This past Thursday, prominent Bangladeshi-American atheist blogger Avijit Roy and his wife Rafida Ahmed Bonna were attacked with machetes in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, resulting in Roy's death and his wife's critical condition. According to CNN, the pair was assaulted on the Dhaka University campus as they were leaving a book fair where Roy had spoken.

Roy is the founder of the Bengali-language blog Mukto-Mona, and is said to have recently received threats from militants for his progressive books and blog posts.  According to BBC, he defended atheism in a recent Facebook post, stating that it is a "rational concept to oppose any unscientific and irrational belief."

In one of his final articles, he called the Charlie Hebdo massacre "a tragic atrocity committed by soldiers of the so-called religion of peace," and stated, "The virus of faith was the weapon that made these atrocities possible."

Fellow blogger Taseema Nasreen said of Roy's death, "Bangladesh has become a safe haven for Islamists where they can do whatever they like... They can kill people with no qualms whatsoever. Avijit Roy has been killed the way other free-thinking writers were killed in Bangladesh. No free thinker is safe in Bangladesh."Nasreen speaks from experience, as she had to leave Bangladesh after receiving death threats from extremists.

Michael De Dora, a close friend of Roy's, revealed that Roy thought no real harm would come to him. He stated, "Avijit was very idealistic. His understanding was that he wouldn't be killed, that if anyone ever tried to attack him or hated him, that they could just kind of have a chat and he would convince them ... that they could at least have a dialogue."

He continued, "For him, even if he was getting threats that he thought were serious, to not be able to go back to his home country and meet with activists and other bloggers and writers would be kind of horrible thought for him."

According to the International Business Times, an Islamist group called Ansar Bangla 7 has since claimed responsibility for Roy's death on Twitter. Messages included "Allahu Akbar... A great success today here in Bangladesh," and "The guy... was targeted because of his crime against Islam."