Irshad's interview with Taslima Nasrin

October 28 2002, Toronto.

Background: Meyebela is the title of Nasrin's latest book, a memoir about growing up female in Muslim Bangladesh. Nasrin invented the word Meyebela - girlhood - because although Bengali assigns a word for boys' lives, it ignores those of girls.

IM: How has Bangladesh responded to the word “meyebela”?

TN: Actually, I created that word when I used to write columns for the big newspapers in Bangladesh. One of my columns was entitled, “My meyebela” or “my experience as a girl.” After introducing that word, people started using it.

IM: In your columns, what topics would you write about?

TN: Normally, women’s oppression, including my experiences. When I described what I experienced in public places, shopping centers, that sort of thing, my stories reflected what other women were going through, too.

IM: How is that in a very male-dominated society, you managed to get a voice in the media?

TN: Circulation increased! All the editors wanted me to write because letters showed there was popular interest from women. Also from men. They found it shocking. Before me, women would write love stories or advice on childcare and cooking. I wrote something different. Even the fundamentalists male chauvinists who hated me – they used to read me

IM: Did editors censor you at all?

TN: At the beginning, not that much. They didn’t know threats would come their way. When their offices got vandalized, the censorship started. Today, if I write five pages, they would cut three of them. That’s why I don’t write for the newspapers, even though some editors still want me to do so from exile.

IM: Why was a fatwa issued against you in 1993?

TN: By 1993, I wrote many books – poems, short stories, essays. But my comments about religion made people angry. I said that Islam oppresses women. I criticized verses in the Koran that treat women as property, as sexual objects. And I argued that we don’t need religious laws. Three death warrants were issued against me, amounting to about $5000. The money itself was not important to the fundamentalists who wanted to kill me; blind faith was.

IM: Liberal Muslims would say that there are plenty of other verses that treat women with dignity, and fundamentalists ignore those elements to suit their own agenda.

TN: Maybe liberal Muslims are morally decent, but they’re not following Islam honestly. Fundamentalists are. They’re following the “word of God,” and the orders of Prophet Muhammad exactly. So it’s not true that Islam is good for humanity. It’s not at all good. Islam completely denies human rights and treats women very badly.

IM: After the fatwas were issued, you went into exile. How did you wind up living in Sweden?

TN: Since 1990, I was physically confined to my house, but I kept on writing. In 1994, hundreds of thousands of fundamentalists went to the streets and demanded my death. They called a general strike, which paralyzed Bangladesh. For seven days, merchants couldn’t open their shops. There was no school, no bus, no train, no planes, nothing. To kill one person, the whole country shut down, which meant that people went along with the fundamentalists. On top of that, the government charged me and denied any opportunity for bail. If I had felt that prison would be safe, I would have gone to stand up for my beliefs. But there was too much outrage; the prisoners would have killed me. My lawyers couldn’t do anything. So the writers’ movement, the human rights movement, appealed to other governments to shelter me. The European Union said okay.

IM: What’s life like in exile?

TN: I used to have [round-the-clock] security. After a few years, I found no need for it. My address is still a secret because the hand of fundamentalists can be very, very long. They took some of my family members into custody and interrogated them about where I live. But even my relatives had no idea. When I first went into hiding, I took refuge in the home of total strangers. At that time, if I was found, the family would have been killed along with me. Like Nazi Germany, you know? Today, after so many years, I walk the streets of Sweden and visit friends. I have a cat, which I love very much.

IM: Does that mean life is “normal”?

TN: I have never mentally settled into exile. I have tried to visit my father in Bangladesh but the authorities won’t renew my passport. I live with the dream that one day I will return permanently. I have even asked my family to leave everything in my house exactly the way it was my books, my clothes, my papers, my pictures, the pen on my desk. Exile is a bus stop for me.

IM: Yet you remain creative. Why did you write Meyebela at this time?

TN: Life in exile makes you nostalgic. I was thinking of my past and asking, Why has this happened to me?” I thought I would learn something from writing this. What I realized is that, even as a child, I did think differently. I had lots of questions and I expressed them. I think most women knew that they were oppressed, but the system. I asked one question: Why? Why should we be slaves? We are human beings.

IM: What allowed you to ask that question out loud when so many others kept it to themselves?

