Nine of these “enemies of Islam’” including Roy, Rahman and Das have been killed so far, and several others have been attacked. The other five killed are Jafar Munshi, Mamun Hossain, Jagatjyoti Talukder, Arif Hossain Dwip and Ziauddin Zakaria Babu.

But matters are not restricted to America or Bangladesh. Saudi Arabia has decided that the “crime” of being an atheist is so grave, that—no joke—atheism has been officially declared a terrorism offense. Meanwhile, free-thinking blogger and Nobel Prize nominee Raif Badawi has been accused of atheism and sentenced to 10 years in prison with 1,000 lashes, 50 of which have been executed. To put the boot in, the Saudis decided to convict his lawyer, too, my friend the liberal Muslim Walid Abulkhair.

And Egyptian atheists have it bad too, whether before or after the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government there in the summer of 2013.

So, in December 2012, Albert Saber, an atheist blogger and activist, was sentenced to three years in jail after being found guilty of “the defamation of religion.” In October 2013 it was reported that student Sherif Gaber had been arrested after allegedly setting up an atheist Facebook page.