Nasreen | Clattery MacHinery on Poetry

August 28, 2007

Taslima Nasreen: Women’s Rights vs the Holy Hell

Filed under: 21 century poetry, 21st century poets, Allah, Bangladesh, domestic violence, East Pakistan, fatwa, freedom, freedom of speech, Human Rights, humanism, India, infidelity, Islamic law, Muslim, Mymensingh, Mymensingh poetry, Nasreen, Nasrin, Pakistan, peace, peace poetry, poems, poetic voice, poetry, poets, political poetry, politics, religion, religious poetry, sexism, speeches, Taslima Nasreen, Taslima Nasrin, translation, voice, women's rights — Clattery MacHinery @ 3:36 am

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Taslima Nasreen, International Women’s Day, March 8, 2007,
Women’s Rights, the Veil and Islamic and Religious Laws

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Taslima Nasreen or Nasrin was born in Mymensingh in what then was known as East Pakistan. Read more about this poet, writer, physician, radical feminist, human rights activist, and secular humanist here:

Family Security Matters: Taslima Nasreen: A Woman of Moral Substance

Here is an excerpt from that article:

The life of Taslima should be protected. If India fails to protect her and panders to its Muslim community by not punishing imams who incite hate, then Islamist bigotry and intolerance will have destroyed its secular ideals as surely as they have already destroyed those of Pakistan and Bangladesh.

That article also links to several Taslima resources, including an excerpt, which is essentially poetry, from her book Nirbachito Kalam which is here:

Digital Freedom Network: In Their Own Words: Nirbachit Kalam

Here is the first section:

I am alive. I also tell the half naked woman cooking her rice on a makeshift fire on the footpath, keep alive. I tell the anxious woman with a heavily made-up face sitting on the park bench, keep alive. I tell the sad woman arrayed in her fineries in the air-conditioned mansion, keep alive. I tell the innocent bride of the drunkard who returns home late at night, keep alive. Keep alive, woman; woman, live. Live abundantly.

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