I am placing some oft repeated questions before the murderers of Avijit and Babu and the supporters of those murderers. I hope that instead of using machetes they will use keyboard this time to answer the questions. It appears that the Bangladeshi Islamists are not capable to take part in any intellectual discourse pertaining to Islam. They kill those who have different opinion. Let me hope that it will be different this time.

Though all the questions are applicable to all religions, except the first four, rest questions are mainly directed to Islam for better comprehension of Bangladeshi Islamists.

• As per three major religions, all pious Christians, Muslims and Hindus after death will go to ‘heaven’, ‘bahist’ and ‘swarga’. Accepting the existence of ‘heaven’, ‘bahist’ and ‘swarga’, can it happen that a pious Hindu goes to ‘bahist’ after death? Can a pious Muslim go to ‘swarga’ after death? How can one be objectively sure to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to that question?
• All religions control humans with dos and don’ts. If these are to make good human beings, then why the dos and don’ts of all religions are not identical?
• Islam claims to be the best religion. Hindus and Christians also claim that their religion is the best. Under this situation who is the impartial judge to give verdict as to which religion is best? Why is it a never ending quarrel between Muslims, Hindus and Christians?
• If Bangladeshi Islamists approve killing of non-Muslims, do they not allow non-Muslims to kill Muslims wherever possible?
• “Mohammad was the Prophet of Allah – so says Qur’an and Qur’an is the revelation from Allah – so said Mohammad.” Why Islam cannot escape from this circular fallacy?
• Islam has been in Bangladesh mainly since 500 to 900 years. What socio-economic improvement Islam has caused to Bangladeshi Muslims in past centuries?
• Islamists propagates hatred towards the followers of other religions. Why this hatred is required for Islam? How Islam can be holy and sacred if it hates fellow human beings of other religions?
• Islamists claim that Islam is at the core of all sciences. If it is so, why all ‘Ulema’ and ‘Hujurs’ could not become famous scientists?
• Islam propagates ‘bahist’ and ‘dozokh’ to compel followers to behave in a particular way. How can that particular way of behavior be sacrosanct? How keeping beard is holy? How killing non-Muslims can be sacred?
• Islam has created a specific power group in ‘Ulema’ as custodians of religion. Why Islam cannot be self sustaining? Is it an immature dogma and needs custodians for safety and security?

When knowledge is belief-dependent, it becomes stagnant and reactionary. Belief has to change with the ever expanding body of our knowledge. To me, however, all religions are nothing but belief-dependent knowledge and rituals. Religions are unreasoning of human beings of ancient and medieval age. If religions were to make good humans, then they have miserably failed to do so. Human society has progressed so much today that we surely don’t need any religion to become good human beings. Butchering fellow humans (having different opinion) in public is no act of good men and the scriptures which approve this are Criminal Manifestos only.