Taslima Nasrin, the Bangladeshi feminist whose irreverent writings forced her to flee from Muslim clerics demanding her life, said in a recent secret interview that she wanted “safety” but denied she wanted to flee the country.
She said she had moved from hideout to hideout over the last two months and had seen her brother a few times, but no other family members.
“We are afraid for her. She is in great danger,” said Rezaul Karim Kayal, her brother. “Everywhere we go, we are followed.”
Every Friday after prayers, crowds chant “Hang her, hang her” outside the apartment block in central Dhaka where Nasrin lived with her mother and younger sister.
Posters have appeared here proclaiming: “Hang Taslima.” She replied by telling one newspaper: “I am not prepared to die at the hands of fundamentalists, either on my way to court or in jail.”
Muslim hardliners have offered rewards of up to 100,000 tacas ($2,700) for her assassination. Such bounties are illegal, but the government, wary of the influence of Islamic fundamentalists, has taken no action.
Nasrin, 32, has expressed a wish to live in the United States, and the government, embarrassed by the affair, would doubtless like to find a face-saving way of letting her go.
“They don’t know what to do next,” said Dr. Rojab Ali, Nasrin’s father and a doctor in northern Bangladesh. “The case against her is political. She will be killed if she comes out of hiding. Her life would not be safe in jail.”
Ali has round-the-clock police protection following threats on his life.
The hunt for Nasrin has been imcompetent, perhaps deliberately so. It seems inconceivable that a woman of such prominence, whose friends and family are well known, cannot be traced by police whose powers are practically limitless.
An arrest warrant was issued on June 4 alleging a “deliberate and malicious attempt to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims,” but police did not arrive at her apartment until the next day. By then she had fled, probably to somewhere in Dhaka.
The authorities may be in no hurry to find her because she represents such a political dilemma. Her arrest would upset liberals proclaiming the right to free speech and religious tolerance; her unchecked freedom would offend Muslim fundamentalists seeking to turn Bangladesh into a full-fledged Islamic state.
Shock tactics rather than literary skill have made Nasrin famous. Bangladeshis are not accustomed to graphic descriptions of rape or having men compared with cockroaches looking for a vagina.
Her books rail against the Muslim clergy and discrimination against women. Hostility toward traditional Bangladeshi men is a recurring theme in her writings. Her love of publicity together with a poor command of English may lie behind the mullahs’ latest hate campaign.
A young Indian journalist quoted her in May as saying in Calcutta that the Koran should be “thoroughly revised” to bring it up to date. Nasrin claimed she had referred not to the Koran, which is regarded as immutable, but to sharia (Islamic law), which is open to interpretation. The journalist interviewed her in English and did not use a tape recorder.
The Muslim clergy has seized on the reported words as a political gift, enabling it to ride to prominence once more despite meager popular support for its policies.
