Taslima Nasrin's Blog, page 33

Hey Egypt, stop killing people.

The Egyptian government acknowledged that its security forces had killed 36 Islamists in its custody on Sunday, as the country’s military leaders and Islamists vowed to keep up their fight over Egypt’s future.

More than 1,000 Islamists and their supporters are gunned down by security forces. This is ridiculous. Egypt must stop killing people.

Morsi supporters are brainwashed Islamists. They are bad people, but still they have the right to live as everyone has the right to live. Muslim Brotherhood is a religion-based political party. A secular country can ban religion-based politics, religion-based laws and religion-based education system as it separates religion from the state, but can not kill Islamists only because they are Islamists. It is not their crime that they become Islamists. They have chosen the wrong path, but they have the right to be wrong. They were not born as Islamists. Your bad, corrupt, superstitious and unscientific, unenlightened society and system made them Islamists. You have to deal with it, and you have to deal with it without bloodshed.

Ban Muslim Brotherhood

“Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”– Muslim Britherhood.

Bangladesh is an Islamic country but banned Jamaat-e-Islami, the Islamic political party. Egypt should learn from Bangladesh and ban Muslim Brotherhood. There is almost no difference between the ideologies of Maulana Maududi’s Jamaat-e-Islami and Hasan al Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood and Jama’at-i Islami are separate movements that tend to draw the bulk of their members from different ethnic groups (Arabs and South Asians, respectively). Nevertheless, both groups are rooted in a political ideology, frequently described as “Islamist,” that calls for the establishment of a distinctly Islamic system of government.

The Muslim Brotherhood is without question the world’s most influential modern Islamist organization. Founded in Egypt in 1928 by schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna, the group advocates the embrace of Islam as a way to promote both personal development and broader social reform. Initially a religious and social organization, the Muslim Brotherhood quickly became politicized. Its ideology, which calls for establishing Islamic states based on shari’a (or Islamic) law, became the basis for virtually all Islamist movements. The group’s standard slogan, “Islam is the solution,” expresses the movement’s emphasis on the systematic application of Islam to all facets of life.

Soon after it was founded, the Muslim Brotherhood spread beyond the confines of Egypt, eventually establishing branches in nearly every country in the Arab world. In addition, it also provided the ideological basis for a number of other prominent Islamist movements outside the Arab world, including the Pakistan-based group Jama’at-i Islami, broadly translated as “Islamic society.”

People are getting killed in Egypt.

If you want true democracy, you have to have secularism. And if you have secularism, it means you have strictly separated state from religion. And if you do that, you can not have politics based on religion, because almost all religions are basically anti-women, anti-science,anti-democracy, anti-rationality, anti-equality, anti-humanity. You can not allow it to rule the world and destroy every good thing that we have built so far. Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami want theocracy, not democracy. They do not believe in women’s equal rights and people’s right to criticize Islam, they want sharia laws or Islamic laws or 7th century’s barbaric laws that are against women’s rights and human rights. Their agenda is to convert the whole world to darul Islam, the land of Islam. They want democracy just long enough to replace it with theocracy.

Come on! Who doesn’t know democracy is the solution! But not in those lands where you have brainwashed people with anti democratic religion for centuries! First you ban the political parties that are based on religion then you welcome democracy. Fascist Nazi party is banned in Europe. Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami are not better than Nazi. You should know that religion and fascism work hand in hand.

Breast bombs!

Al-Qaeda’s chief bomb-maker Ibrahim al-Asiri is thought to have developed explosives that can be concealed in breast implants and escape detection from airport scanners.

Too much trouble for airline passengers! Because there was a twin tower attack, we still have to wait in a long queue and get vigorously checked at the airport security checkpoints. Because there was a shoe bomber, we still have to take off our shoes. Now, because there is a new breast bomb threat, we, most likely, are going to be harassed again. Are the airport security personals planning to give us hard breast massage or what?

I do not think al-Qaida is capable of doing any thing big any more. Dead lions roaring! There is no need to take their threats too seriously. I hope the breast bomb threat is like fake anthrax threat or fake underwear bomb threat.

What next?

Ass bombs? No, I am not interested. I am waiting for brain bombs. If those bombs can make terrorist brains change.

Welcome to Earth, baby!

