 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
A new fatwa against writer Taslima Nasrin! Published on March 20, 2007
Dear Mukto-Mona forum-goers:
Many Bangalee Internet-goers who
pretend to be the champion for the cause of free expression of
thoughts and women lib causes blames many of us, the secularists, to
be an ardent supporter of the intrepid female writer from
Bangladesh. What many of us had stated in the past visa-vis Taslima
Nasreen is that we support her rights to freely express her
thoughts. I am doing the same thing again.
A handful of Islamic clerics who
think Ms. Nasreen is a loose canon and whose writings blemish Islam
have the opinion that her writings are pernicious; therefore, she
should be beheaded. Please read the recent AFP dispatch to confirm
the veracity of the fact that a small section of virulent Islamists
hold such obscurantist views. This testament from me hardly makes
me a champion of Ms. Nasreen's views. Fatwa should be banned and
banned right now. Many of the Islamic practices including Fatwa
Giving are anachronistic and needs to be weeded out if Muslim
societies all around the world would like to embrace modernity and
make headway into the future for the betterment of the so called
Ummah.
Sincerely,
A.H. Jaffor Ullah
---------------------------------
Indian Muslim
group calls for beheading of writer Taslima Nasreen
Sat Mar 17, 4:47 AM ET
LUCKNOW (AFP) - An Indian Muslim group has offered a 500,000 rupee (11,319 dollar) bounty for the beheading of controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen.
The president of the All India Ibtehad Council,
Taqi Raza Khan, said on Friday he had declared the reward for anyone
who carried out the "quatal" or "extermination" of the "notorious
woman."
"Taslima has put Muslims to shame in her
writing. She should be killed and beheaded and anyone who does this
will get a reward from the council," he said in a statement received
in Lucknow, capital of northern Uttar Pradesh state.
The council, based in the Uttar Pradesh town of
Bareilly, is a splinter group of the influential All India Muslim
Personal Law Board.
Khan said the only way the bounty would be
lifted was if Nasreen "apologises, burns her books and leaves."
The bounty was not a fatwa as Khan, while a
cleric, is not senior enough to issue Islamic decrees.
But it drew swift condemnation from one of
south Asia's most powerful Muslim seminaries.
The clergy of the Sunni seminary Dar-ul Uloom
in Deoband in Uttar Pradesh, a state with a large Muslim population,
said the call to behead Nasreen was "un-Islamic" and that clergy
should not issue such "fatwas."
"Unnecessary edicts increase friction in
society and people of other religions start treating Islam as a
barbaric religion," Mufti Arif, who sits on the board of the fatwa
committee of Dar-ul Uloom, told AFP by telephone.
At the same time Arif backed Khan's call for
45-year-old Nasreen's expulsion from India, where she is seeking
permanent residence or citizenship.
Nasreen has incensed conservative Muslims for
writing a novel "Lajja" or "Shame" depicting the life of a Hindu
family facing the ire of Muslims in Bangladesh. The book is banned
in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
The author was forced to flee her homeland in
1994 after radical Muslims decried her writings as blasphemous and
demanded her execution.
There was no immediate comment available from
Nasreen, who is also a doctor, who has lived in self-exile in Europe
and the United States but who has lately been living in India.
_____ Dr. A.H. Jaffor Ullah, a researcher and columnist, writes from New Orleans
Responses:
|
|
|
||||||||||||
 |
|
 |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
 |
 |