TN: I thought it was natural to ask “why”. I don’t understand why they accepted being beaten by their husbands, being prevented from going outside without permission, being forced to marry somebody and stopping their studies after marriage. I know that this is a very, very difficult situation because if you divorce your husband and try to be independent, you’ll be called “prostitute.” But, you know, I don’t care what people call me. Maybe that is the difference. If you want to be a human being, a good person, you first have to be bad in this society’s eyes. If you’re not willing to be “bad,” you’ll never be a truly strong and independent person.

IM: Even as a child, you asked the question, “Why should the Koran be in Arabic?” Tell me that story.

TN: Bengali Muslims read the Koran in Arabic because we are told that Allah says it is good to read the Koran in its original language. But very few people know the language and the real meaning of what they are reading. As a child, I was told that Allah knows everything. Well, everything means everything. So Allah should know Bengali, shouldn’t He? I was curious: How come I have to pray in Arabic? When I want to talk to Allah, why do I have to use somebody else’s language and not my own? My mother did not have any answers. She memorized the Koran because it is written in the hadiths that when you die, two angels will come and ask questions of the soul. The answers will have to be given in Arabic, otherwise your grave will squeeze you so hard. Why wouldn’t those angels know Bengali? It’s as if God has occupied the minds of Muslims, invaded them.

IM: You’re a big advocate of secularism. Exactly what does that mean to you?

TN: In the Indian sub-continent, secularism means many religions at once but real secularism means no official religion at all. The state should be separated from religion.

IM: But how do you respond to those, including many non-Muslims, who say that separating church and state is a Western approach; that it amounts to Western colonization of Islamic culture?

TN: Those liberal Western intellectuals think that the West is against Islam so they feel sympathy for Islam. But by supporting Islam, they are supporting fundamentalism. It’s very bad for the Islamic countries, which need to be secularized. Westerners often support Islam in the name of multiculturalism – “We don’t use the veil, but in their culture, in their religion, they do.” Have they bothered to ask why women even have to veil themselves? The veil is a sign of oppression. Some people try to portray female genital mutilation as culture. Does that mean it should be followed? I love my culture – my food, my music, my clothing – but I never, ever accept torture as being culture. The real conflict is not between the West and Islam, or even Christianity and Islam. It’s been secularism and fundamentalism, irrational blind faith and a rational, logical approach, between innovation and tradition, between past and future, between those who value freedom and those who do not.

IM: And both camps can be found in the Muslim world.

TN: Yes! I come from the Muslim world, don’t I?

IM: But by your own admission, you’re unique.

TN: There is a vibrant secular movement in Bangladesh, but the fundamentalists have momentum because they get financial help from rich, Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran. Let’s also look at Western donors – when they give money for “cultural education,” where does the money go? To madressas [religious schools] and those madressas are making what? Ignorant, foolish fundamentalists.

IM: I interviewed Salman Rushdie not long ago. He believes that the reform of Muslims begins in the West because we in the West have the precious freedom to speak up, dissent and build a much more honest relationship with Allah.

TN: I don’t believe it. It’s blind faith. You don’t get any answers from Allah, do you? Allah does not allow you to argue back. You must believe everything He has ordered, otherwise you are not a Muslim; you are an apostate. So believing in Allah is a form of blind faith. In the West, you may have the freedom to ask questions but I have seen Muslim communities in the West and they are very, very conservative. Very, very irrational. Even though they have a high education, that does not mean anything. They have academic education and academic education doesn’t mean real education – critical thinking.

IM: So what is a realistic way in which the West can support secularism in the Muslim world?

TN: Does the West really want secularism in the Muslim world? I do not think so. They want to keep these people ignorant. Do you think they did not know that religious education makes ignoramuses, and only now they have realized it? They made Osama bin Laden and then they gave all the arms and everything to those fundamentalists.

IM: But post-911, presumably the U.S. realizes that creating fundamentalists is not in the interests of national security –

TN: Yes, and now they are against Iraq. Who gave Saddam Hussein the power to kill? Who helped manufacture the chemicals and the weapons? It is the United States. They created the monster and now they quickly want to remove him by bombing. Bombing is not the solution. Bombing creates more and more anger among the people and they become fundamentalists.

IM: But through the bombing of Afghanistan, women got rid of the Taliban and got the freedom to tear off their burkahs and go to school. Why is that not a good thing?

TN: At the same time as education spreads, religious law has to be thrown out. Otherwise, what people will wind up reading and writing are the Koran and the hadiths. So I’m talking about secular education, not religious education. Education about science, so they can find the contradiction between science and the Koran. Little, simple things will spark them to inquire and ask the question: Why? At some point, they will find that religious law is bullshit.

