Updated March 24th, 2008

Taslima Nasrin is facing some issues today. Her 15 minutes of fame has ended and her luck seems to be running out. The diminution in her hubris may reflect her inability to find a country or even a state that is able to host her.

She is angry at India, is in London and may be going to another country.

“The government is no better than religious fundamentalists,” she said. She said the government refused her timely medical treatment and called the safe house where she was kept under federal protection a “chamber of death.”

This is how “The Game” is played. The ruse identifies wannabe authors from different countries and then incubated. Same Islampphobic message —different bottle.  For aspiring authors willing to sell their souls, the perfect scheme based on a planned formula seems to work like clockwork. The ploy has worked for many “authors” from Kenya, Somalia, Iran, Iraq and other places.

The track record of the “Taslima Nasrins” of the world is similar. They do it to give their careers a boost, and are fully cognizant of their actions. All it takes in  an ambitious third rate writer who wants to crawl the “corporate ladder” and get published. Today the easiest way to stardom is to trash Islam and deliberately provoke a sensitive, easily excitable, and penury stricken population with acerbic comments, vile depredations and inflammatory rhetoric. Some deranged psychopathic idiotic loser somewhere in the world who hates the world wants to fix the planets problems by issuing a death sentence on the “writer”.

Bingo! “Mission accomplished!”  Islam is demonized.

There are rumors amongst the conspiracy theorists that some of these psycho-idiots are hired guns and some of the rioting was orchestrated to affect an elections. 

Before you can snap your fingers and say “electronic crusade“, before the “global village” hears about it, before the message is broadcast from the pulpits, before the rioting is over, champions of human rights from a pre-selected section of the media take a break from the “firecrotch” shots of Spears, Lohan or Hilton. They make a bee line to the “writers” defense and find another excuse to badmouth bad bad bad Muslims. 

The polemicists become instant celebrities and the darling of the West. A book tour at $5000 a pop materializes with paid speaking engagements on campuses etc. They are instantly adopted by a country who accept foster parentage for the trash and their trashy views. With notoriety comes fame and fortune. They move to the West, say Scandanavia or the Netherlands. Soon the welcome mat is withdrawn and the “hired mule” rider is left to fend for herself or himself.

Taslima Nasrin made a career out of her polemics on Islam and the Muslims. She was awarded asylum and citizenship in one of those Scandinavian countries. I am just as confused of the individual identity of Scandinavians as they are confused about the diverse and distinct world which is inhabited by red, yellow, black and white Muslims in Asia, Africa, Europe and of course the bad bad Middle East.  All I can remember from my teenage days about “paradisanavia”—-the home of Olga the Nymphomaniac Nurses in “those” ”sex free” countries is coed saunas, orgies in the snow, nude beaches, naked blondes, unisex changing rooms,  and the fact that for some reason they are the grand aqueducts of all pornography. (I wrote that just get a rise out of any Scandinavian reading this….smile! I was simply making a point)

Taslima Nasrin went to the “workers paradise” –the epitome of socialism, and home of the boxy safest car. She had a good time for a few months but could not really get into the “free sex” thing. Perhaps being ugly and portly in a nation of slim and pretty blondes may have something to do with it. She got lonely and couldn’t handle the inherent racism and the isolation. She was looking for a new home and groveled to India to let her in.

Magnanimous India, ever sensitive about her insurrection loving Kashmiris and slum-dwelling poor and destitute Muslim population allowed her in,  provided she did not unnecessarily provoke the “hot headed mian bhais“. But provoke she did and Bengal the most liberal of all Indian states recently showed Ms. Nasrin her walking papers.

Because India the darling of the West is a great democracy run by human rights activists and statesmen she has plenty of invitations. Mr. Modi is one such activist who is supporting her “right to free speech.” Mr. Modi’s claim to fame is the murder of more than 3000 Muslims in his home state of Gujrat. (caught on tape by Tehilka.com)

This is what says a newspaepr says about the Taslima-Modi affair:

…the BJP has sprung to her defence. Thus, they are seeking to reinforce their anti-Muslim stance and consequently consolidate the Hindu vote-bank. Nothing else can explain this sudden fondness for Taslima.

The duplicity lies in the fact that the BJP and the saffron brigade continues with its relentless campaign to send ‘Bangladeshis’ back from the metros of Delhi and Mumbai. In the process, many a genuine Indian citizen, who happens to be a Muslim hailing from West Bengal, have been harassed and hounded. Further, further duplicity lies in their rabid intolerance of any artistic expression that they consider offensive to their religious sentiments. Over the last decade, there have been innumerable instances of brazen attacks on artists of a wide spectrum, the most infamous of them being attacks against Indian painter, M F Husain. His house was vandalised, his paintings that sell in international auctions at phenomenal prices were destroyed, and court proceedings were initiated against him at various places. The net result is that one of India’s illustrious sons is forced to live abroad virtually in exile. The BJP spokesman in the Lok Sabha says: “Husain is welcome to come back and face the charges. We don’t stop him from coming and facing the law.” Everyone needs to both face and abide by the law. This is not the contentious issue. The same law of the land must also protect the life and properties of the concerned individual. When these are violated with impunity by the saffron brigade, where is the protection?

The concert of noted Pakistani ghazal singer Ghulam Ali was disrupted in Mumbai. The shooting of Deepa Mehta’s film, Water, was sought to be prevented. Films like Parzania on the 2002 Gujarat carnage or Fanaa are attacked. In fact, some film-makers needed to take ‘permission’ for their films to be screened. In May 2007, the saffron brigade ransacked the prestigious M.S. University in Vadodara protesting against an in-house painting of a student for hurting their religious sentiments – the same charge that some Muslim organisations have raised against Taslima. On May 19, 2007, justifying this attack, the BJP said: “Freedom of expression does not mean hurting religious sentiments.” Clearly, the saffron brigade does not accept the saying, ‘What is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander’.

Two survivors of the 2002 carnage have reportedly stated that they will vote for Modi “because I don’t know what Bajrang Dal will do to us if he is voted out”. This is Abdul Majid, who lost seven family members, including a daughter who was raped and killed and two sons who were burnt alive. The other survivor who echoes this sentiment is Khaliq Noor Mohammad Sheikh. Apart from losing his father and four uncles during Partition, he lost his wife and all five children in 2002. He tells the reporter: “You must have heard of Kausar Bi, the pregnant girl whose baby was ripped out of her. I am her father.”

So what will happen to Ms. Nasrin? Don’t worry, if Ms. Nasrin has troubles settling in Gujarat, she can always find a job with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). This same institute has already hired another one of these trashy “writers” and may hire more. The worst case scenario, she can write another book or colloberate with the other trashy writers. The game starts again. ”Do not go to jail, simply collect $200.“