Shame: A Novel - Hardcover

EXILED WRITER GETS JAIL TERM FOR CRITICIZING ISLAM IN BOOK

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) -- A district court in Bangladesh sentenced exiled writer Taslima Nasrin to a year in jail for criticizing Islam in her book, a court offical said Sunday.

The sentence will take effect the day that the feminist writer, who resides in Europe, is arrested, an official at the Gopalganj court said on the condition of anonymity. Gopalganj is about 60 miles southwest of the Bengladeshi capital, Dhaka.

Nasrin fled Bangladesh in 1994 after Islamic extremists threatened to kill her. She never appeared in court to answer the charges and had no lawyer.

Saturday's ruling came three years after an Islamic cleric sued Nasrin, accusing her of "making critical remarks" against Islam in her 1994 novel, "Lajja," which means "shame".

The animosity and bloodletting between Muslim and Hindu extremists on the Indian subcontinent are centuries old. But when the 450-year-old Babri mosque in Ayodhya (southeast of Delhi) was destroyed by Hindu fundamentalists in 1992, it let loose a worldwide wave of Muslim reprisals against all Hindus - a reign of terror that extended even to Bangladesh's small Hindu community. These incidents form the background to Taslima Nasrin's explosive and courageous novel, Shame (Lajja in Bengali), describing the nightmarish fate of one family. Not since Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses has a book provoked such mob violence, public outcries, and calls for the author's death. Following the initial appearance of Shame in Bangladesh, Dr. Nasrin was physically attacked and made the object of hate campaigns. Her book so angered Muslim leaders that they placed her under a fatwa, or holy judgment, offering thousands of dollars to anyone who would kill her. Dr. Nasrin went into hiding until, with the aid of American and European Union authorities, she was offered asylum in Sweden, where she currently lives. The fatwa, however, remains in effect. The novel's title, Lajja, bespeaks the author's shame at human degradation, her shame both for a government which could not protect the Hindu minority, and for her fellow citizens. It is the indictment of a nation - indeed, an entire religion. Dr. Nasrin calls Shame the "testament" of a writer determined, despite the danger she faces, to speak out in favor of Islamic reform, religious tolerance, and freedom of expression, and against Muslim extremism and other forms of fanaticism.