Muslim Freedom Fighter

In late October, I had the privilege of spending the day with Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, a courageous Bangladeshi journalist. In 2003, the Bangladeshi government arrested Mr. Choudhury. He was beaten, tortured, starved, and deprived of medical attention for glaucoma and broken bones.

His crime?

Attempting to visit Israel, and daring to write pro-Israel pieces in his newspaper, The Weekly Blitz. Read more about him here.

Like another great Muslim freedom fighter, Mithal al-Alusi, Choudhury inspires love and devotion in some, hatred and violence in others, because he is a prophet who speaks truth to those cocooned in self-deception and lies.

For correctly identifying the pathological prejudice that underlies the blaming of Israel for the problems of the Muslim world, Mr. Choudhury is demonized. In October, he told me, “[In Dhaka,] it’s like I am a devil in an angel town.”

The reality, of course, is much closer to the opposite. There are no greater men than those like Mr. Choudhury and Mr. al-Alusi, who can stand against raging currents of ignorance and societal self-deception, enduring physical torture and ostracism for the sake of truth and a brighter vision of the future.

This entry was written by Heather Robinson and posted on November 21, 2007 at 2:27 am and filed under Blog. permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Keywords: dissidents, human-rights, Israel, Jewish-Muslim-relations, media. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. */?>