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5th
Year of Science, Reason & Understanding
Mukto-Mona in Retrospect
It was 2000. I was a new arrival
in USA with enrollment at the Colorado State University as an
aspirating graduate student. Prior to coming to the USA, I had read
quite a few Bengali books on humanism and rationalism. One such book
had a mention of CSICOP, the abbreviated name for
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the
Paranormal; I didn�t have the web address though. So one day
I tried Google. It was then when I learned about American
secular humanist Philosopher Paul Kurtz and his organization
Council for Secular Humanism (CSH). I wrote a letter to CSH
explaining how thrilled I was to discover- I was not alone in my
beliefs! Later in life, I had to hear same from many humanists from
different parts of the world, especially after I published my
autobiographical essay �My
Experience with Islam�. CSH reciprocated promptly with their
greetings saying, they�re also working with Taslima Nasrin, the
humanist author in exile from Bangladesh. Additionally, CSH provided
me the web address of secularislam.org, hosted by Ibn Warraq.
I visited the site and posted a few interactive messages. It was
Jamal Hasan at the time who sent me a personal e mail saying, he
learned about me from Ibn warraq�s website and was glad to know, I
was from Bangladesh. He suggested that I join a website named
NFB (News from Bangladesh). By the end of 2000 it was at NFB
when I met today�s such prolific freethinker writers as Dr. A H
Jaffor Ullah, fatemolla, Syed Kamran Mirza, Dr. Shabbir Ahmed, Avijit Roy,
Aparthib Zaman & late Narayan Gupta. Abul Kasem had yet to appear. Avijit and I were the
youngest in that tiny circle of freethinkers at the time. Everyday,
NFB�s Reader�s Opinion section was filled with
rebuttals by fatemolla, SKM, Shabbir Ahmed, which were rich in
references, eloquent and inspirational to young freethinkers like
me. In the beginning of 2001, I met Abul Kasem at bangla2000.com.
Quickly I discovered, we�re in same boat. I referred him to NFB.
Soon he became prominent by his own thirst and curiosity to the
movement of secular humanism. Realizing the need to communicate
among ourselves about many issues of importance perhaps it was
Avijit who suggested the formation of an e group. The concept was
still alien to me. Besides NFB, we also started rebuttals of
scriptures in several other e forums. Although occasionally we
received greetings, mostly it was cursing that kept our flame on
indicating we�re hitting the right target! Although all of us were
hated by mullas (proud to say, still we�re), in the case of Avijit,
cursing was two folds. First, he was an atheist and secondly, he was
of Hindu origin, thus in mullahs� eyes, disqualified to pass
on any opinion about Holy Quran/Hadeeth! (Funnily, same mullahs
claim, Quran is here not only for Muslims, but for the whole
humanity!). Anyway, we realized the tremendous need to form our own
organization at the time. Adnan from Pakistan (in USA at that time),
poet Audrey Manning from Canada, Susan from USA were also with us
and supported the decision to form an organization. Avijit
created a yahoo group under the name Mukto-Mona on 26th
May 2001 (without the web page). Then came the 9/11 amid
astounding shock! We formed VOOPs (Voices of the
Oppressed, a name given by fatemolla) where we had newly joined Ibn
Warraq, Taslima Nasrin and Ali Sina with us. The name coined for our
would-be organization, after much discussion and debate, was
Faith Freedom International. I need to make it
clear, the ideals that Ali Sina�s FFI today preaches have hardly
anything in common with the grounds we unanimously agreed on at that
time. Possibly in November or December of 2001, Austin Dacey
from the CSH invited me to attend a conference of secular humanists
of Muslim origin in Buffalo, NY. Ibn Warraq was the convener to the
event. Fatemolla, Dr. Shabbir Ahmed, Syed Kamran Mirza, Adnan,
Bishnu Dey and I attended the conference. The event for the first
time provided me a chance to meet all of above mentioned names in
person. We�d a special meeting with Paul Kurtz where each of us had
chance to express our views and plans to fight Islamic fanaticism.
Unfortunately, attending that meeting didn�t result in anything
productive due to profound difference of opinions that existed
between us and freethinkers of Iranian origin. It turned out, we�d
fundamental differences about the strategy to fight Radical Islam.
I left Colorado leaving my
Ph.D. studies incomplete by the end of 2001. That also brought about
an end to my communication with our group. During 2002 and 2003, I
was totally inactive in Mukto-Mona. But from my occasional
communications with fatemolla, I learned, Mukto-Mona has had its own
website by the generosity of Alan Levin, a prominent humanist from
Canada, and many people have joined there. In 2004, I sought
political asylum in the USA as a humanist and nonreligious writer.
The personal statement which I wrote for the US Immigration court
was published under the title �My
Experience with Islam� when I sent it to Avijit. Paul Kurtz,
Ibn Warraq wrote testimonies for me. I was surprised when so many
people responded enthusiastically to my essay saying, my essay
reflected their own experiences. People enjoyed reading my essay
although it carried ample amount of grammatical mistakes & syntax
errors. To date, I receive feedbacks on that particular essay. The
essay evoked my interest in Mukto-Mona again. When Avijit requested
me to join as a moderator in 2004, I agreed immediately. By the
time, some new faces such as Bonna Ahmed and others had
joined Mukto-Mona Moderation Team.
Rest of the story is somewhat
known to all. Yet I would like to point out that the ideals,
missions and goals which Mukto-Mona believes in now are not quite
the same the activities which Mukto-Mona carried out during 2002,
2003 & part of 2004. So does it make Mukto-Mona a weak or
compromising forum? Well, the very criterion that makes someone a
rationalist is that he/she is not afraid of revising the action
strategy so long as it creates broader room of improvement for the
mankind. Today, Mukto-Mona has 2700+ members. In the meanwhile,
Mukto-Mona�s moderation team has been strengthened by the additions
such as Mehul Kamdar�a former editor of the MediTech
and assistant editor of the Modern Rationalist under M.D.
Gopalakrishnan in India�then Farid Ahmed from Canada &
Tanbira Talukdar, probably the youngest in our team, from
Nederland. The oldest member of our advisory board is about 80 years
while the youngest is in his early 20s! Breaking the norm is one of
the cardinal missions of Mukto-Mona. However, we don�t measure
success just by �hits per counter�. Our aim is to reach out people
on the ground. Thus, despite limited resources and man power, we�ve
undertaken several ground level projects. On the net, Mukto-Mona
has introduced celebrations of
Darwin Day,
Earth
Day,
Rationalist Day,
Women's Day.
Our advisory committee member Dr. Ajoy Roy has been actively
protesting all kinds of minority and human rights violations through
national and International platforms including MM. To learn
more about our related activities, readers may visit https://gold.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/muk-projects.htm
Has Mukto-Mona been a
success? That�s up to you--the readers and writers of Mukto-Mona--to
decide. As a moderator, I�d only say- curse or greetings, we love to
hear from you!
Greetings to all on 5th
anniversary!!
New York
05/24/2004
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