It is always nice to be reminded that when women suggest they need more rights they are protested, slapped, exiled and/or censored. Bangladeshi poet, author, feminist and activist Taslima Nasrin was barraged by protesters, at a book reading in South India, accusing her of suggesting changes to the Quran.
Dozens of Muslim protesters led by three lawmakers attacked an exiled Bangladeshi writer at the release of her book in southern India on Thursday, calling her “anti-Islam,� and telling her to go back to her country.About 100 people burst into the Press Club in Hyderabad, shouting insults at Taslima Nasrin and ransacking the place, throwing chairs in the air and overturning tables.
Organizers pushed them back, and Nasrin escaped unhurt. In the melee, one of the protesters slapped her, witnesses said.
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Taslima Nasrin is awesome. She's basically like Salman Rushdie and Richard Dawkins in one. And she's a medical doctor too!
It's a shame she's not more widely known of in the West, and that she gets so much abuse from these a-hole fundamentalists.
Thanks for posting this. I'm going to research more of her now.
Micheyd, "a-hole fundamentalists" is a redundancy.
What is left out of this post and the AP article is that it's against the law in India to say something offensive about someone's religion because of the high level of tension there is between religious groups. Partition has left its legacy on the country in the same way that the Holocaust has left its mark on Germany, where denying the Holocaust is a crime. Think of what she said in the context of it being considered similar to what Americans would call 'hate speech', except with a much greater potential for inciting mass violence.
This is not to say that I agree with what is going on, just to point out the cultural significance of the situation and shift the lens away from a Western view.