Taslima Nasrin

Clerics in Bangladesh have offered a $5,000 bounty for her murder because of her her active engagement for women's rights and outspoken criticism of religious fanaticism.

In an article in New Politics magazine, Nasreen is described as "A self-declared atheist, [who] warns that fundamentalist tendencies -- whatever the particular religion -- invariably oppress women: 'fundamentalism is the misuse of religion as an instrument of power for political ends."'

---

In "International Humanist News" (Vol.6 No.2 October 1998) there is a quote by Taslima Nasreen:

"Again I dare to write against male-made religion. I believe that women are oppressed by every religion. If any religion allows the persecution of people of different faiths, if any religion keeps people in ignorance, if any religion keeps women in slavery, then I cannot accept that religion. Freedom for women will never be possible until they cross the barrier of religion and patriarchy." (quoted from her Oxford Amnesty Lecture [whatever that may meen] in 1995)

The contributor notes she is likely to be named 'Humanist of the Year'.

---

A contributor (WAS) reports some new info on Nasrin:

In January [1999], the 36-year-old Bangladeshi physician barely escaped from Islamic fundamentalists who call her an atheist and who placed a fatwa on her head and hunted her in order to kill her in a Dhaka public square. Now safely in Sweden, she cannot practice medicine and receives funds only from speaking and from poetry royalties.

Once the subject of a "60 Minute" telecast and featured in Annie Laurie Gaylor's "Women Without Superstition: No Gods-No Masters," Nasrin is interviewed in the current Winter 1998/99 "Free Inquiry." She has variously been termed "the most dangerous woman in the world," "the 20th Century Humanist Heroine," "Asia's Antigone," and "the female Salman Rushdie."

---

For more details concerning Nasrin's plight, see http://idt.net/~wasm/nasrin.htm and http://humanists.net/nasrin.