Free speech, ban and “fatwa”: A study of the Taslima Nasrin affair

Abstract

Of the many feminist voices in Bangladesh, Taslima Nasrin is the best known for the censorship, fatwa and subsequent legal intervention against her. Of all her banned books, Lajja drew the widest international attention, and that, as many commentators argue, was especially because of the involvement of the Indian establishment and media that sought to distract the world’s concern away from religious tensions and communal strife in India in the wake of the Babri Masjid’s demolition in 1992. Despite this political debate, the Taslima Nasrin affair is sometimes used to reinforce the binary between Islam and free speech, and the writer represented as a wronged woman of Bangladesh’s Islamic patriarchy. However, a look at the genealogy of the Bangladesh Penal Code and the Islamic position on free speech suggest that Bangladeshi censorship laws date back to the British colonial period and that there is a wide gap between the street rhetoric to punish Nasrin as an “apostate” and “blasphemer” and the Islamic tradition of free speech rights. Moreover, shifting ban controversies from Lajja to Ka/Dwikhandita counteracts the conventional branding of the secular as sole defenders of free speech and the religious as its chief opponents.

Keywords:

• freedom of speech
• apostasy
• censorship
• blasphemy
• fatwa
• Bangladesh Penal Code
• Taslima Nasrin

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the support he received from the Cluster of Excellence at Heidelberg University while working on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

1. Nasreen is also used as her surname.

2. Nasrin later claimed she was misquoted and it was Shariah not the Qur’an she wanted to be amended. But Sujata Sen “swears she neither misquoted nor misunderstood Taslima” (Deen, Broken Bangles 53).

3. Entered into force on 1 January 1862.

4. The ban was lifted in 2005.

5. During an outbreak of anti‐Taslima feelings among Muslims in India in 2007, a Hyderabad‐based Muslim community leader, Taqi Raza Khan, offered Rs 500,000 for her head, which was protested against robustly by prominent Muslim scholars and organizations there (“Bounty on Taslima’s”).

6. For detailed discussion, see Kamali.

7. Many Islamic scholars reject this hadith outright for “authenticity problems” (Abou El Fadl).

8. Some other Qur’anic verses on apostasy are: 2:217, 3:63, 5:54, 5:86, 9:75–76, 16:106 and 47:25.

9. The Qur’an states: “No‐one is to be compelled to believe” (2:256); “And so, [O Prophet,] exhort them; your task is only to exhort. You cannot compel them” (88:21–22); “Will you then compel humankind against their will to believe!” (10:99).