 likes and was redistributed many times. Some Muslims living in Germany or migrants from Islamic countries to Germany also met his views with decisive rejection. After his one-year scholarship expired, Mohiuddin initially stayed in Germany and did not return to Bangladesh as intended. In the meantime he has become “enemy number 1” of the Islamists. Mohiuddin has not stopped his internet activities. Due to the closure of his old blog, he continues to spread his views on Facebook and other internet channels. He is active as a lecturer at various congresses and events, including the American Atheists Conference in Memphis on June 29, 2015.

additional

Asif Mohiuddin at the European Humanist Youth Days 2016 in Utrecht .

The 2013 murder attack on Mohiuddin, which was widely reported at home and abroad, was the public prelude to a series of murders against bloggers, secularists and critics of Islamism in Bangladesh, which continues to this day and which so far (2016) has resulted in around two dozen deaths Has. Mohiuddin also attributes the fact that he survived to the fact that he has attracted a lot of international attention. In particular, the English-language service of Deutsche Welle reported a lot about him.

Honors

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Joshua Hammer: The Imperiled Bloggers of Bangladesh. The New York Times Magazine, December 29, 2015, accessed April 30, 2016 .
  2. ^ A b c Thomas Klatt: Politkovskaja Award for Bloggers: That is why Asif Mohiuddin sought refuge in Germany. Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung , August 7, 2015, accessed on April 30, 2016 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Asif Mohiuddin - Freedom of Speech Means Freedom to Offend (2015 National Convention). YouTube, June 29, 2015, accessed April 29, 2016 (English, speech by Mohuiuddins at the American Atheists National Convention in Memphis, TN).
  4. ^ A b Neil King, Samantha Early: 'I have to help the people of Bangladesh'. Deutsche Welle, April 22, 2014, accessed on April 29, 2016 (English).
  5. ↑ Arafatul Islam: Bangladesh gags award-winning blogger. Deutsche Welle, March 25, 2013, accessed April 30, 2016 (English).
  6. ^ Rezwan: Bloggers in Bangladesh Face Threats Online and Off. slate.com, April 4, 2013, accessed April 30, 2016 .
  7. ^ Bloggers in Bangladesh protest over arrest of writers. BBC News, April 4, 2013, accessed April 30, 2016 .
  8. ↑ Blogger Asif Mohiuddin arrested over “blasphemous” blog posts. Reporters without borders, April 3, 2013, accessed April 29, 2016 .
  9. ↑ Sanaul Islam Tipu: blogger Asif Mohiuddin sent to jail. (No longer available online.) Dhaka Tribune, July 29, 2013, archived from the original on April 30, 2016 ; accessed on April 29, 2016 (English).
  10. ^ Blogger Asif Mohiuddin granted bail. (No longer available online.) Dhaka Tribune, June 27, 2013, archived from the original on June 3, 2016 ; accessed on April 29, 2016 (English).
  11. ^ Outlook: Imprisoned with My Attacker. BBC News, February 17, 2016, accessed April 30, 2016 (BBC radio interview with Mohiuddin).
  12. ↑ Asif Mohiuddin, blogger from Bangladesh - new guest of the Hamburg Foundation for the Politically Persecuted. (PDF) March 24, 2014, accessed April 30, 2016 .
  13. ↑ Bangladeshi bloggers Asif Mohiuddin and the late Ahmed Rajib win Free Expression Award at World Humanist Congress. humanism.org.uk, August 9, 2014, accessed April 30, 2016 .
  14. ↑ 100 Information Heroes. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on May 2, 2014 ; accessed on April 30, 2016 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Mohiuddin, Asif
ALTERNATIVE NAMES আসিফ মহিউদ্দীন
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Blogger, secularist
DATE OF BIRTH 1983 or 1984
PLACE OF BIRTH Dhaka , Bangladesh