American Atheist Blogger Killed with Machete in Bangladesh

An American atheist blogger living in Bangladesh was recently killed during a machete attack that may have been related to recent threats he received from hardline Muslims. 

Avijit Roy, who founded the Mukto-Mona blogger site, which promotes secular ideas, was found hacked to death by a machete in the town of Dhaka. Roy was reportedly attacked by multiple assailants after receiving threats from Islamists regarding his secular writing in the predominately Muslim country.

Roy's wife was also seriously wounded in the attack, but has managed to survive at a local hospital.

"He died as he was brought to the hospital. His wife was also seriously wounded. She has lost a finger," local police chief Sirajul Islam told The Guardian.

The U.S. has also condemned the recent attack, with U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki calling it "a shocking act of violence" that was "horrific in its brutality and cowardice," according to Reuters.

According to The Washington Post, Roy was a liberal voice in Bangladesh who sought to turn Bangladesh toward a secular democracy.

"Our aim is to build a society which will not be bound by the dictates of arbitrary authority, comfortable superstition, stifling tradition, or suffocating orthodoxy but would rather be based on reason, compassion, humanity, equality and science," Roy said in an interview in 2007, according to The Washington Post.

Roy and his wife were reportedly attacked in a street in Bangladesh, with graphic photos showing children wiping the blood from the concrete where he was brutally killed.