Welcome to Earth, Olinguito!

From now on, we will call your species Olinguito.

Don’t you like the name? It does not matter you like it or not, we will call you Olinguito anyway.

You are living in the cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador. Your colour is reddish-brown. Quite a common colour for the animals living in those forests. You have a cute teddy bear face. Do you know that you have a cute teddy bear face, cutie? You are about 14-inches long and your tail is also 14-inches long. It makes you look so beautiful! You weigh about 2 pounds. So tiny little raccoon! You are the smallest member of the raccon family. You guys were there, but we didn’t know that you were there. We say we have just ‘discovered’ you. You can ask, ‘were we covered?’ No, you were not covered. But you should know that we look like giants but our brains are not yet giants. We do not know about every little thing of earth. We still have limitations. But you should be happy that we are very excited to find you because you are not mere insects, you are mammals. You have hair, you give birth to babies, you breastfeed your children. You are like us!

We never saw animals like you, at least not in those forests. We saw Olingo, your cousins, but not Olinguito, not you. You are the first new species of carnivore that we have discovered in the western hemisphere in 35 years. Kristofer Helgen, a Smithsonian zoologist is the man behind to find you. Don’t worry, we will not kill you off. We will force some of you to leave the forests, but promise we will take care of you. And we will not let you extinct in near future. Personally I do not like carnivore. Wish you were not flesh eating animals. I know you are like cats, dogs, bears etc. Oh no, I love cats. I can love you too if you do not bite me.

Enjoy life, Olinguito! See you soon in zoos!

Gandhi

I am watching Gandhi on an Indian TV. Today is the Independence Day of India. TV channels are celebrating the day. Gandhi is the father of the nation. Showing Gandhi is part of their celebration. Gandhi is an award winning well produced well directed film. The film won eight Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Richard Attenborough), Best Original Screenplay (John Briley) etc. The film also got Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

I always wonder how the film got so many awards when an important part of Gandhi’s life was ignored. Who knows why the film did not show Gandhi’s sex experiments or Celibacy tests! Gandhi’s sex life is very important to know Gandhi the person. Gandhi started sleeping and bathing naked with young naked girls since 1906. He continued to do it until his death in 1948. 16 to 19 years old young girls were forced to sleep with him every night. Manuben, one of the girls who had to sleep with him, wrote her diary. She described how she was cursed if she ever hesitated to get naked. Gandhi got angry with her whenever she expressed her desire to marry someone. Gandhi could do whatever he liked because he was extremely popular and also because Indian society was deeply misogynistic. There was no proof that those girls were not molested by Gandhi. The girls were asked to keep their mouths shut.

Gandhi also used the girls as his walking sticks.

Remembering those days

India got independence from the British in 1947. But the independence brought the partition, based on religion. Pakistan was for Muslims. India was for Hindus. The political leaders of India believed in two nation theory. But the war between East and West Pakistan proved that two nation theory was a wrong theory and Muslim unity was a myth. The leaders thought if they could divide people who lived for thousands of years together on the same land, all the conflicts will be solved and everybody would live happily ever after. But they were wrong. A million people died during the partition. Hatred increased. Muslim and Hindu fundamentalism grew more than ever. After 66 years of the partition, now we see that India and Pakistan are having nuclear bombs, Indians are in constant fear of Pakistani terrorists, Pakistanis are getting killed by talibans and drone attacks, Bangladesh’s secular fabric has been destroyed by the Islamists.

If there were no partition of India, there would not have been war in Bangladesh in 1971. 3 million people would not have died, 200,000 women would not have raped.

Today I am celebrating Independence Day of India by reading ‘September on Jessore Road’, a poem by Allen Ginsberg and all the deaths and the homelessness of Bengalis.

