Fatwa can not silence warrior woman poet

Taslima Nasreen, Righteous Woman of Valor

FATWA CAN NOT SILENCE WARRIOR WOMAN POET



''She writes that Muslim women should burn their burqas, that women should be treated as equals, and that religion should have no place in law or government...''





What can you buy for $11,319 these days? You can rent the 14-bedroom Christian Dior Chateau on the French Riviera for a week in December. Or, you can grab a 2001 Ford F-250 Super Duty two-door pickup truck that's still in pretty good shape.


Or ... if your taste runs toward the grisly, you and your Muslim extremist cronies might offer $11,319 on the open fatwa market to buy a head; specifically, the head of ''notorious woman'' and dissident writer Taslima Nasreen.


Separated from her body, of course.

The president of northern India's All India Ibtehad Council recently announced a 500,000 rupee (U.S. $11,319) bounty on Nasreen's head. ''She should be killed and beheaded and anyone who does this will get a reward from the council,'' declared cleric Tauqeer Raza Khan, because Nasreen made ''derogatory references against Prophet Mohammed in her writings.''


Granted, Nasreen's writings which demand equality and dignity for Muslim (and all) women are, to many Islamic fundamentalists, a bit radical. She writes that Muslim women should burn their burqas, that women should be treated as equals, and that religion should have no place in law or government … heretical stuff to Islamic fundamentalists. Nasreen fled Bangladesh in 1994 due to widespread violence about her writing and spent many years in exile in Europe. She recently sought permanent residency in an area of India that is culturally similar to her native country.


Khan denies that his bounty is gender related: ''Anyone who opposes the Prophet does not deserve to live,'' he proclaims. ''There have been a number of e-mails and telephone calls congratulating me for the bold stance I have taken.'' Khan is getting e-mails that support chopping off a woman's head? What is this? Seventh century violence meets 21st century technology?


Having Muslim extremists call for her death is nothing new to Nasreen. In 1993, the Soldiers of Islam offered about $5,000 for her execution. Scores of writers, editors, playwrights and filmmakers have been executed since the 1960s in places like Algeria, Iran, Morocco, Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and even Amsterdam, where filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was killed in 2004 for making a film called ''Submission.''


Beheading is legal in Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, where many crimes are punishable by public beheading with a large, curved sword. Just last month, in Riyadh, a Sudanese man convicted of sorcery was beheaded in a public ceremony. While beheading may be a tool for justice in some parts of the Islamic world, it is a tool for terror in others (think Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg) and the $11,319 price on Ms. Nasreen's head is intended to keep her from writing more things like this:

''Nature says women are human beings, men have made religions to deny it.

Nature says women are human beings, men cry out NO!

Women are oppressed in the east, in the west, in the south, in the north.

Women are oppressed inside, outside home.

Whether a woman is a believer or a non-believer, she is oppressed.

Beautiful or ugly, oppressed.

Crippled or not, rich or poor, literate or illiterate, oppressed.

Covered or naked, she is oppressed.

Dumb or not, cowardly or courageous, she is always oppressed.

Even a mangy cur of the house barks now and then,

but over the mouths of women cheaply had

there's a lock, a golden lock.''

Clearly, Nasreen has found a way to remove the lock from her mouth.
More of her writing can be found at her website


So, extremists want her mouth, and the rest of her head, removed from her body. Newspapers in the region have demanded that the Indian government condemn the death sentence, and back it up by offering Nasreen permanent residence. For our part, women all around the world should protest this treatment of a genuine ''warrior woman'' and the world's leaders should demand that Nasreen be protected.

INTERVIEW WITH TASLIMA NASREEN PART ONE

INTERVIEW WITH TASLIMA NASREEN PART TWO