FFRF’s newest award honors Avijit Roy legacy

FFRF is proud to announce the creation of an annual award in the name of Avijit Roy, who was assassinated three years ago. Avijit, a Bangladeshi-American writer and atheist, died at the hands of militant Islamists on the streets of Dhaka.

Avijit Roy initiated a new movement in free and rational thinking in Bangladesh, South Asia and Bengali-speaking diaspora communities. He had a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, but wrote prolifically on many varied subjects that include religion, atheism, cosmology and homosexuality.

He founded an online community called Muktomona (freethinkers) that promoted rational discourse among mainly Bengali-speaking users across the world. As an advocate of freedom of expression, Avijit took an active role in protesting the arrests of atheist bloggers in Bangladesh. His writings and activism earned the ire of fundamentalist Islamists and on Feb. 26, 2015, he was hacked to death by militants at the Dhaka Ekushey Book Fair where his two new books were featured. His wife, Rafida Bonya Ahmed, known as Bonya, was also brutally attacked and critically wounded, but survived the assault.

FFRF will be working with Bonya in helping to raise funds and bestow the annual award or scholarship of $5,000.

The Avijit Award will be given to a person who has been working toward the spread of rational and logical discourse, toward diminishing the influence of regressive fundamentalist religious thinking, toward building a society based on humane laws and without discrimination. The award will recognize creative and heroic 

people, who — in spite of facing numerous hurdles that may include a threat to their personal lives — have persisted in their work through writing, artistic projects, activism or other means of expression to promote science, logic and humane ideas.

“We are honored to be part of this overdue memorial to Avijit Roy and to be working with his widow, Bonya, who is continuing in Avijit’s footsteps to ensure Muktomona persists, and who has personally done so much to ensure the safety of other endangered Bangladeshis,” said FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “As Medgar Evers presciently noted before his own assassination, ‘You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.’ It’s vital that Avijit’s work continues so that rationalism and freedom of conscience prevail.”