Years ago I recall a reader (perhaps Ikram or Conrad Barwa?) quip that I was basically Magid Iqbal from the novel White Teeth. Probably the biggest similarities are the fact that Magid is an atheist with a pro-Western outlook, and, he’s a geneticist. But a major difference is that the Magid depicted in White Teeth strikes me as a prig. And, there are obvious biographical discrepancies. Despite my parents threatening to send me back to Bangladesh periodically for impudence, they never did. I grew up in the United States, and have the citizenship of that country, as well as Bangladesh. And I’m quite glad to be an American right now, because of articles such as this: Atheists are being hacked to death in Bangladesh, and soon there will be none left. The sad conclusion:
This weekend I arrived in Bangladesh with the naïve hope of writing about wide-eyed idealists fighting the fight no matter what, fuelled with the zeal of Je Suis Charlie. The reality on the ground is much harsher: atheists are being hunted down for both religious retribution and political gain. Washiqur Rahman was right: words cannot be killed. But a struggling movement can only take so much battering, and Bangladeshi atheism is fighting to survive.
I’m not much interested in a “movement” of atheists. Bangladesh has other problems, and in some ways it is making progress. As I may have mentioned my mother was impressed and confused by the rapid economic development she saw across the country when visiting a few months ago (my parents left Bangladesh when the nation was only about a decade old). But these recent developments sadden me greatly, because when basic liberty of thought is an offense, then we see a society regressing. Mind you, I am not much the Whig, so this does not surprise me, nor does it strike me as unnatural. I think organized Islamism is atavistic in only a rhetorical sense. The reality is that it is a feature of modernity, or at least a reaction to modernity.
Words are cheap. And “solidarity” across the oceans is pretty much worthless. But I think it is something to at least say that there, but for the grace of God go I, ironically in this particular case. To me a measure of the worth of a society is its ability to tolerate heretics. That is why I sympathize with the ancient Hellenists, and not the waxing homogeneity of Christendom über alles. And that is why I think the world of Islam is today by and large an inferior vessel for human possibility. Not to sound too much a Spenglerian, but I do hope that this flare-up of Islamic violence is simply a reaction to the inevitable liberalism which is being ushered in by the demographic transition and economic growth evident across Bangladeshi society.
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