IM: So what’s the key to ensuring that there will be secular education?

TN: Western countries who are helping poor Bangladesh should be clear that money will not go to fund religious schools, because it is not culture but a monster that will grow.

IM: In most of the West today, the daughters of women your age can look forward to a more dignified future than their mothers did. What has changed for the better in Bangladesh since your girlhood?

TN: [Long pause] Not much. In some ways, it’s even worse now. Because during my childhood, Bengalis were fighting for independence [from Pakistan] and had Pakistani Muslims as their enemies. The Muslim identity of Bengalis was not that important. Now, there is no outside enemy. So Bengalis are oppressing Bengalis, and using Islam to do it. Today, the enemies are at home.

IM: In Meyebela, you make it clear hat there is nothing more precious for a woman to protect than her honor. In the Muslim world, what does a woman’s “honor” mean?

TN: Chastity. That [she] should not be touched by other men. Especially in war, Muslim men rape Muslim women a lot because women are supposed to keep the honor of the family. If women’s minds are destroyed, honor remains. If our hands or legs are destroyed, honor is protected. If anything enters the vagina, everything is destroyed – the life of the woman, the life of the family. It’s perversion. But it’s not a perversion of Islam; it’s a reflection of Islam. The Koran says women are like fields and men can use them as property. Prophet Muhammad himself enjoyed captured women. He passed them around to his soldiers, too.

IM: Moderate Muslims say that plenty of other verses treat women with dignity, and fundamentalists ignore those elements to suit their own agenda. Don’t the moderates have a point?

TN: Ultimately, not even a liberal interpretation of the Koran can lead to equality because there are hundreds of very negative verses that cannot possibly be interpreted in the spirit of equality, and they outweigh the few verses that can be interpreted positively. I think the fundamentalists are more honest about Islam than the liberals are.

IM: Is it possible to be a feminist and a practicing Muslim at the same time?

TN: No, no, no. Not at all. If you are a Muslim, it means you are obeying Allah’s words, which are totally against women. If you are a feminist, it means you support women’s rights and you cannot be religious. Actually, I do not understand how women can be religious because religion is made for men, for their own pleasure. Most of Hinduism’s gods are female, but look at how women in Hindu society are treated. Reform efforts should focus on removing religious laws. That’s what leads to abuse.

IM: Maybe women need religion as a mechanism to cope with the various humiliations they face in this life.

TN: They know there is no hope on this earth. So they are waiting for the afterlife. But there is no afterlife. If you’re dead, you’re dead. Finished, finito –

IM: From the purely scientific perspective, sure. But who’s to say the scientific perspective is superior to any other perspective?

TN: Because it’s true.

IM: Aren’t you fighting against orthodoxy?

TN: I am fighting for truth. Devastated women seek shelter in religion and religion is for that. It’s for weak people, vulnerable people, ignorant people, foolish people. But why should we be weak and vulnerable in the first place?

IM: You know, Taslima, your critics can say that you’re falling into the very pit that you claim they, as religious people, fall into. You say that religion leads to supremacy. Guess what? You’re a scientific supremacist!”

TN: [Laughs] I’m not a scientific supremacist. I am for truth. Not big-T “Truth,” which is God’s Truth, but small-t truth.

IM: But you don’t believe in God.

TN: I don’t believe in God.

IM: So your small-t truth is actually a big-T Truth.

TN: I am a rational person. I am a rationalist, secularist, humanist. It’s not that I want to put scientific ideas higher than religious ones – no. I want to abolish religion only because religion is against humanity. If religion is not against humanity, I have no problem with it. Because I believe in the ideas of secular humanism, I know very well that religion is against humanism. If someone personally wants to believe in religion, I have no problem. But when they try to impose religion on others, then the problem starts. Religious law imposes. The Koran is an historical document. I cannot deny that it exists. But why should we follow it now, in this period, when it’s outdated and out of place? Why do we need seventh-century law now?

IM: The fact that we in the West have plurality of thought – does that make us morally superior to the contemporary Muslim world?

TN: No country is ideal. There are still many women suffering in the Western countries. But in some places, women are suffering much more. It does not mean the cultures of these places are inferior to the West. I find some things about Eastern cultures much better than the individualism of the West – hospitality, kindness, generosity. Individualism can destroy your feelings for other people. We have to take the good things from every culture. But never, never, consider torture as culture.