Taslimanasreen returned to Bangladesh about the same time the more celebrated Salman Rushdie received a semi-reprieve from the fatwa issued against him by the long-gone Ayatollah Khomeini. These kinds of fatwas are a vicious form of controlling society, used by clerics traumatised by changes that are beyond their control. These are cowardly instruments on intolerance which cow down politicians and the bureaucracies they control.
At the moment of going to press, Taslima is still in hiding back in her home country. Having come back to Bangladesh with her father and cancer-ridden mother, she has obviously been moving from safe-house to safe-house, avoiding vigilante action. Four years ago, it was the same fanatic thought-police which hounded her out of the country. Now, after lying low during Taslima´s exile in the West, the religious extremists of Bangladesh are at it again, baying for Taslima´s blood.
That their country has been devastated by one of the worst floods of the century has not diminished the fanatic energy to avenge what is thought to be blasphemy committed. For these men, nature´s ravages do not spell as real a threat to their supremacy in society as the one posed by a female daring to show sympathy to a minority community. How much does the noose Taslima faces have to do with her being a woman? We do believe that the male Salman Rushdie, howsoever grand a writer he may be, would not have whipped up as wicked a reaction as the female writer, who, by some snide accounts, is only a "mediocre writer".
Writing skills are hardly of consequence in the case at hand. The issue is whether an individual can be denied her fundamental rights merely because her views challenge a religion´s orthodoxy. It is also banal to treat the whole affair as one which harks back to the medieval times; this is the here and now. It is clear that modernisation of technology does little by way of enhancing thought, which is why humankind has been continuously and meticulously updating its talent for brutality.