Quite a few extremist dens have been discovered by law enforcing and counterterrorism agencies across the country in recent times.

The government must realise that it is against heavy odds, that it faces an organised group that is well led both at the strategic and tactical level as evident from the recent conduct of the killings.

The motive behind the horrid murder of Shahidullah, a 'Pir' in Rajshahi, is unknown but the way unidentified assailants killed him bears the hallmark of extremists who have been behind the recent killings of several others, both Muslim and non-Muslim.

Bangladeshis simply cannot allow extremists to triumph over liberalism and the way to defeat extremism is neither through dagger nor through 'development' but through unadulterated democracy.

Quite a few extremist dens have been busted over the last several days. And that is a matter of both comfort as well as alarm.

Emboldened by the government's lack of action, the extremists will eventually expand their attacks on liberals, politicians, journalists, writers and anyone who disagrees with their views and approach.

Siegfried O. Wolf, a professor of political science at the South Asia Institute of the University of Heidelberg, said that foreign intelligence agencies did withhold sensitive information from Bangladesh, fearing that it could be misused. The country is in the grip of extreme political polarization, he said, and there is factionalism and rivalry among security agencies.

Iran has played the extremist card to the hilt and managed to run rings around the US that continues to suffer from a joint ISIS-Al Qaeda phobia...

The Islamic State jihadist group has released a video purportedly showing the executions of some 30 Ethiopian Christians in Libya.

IN recent times, an upsurge of extremist movements, zealotry and fanaticism has almost shaken the foundation of our fledgling democracy.

A monitoring group says, since last three months, the Islamic State has recruited at least 400 children in Syria and trained them as so-called "Cubs of the Caliphate" and hard line indoctrination.

THE brutal killing of Avijit brings into sharp relief the question posited in the heading of this article. He is the latest in a long list of victims who had to forfeit his life to an extremist group who found his views to be in discord with theirs. And the killers claim to belong to a faith that considers killing of even one innocent person as killing of entire humanity.