[Assam] Muslim lawmakers attack Taslima Nasreen

[Pradip Kumar Datta]

Muslim lawmakers attack Taslima Nasreen

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 HYDERABAD, India (Reuters) - Muslim protesters assaulted the exiled  Bangladeshi author and feminist Taslima Nasreen at a book launch in Hyderabad on  Thursday, incensed by her repeated criticism of Islam and religion in  general.
 Some radical Muslims hate Nasreen for saying Islam and other religions  oppress women.
 On Thursday, lawmakers and members of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul  Muslimeen party attacked her at the press club in Hyderabad at the launch of a  Telugu translation of one of her novels.
 An uneasy-looking Nasreen backed into a corner as several middle-aged men  threw a leather case, bunches of flowers and other objects at her head and  threatened her with a chair, according to a Reuters witness and television  pictures.
 Some of the mob shouted for her death.
 Other men tried to shield her and catch the projectiles. She ended up with a  bruised forehead, and described the attack as barbaric before being taken to  safety by police.
 Nasreen fled Bangladesh for the first time in 1994 when a court said she had  "deliberately and maliciously" hurt Muslims' religious feelings with her  Bengali-language novel "Lajja", or "Shame", which is about riots between Muslims  and Hindus.
 At the time, thousands of radical Muslims protested against her, demanding  that she be killed for blasphemy, and some have continued to threaten her life  ever since.
 Police said they have arrested three state lawmakers from the political party  along with 15 party workers.
Nasreen - sometimes spelled "Nasrin" - was born into a Muslim family in  Bangladesh, a conservative, predominantly Islamic country.
 The author, who lives in Kolkata, now describes herself as a secular  humanist, and criticises religion as an oppressive force.
 In 2004, a Muslim cleric offered a $440 reward to anyone who was able to  successfully humiliate Nasreen by blackening her face with shoe polish or ink or  by garlanding her with shoes.
 She worked as a doctor before turning to writing, and several of her books  have been banned in India and Bangladesh because they upset hardline  Muslims.
 The European Parliament awarded her the Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought  in 1994.
http://in.reuters.com/article/topNews/idINIndia-28903220070809



       
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