Taslima’s security increased after fatwa issued

INDIA: Security was stepped up for the exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen after the controversial author was issued with a death threat, police said.

The move came after radical Muslim cleric Majidulla Khan Farhad accused Nasreen of “defaming” Islam and announced an “unlimited financial reward” to anybody who would kill her, according to the Press Trust of India.

“Police in plainclothes have been posted in and around Taslima’s flat in the wake of the threats of Muslim clerics after Friday prayers at a city mosque,” city deputy police commissioner Gyanwant Singh told AFP.

The death threats against the author came just over a week after Nasreen was physically attacked by radical Muslims in Hyderabad during the launch of a translation of one of her novels.

Other clerics in Kolkata backed the call of Farhad, who is from the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, and accused the author of insulting Prophet Mohammad in her writings.

“Muslims in the country will not tolerate an insult to the prophet,” said Syed Nuroor Rehman Barkati, cleric of the Tipu Sultan Mosque in the heart of the city.

“Taslima is fanning communal passions in India by her writings. We will hold protests if she does not leave the country within a month,” Barkati told AFP by telephone.

“Our fatwa (religious edict) against her is a death threat. We have given her a month’s time to avoid it,” he said.

However, on Saturday, the home ministry extended Nasreen’s visa for another six months.

Nasreen remained confined to her home on Saturday.

Kolkata, Sunday, AFP