Case of Shoaib Choudhury and some confusion

It was in 2006, when I first heard the case of Bangladeshi editor and journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, who has been facing sedition, treason and blasphemy charges in his own country for advocating relations between Bangladesh and Israel as well as for confronting anti-Semitism and Jihad. Surely I was surprised to first learn the story of this extra-ordinary brave man, who can say something which goes against the popular opinion in a country like Bangladesh, which has approximately 130 million Muslim populations with the continuous track record of persecution of religious minorities.

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is an award winning anti Jihadist Muslim journalist in Bangladesh.

He is the editor of Weekly Blitz. This newspaper has both print and online edition reaching mostly policymakers, politicians, entrepreneurs, students, think tanks, civil and military officials, clergies and cross section of people in the world.

Weekly Blitz is the largest and most influential English language newspaper published in Bangladesh. Online edition of the only anti Jihadist newspaper in the Muslim world is available on www.weeklyblitz.net

Journalist, writer, poet, lyricist, author, film director, political analyst and peace activist, Choudhury, started his career in journalism in 1989 as the Correspondent of TASS, state news agency of Soviet Union. Later he was promoted as the Chief Correspodent of Itar-Tass in Bangladesh.

On November 29, 2003, he was arrested at Zia International Airport in Bangladesh on his way to Israel to attend a peace conference. Choudhury was tortured, imprisoned and denied medical treatment in prison. Government brought sedition, treason and blasphemy charges against him for confronting religious extremism, advocating inter-faith dialogue and demanding relations between Dhaka and Jerusalem. He was released on April 30, 2005 after imprisonment of seventeen months.

Although released on bail, Choudhury continues to face sedition, treason and blasphemy charges and the trial continues in a court in Dhaka. Sedition bears capital punishment (death penalty) according to law in Bangladesh.

Choudhury is the recipient of PEN USA Freedom to Write Award in 2005; American Jewish Committee's Moral Courage Award in 2006; Monaco Media Award in 2007 Key to Englewood City (NJ, USA) in 2007 and Key to Cherry Hill (NJ) in 2007 alongwith numerous local and international awards.

He has written a number of books on various issues. His book titled 'Injustice and Jihad' was published in October 2007. Italian publication house Neftasia Editore has published Choudhury's book titled 'Non Sono Colpevole' in May 2008.

Choudhury's latest book titled 'Inside Madrassa', which contains descriptive and elaborate information on condition of Madrassas in Bangladesh, Pakistan and other Muslim nations has been published in October 2009. This book is a result of comprehensive research by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury for several years. Interested people can buy a copy of this book by contacting Blitz Publications, [email protected]

In today's world, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is perhaps the most quoted Bangladeshi journalist in the international media.

The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Sun, The Washington Times, The Australian, The Berliner Zeitung, The Jewish State, The Jewish Week, The Guardian and many other leading international and regional dailies and periodicals have published numerous editorials on Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury.

Office of Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury's newspaper, Weekly Blitz was bombed by Islamist militants in Dhaka [Bangladesh] in July 2006. On October 5, 2006, armed terrorists attacked the his office and physically assaulted him. On 18th March 2008, members of Rapid Action Battalion (infamous of extra-judicial murders) abducted Mr. Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury at gun point from his office. He was blind-folded and physically assaulted. Because of quick actions by US Peace Activist Dr. Richard L Benkin and Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (now Senator elected from Illinois) and other esteemed members of United States Congress, Choudhury escaped RAB's deathtrap.

On February 22, 2009, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury's newspaper office was once again attacked by the armed thugs belonging to ruling party. He and his staffs were physically assaulted and the attackers looted his laptop along with two manuscripts of his un-published books.

US Congress, European Parliament, Australian Senate passed resolutions demanding dropping of the false case of Mr. Choudhury and to give him proper security and stop all forms of harassments. But, Bangladeshi authorities in Dhaka, instead of showing minimum respect to such calls, withdrew police protection from the residence of Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury in May 2008.

After knowing such courageous and heroic activities of Shoaib Choudhury, I decided to defend him as a fellow journalist and wrote a few articles on his work, which was published in some news portals and newspapers. But, to my utter surprise, in 2010 I received an email from an unknown email ID, where some Madeline Brooks giving a brief description of certain un-documented issues requested me to pull down my articles on Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury. When I declined such unwarranted request from this unknown person, there have been few more emails from various people using real names and pseudonyms with almost similar type of suggestions of pulling down my articles on Shoaib Choudhury. There had been couple of emails containing information against Shoaib Choudhury's newspaper Weekly Blitz. In those emails, the senders wanted to convince me stating, Weekly Blitz has no readership in the world and the standard of English of the published materials in this newspaper are “sub standard” etc. In other word, they were trying to discourage me in writing for Weekly Blitz or even reading this newspaper.

I was really surprised at the campaign led by Madeline Brooks with her frantic bid in getting articles published in favor of Shoaib Choudhury or mentioning his cause in favor of Israel to be removed from the web. Then I started investigating this character – Madeline Brooks. To my utter surprise, I found an article titled “reforming Islam from Within”, which was published in 2009 and was written by none but Madeline Brooks. In this article, she wrote: “On October 27, 2009, the well-known Muslim peace activist from Bangladesh, Shoaib Choudhury, arrived in New York City to give talks on the problem of jihad at several prestigious institutions in the area. Shoaib, as he likes to be called, has gained the respect of much of the world, for his heroic efforts to stop the Muslim persecution of Jews and other religious minorities in Muslim countries. For this, his life has been threatened several times after he was accused of sedition, imprisoned and tortured. He still is at risk of being hanged by the state for his supposed crimes.”

Madeline Brooks wrote: “Shoaib's goal is to expose evil to the light of day so that public outcries can bring about needed reforms. He attacks the broad central branches of self-serving and sadistic Islamic practices rather than taking an axe to what the American counter-jihadists consider to be the main problem: the trunk of the tree - that is, Islam itself.”

After reading the entire article, I asked myself, why the same Madeline Brooks has now visibly declared war in burying image of Shoaib Choudhury and his actions in favor of Israel as well against militant Islam. I even asked my own conscious, if Madeline Brooks is a wolf in sheep clothing. And it really did not take long for me to ultimately unearth the real identity of this Madeline Brooks.

Madeline Brooks is a practicing Catholic Christian, who abandoned Judaism couple of decades back. She is currently associated with anti-Semitics in the world as well as has also links with Jihadists. Main agenda of Madeline Brooks is to identify and exterminate anti-Jihadist and pro-Israel forces in the world. And, of course, they targeted Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury many years back and finally assigned Madeline Brooks in smashing the image of this man as well sabotage his activities in Bangladesh.

Vinod Mehta
Covering topics ranging from high profile politics to gossip of the celebrity world

Email: patriotvinod (at) yahoo.com