Taslima Nasrin (Bengali: তসলিমা নাসরিন IAST Tasalimā Nāsarin, anglicized: Taslima Nasreen; born August 25, 1962 in Maimansingh) is a Bangladeshi physician and writer.
Taslima Nasrin advocates for women’s equality and opposes the oppression of religious minorities in predominantly Islamic societies, such as her native Bangladesh. She has been threatened with death by Islamic fundamentalists, primarily because of her 1993 Bengali documentary novel Lajja (Bengali: Shame), about the persecution of a Hindu minority family in Bangladesh.[1] The book was immediately banned in Bangladesh. In 1994, she was forced to flee her country.[2] She initially sought refuge in Sweden. Nasrin has lived in exile on and off since then. In 1995, she first lived in Berlin.
Taslima Nasrin’s literary work has been translated into thirty languages.[3] Sixty thousand copies of her book Lajja (Sham) were sold within five months, but then the book was banned and her passport confiscated.[4] Other works were also banned in Bangladesh and West Bengal.
She is one of the signatories of the Manifesto of the 12 against Islamism as a new totalitarian threat.
In 2004, an Indian Islamic cleric offered a reward of 20,000 rupees to anyone who would “blacken her face,” an act considered a grave insult. In March 2007, the All India Ibtehad Council offered 500,000 rupees for her beheading. The group’s president, Taqi Raza Khan, said the bounty would be withdrawn only if she apologized, burned her books, and left India.
Nasrin has been the victim of violence because of her beliefs. In August 2007, she was attacked by radical Muslims during a reading in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.[7] Nasrin intended to settle in exile in West Bengal. After violent protests by Bengali Muslims in Calcutta (Kolkata) in November 2007, which led to the deployment of the army and the imposition of a night-time curfew in the city, Nasrin first moved to Jaipur and from there to Delhi. The Indian central government warned her that her safety could only be guaranteed in Delhi and that her visa might not be renewed if she insisted on moving to Calcutta.[8] After further death threats, she left for Europe in mid-March 2008. In early 2009, it was announced that she would find refuge in France. The city of Paris will provide its honorary citizen with an apartment on February 1.
Critics accuse Taslima Nasrin of advocating for changes to the Quran to achieve more rights for women. She denies this, however.[10] In 1994, she responded to such accusations by saying that she had called for changes to the Sharia, not the Quran, to benefit women.