The "international community" showed no grief about the assassination of Rafiq Tagi. An unknown coward stabbed him in the back, then ran away. He "was very nervous and did not say a word," Tagi said before his injuries overwhelmed him. Index on Censorship tried to sound an alarm. But as Tagi's murderer was in all likelihood a supporter of religious rather than political tyranny, the death of the 61-year-old Azerbaijani journalist and literary critic passed almost without comment.

As the Arab Spring turns to winter, more should take notice. Men and women such as Tagi are everywhere under attack. In Tunisia, the religious right in the form of the Ennahda party wins a plurality of the vote in the first elections after the fall of the dictatorship. The BBC and the Guardian hail its leaders as "moderate Islamists". The Islamists then display their moderation by attacking a TV station that broadcast Persepolis, the animated version of Marjane Satrapi's story of the subjugation of women in Iran, and sending it to the courts to face charges of undermining "sacred values and morals". In Egypt, the demonstrators in Tahrir Square start to realise that the Muslim Brotherhood is not their ally, and even western optimists begin to see the wolfish looks on Islamist faces as they gaze at Egyptian Christians and think of a pogrom. Meanwhile, in Azerbaijan a nervous man stabs Rafiq Tagi in the back and leaves him for dead without saying a word.

As no one else in Britain will write his obituary, I will see what I can do. Tagi was an enemy of oppression in all its forms. He opposed Azerbaijan's secular dictatorship, whose oil and gas reserves make it popular with governments the world over. The Aliyev family has made the country its property. Ilham Aliyev, son of the former KGB officer who seized power after the fall of communism, now runs it. Westerners learn about this far-off land, if at all, through the English-language magazine Baku, a glossy rag Condé Nast ought to be ashamed to publish. Baku reveals the old connection between trash culture and trash politics by featuring fashion, modern art, film stars and Azerbaijan's beautiful scenery. It fails to give due prominence to the regime's harassment of the opposition. Nor does it mention a fondness for money, which led Transparency International to place Azerbaijan 134 out of 178 countries on its world corruption index and American diplomats to compare its rulers to the Corleone crime family. Baku's sins of omission become less surprising when you learn that the editor is Leyla Aliyeva, daughter of Ilham.

Tagi also wanted to – had to – oppose religious oppression and he became a volunteer in the two-front war liberals must fight in so many Muslim-majority countries. His religious enemies knew it and marked him for execution. Tagi compared Muhammad unfavourably to Jesus, arguing that Christianity led to human rights and democracy in Europe while Islam led to "eastern despotism". Azerbaijanis, he said, must embrace secularism if they were to be free.

I'd have argued that western religions buttressed oppressive monarchies and empires for most of their histories and he was being too kind. But argument was not what his opponents wanted. The Azerbaijani state imprisoned him and Iran's grand ayatollah, Fazel Lankarani, ordered his followers to kill him. Tagi got out of jail and carried on writing. One of his last pieces was an attack on the Iranian theocracy.

The Iranians or local Islamists probably arranged his murder. As Tagi wrote and spoke as if he were a free man with nothing to fear from dictatorial authority, however, one cannot rule out the involvement of agents of the state. Emin Milli, a liberal Azerbaijani writer, told me that Tagi appeared to be recovering from his injuries in a state hospital and then took a turn for the worse. He wondered how that could be. He was as suspicious about the failure of westerners to take an interest in the murder of a writer, whose "crime" had been to speak his mind. He'd tried the BBC, newspapers… everyone he could think of and no one apart from Index on Censorship was interested. "Why don't they care?"

Milli has a touchingly simple belief in the power of free speech, but his question was not as naive as it sounded. He knew from experience how effective democratic opinion can be when mobilised. He was one of the Azerbaijani "donkey bloggers," whose persecution became a cause celebre in 2009.

Milli and his friend Adnan Hajizade found that the regime had paid €42,000 for a donkey from Germany. Suspecting it was hiding yet another corrupt transaction in the small print of the accounts, they dramatised the absurdity of life in the dictatorship by dressing an actor up in a pantomime donkey costume. The donkey demonstrated why he was worth so much taxpayers' money by answering reporters' questions and leaping up to perform a virtuoso violin solo. The video of the stunt went viral. Police thugs beat up Milli and Hajizade. The courts charged them with starting the fight and sent them down for two years. The world did not stand by and say that Azerbaijan was none of its business. Barack Obama, the EU, the media and human rights groups took up the donkey bloggers' cause and persuaded the regime to free them.

Milli is now studying in London and cannot understand why those who shouted with such passion about his conviction ignored Tagi's murder. I tried to explain that Europe was not the brave continent that Tagi imagined. It would defend the victims of political oppression but not of religious oppression. Ever since the persecution of Salman Rushdie, many have been frightened of denouncing Islamism for fear of reprisals. Others were frightened of being accused of orientalism, neoconservatism or some other sinful religious or racial phobia.

Most, I said, were frightened merely of breaking with the consensus and arguing a minority position. In the war on two fronts, liberal westerners would therefore be reliable allies in the battles with political authoritarianism, but not with religious authoritarianism.

He didn't understand and I felt ashamed. Compared to what liberals must face in the Middle East and beyond, what right do westerners have to put their paltry fears first?