Millions of babies watching the skies

Bellies swollen, with big round eyes

On Jessore Road–long bamboo huts

Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts

Millions of fathers in rain

Millions of mothers in pain

Millions of brothers in woe

Millions of sisters nowhere to go

One Million aunts are dying for bread

One Million uncles lamenting the dead

Grandfather millions homeless and sad

Grandmother millions silently mad

Millions of daughters walk in the mud

Millions of children wash in the flood

A Million girls vomit & groan

Millions of families hopeless alone

Millions of souls nineteenseventyone

homeless on Jessore road under grey sun

A million are dead, the million who can

Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan

Taxi September along Jessore Road

Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load

past watery fields thru rain flood ruts

Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts

Wet processions Families walk

Stunted boys big heads don’t talk

Look bony skulls & silent round eyes

Starving black angels in human disguise

Mother squats weeping & points to her sons

Standing thin legged like elderly nuns

small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer

Five months small food since they settled there

on one floor mat with small empty pot

Father lifts up his hands at their lot

Tears come to their mother’s eye

Pain makes mother Maya cry

Two children together in palmroof shade

Stare at me no word is said

Rice ration, lentils one time a week

Milk powder for warweary infants meek

No vegetable money or work for the man

Rice lasts four days eat while they can

Then children starve three days in a row

and vomit their next food unless they eat slow.

On Jessore road Mother wept at my knees

Bengali tongue cried mister Please

Identity card torn up on the floor

Husband still waits at the camp office door

Baby at play I was washing the flood

Now they won’t give us any more food

The pieces are here in my celluloid purse

Innocent baby play our death curse

Two policemen surrounded by thousands of boys

Crowded waiting their daily bread joys

Carry big whistles & long bamboo sticks

to whack them in line They play hungry tricks

Breaking the line and jumping in front

Into the circle sneaks one skinny runt

Two brothers dance forward on the mud stage

Teh gaurds blow their whistles & chase them in rage

Why are these infants massed in this place

Laughing in play & pushing for space

Why do they wait here so cheerful & dread

Why this is the House where they give children bread

The man in the bread door Cries & comes out

Thousands of boys and girls Take up his shout

Is it joy? is it prayer? “No more bread today”

Thousands of Children at once scream “Hooray!”

Run home to tents where elders await

Messenger children with bread from the state

No bread more today! & and no place to squat

Painful baby, sick shit he has got.

Malnutrition skulls thousands for months

Dysentery drains bowels all at once

Nurse shows disease card Enterostrep

Suspension is wanting or else chlorostrep

Refugee camps in hospital shacks

Newborn lay naked on mother’s thin laps

Monkeysized week old Rheumatic babe eye

Gastoenteritis Blood Poison thousands must die

September Jessore Road rickshaw

50,000 souls in one camp I saw

Rows of bamboo huts in the flood

Open drains, & wet families waiting for food

Border trucks flooded, food cant get past,

American Angel machine please come fast!

Where is Ambassador Bunker today?

Are his Helios machinegunning children at play?

Where are the helicopters of U.S. AID?

Smuggling dope in Bangkok’s green shade.

Where is America’s Air Force of Light?

Bombing North Laos all day and all night?

Where are the President’s Armies of Gold?

Billionaire Navies merciful Bold?

Bringing us medicine food and relief?

Napalming North Viet Nam and causing more grief?

Where are our tears? Who weeps for the pain?

Where can these families go in the rain?

Jessore Road’s children close their big eyes

Where will we sleep when Our Father dies?

Happy Independence Day!

Today is August 15. . 66 years ago India got independence from British rule. Let’s celebrate the day.

I was asked by The Hindu, one of he leading newspapers of India to write about my own experience of this country.

Here is what I wrote.

‘When I first visited India in the late ‘80s, I did not for an instant think I was in another country. I felt I belonged here and that it was, in some fundamental way, inseparable from the land I called my own. The reason for this was not my Hindu forebear. The reason was not that one of India’s many cultures is my own or that I speak one of her many languages or the fact that I look Indian. It is because the values and traditions that define India are embedded deeply within me. These values and traditions are a manifestation of the history of the subcontinent; I have been enriched and enlivened by it. I am also a victim of its poverty, colonial legacy, communalism, violence, bloodshed, partition, migrations, exodus, riots, wars and even theories of nationhood. I have been hardened further by my life and experiences in a poverty- and famine-stricken, ill-governed country called Bangladesh.

The intolerance, fanaticism and bigotry of Islamist fundamentalists forced me to leave Bangladesh. I was forced to go into exile; the doors of my own country slammed shut on my face for good. Since then I have sought refuge in India. When I was finally allowed entry, again, not for an instant did I feel out of place. Even after spending decades in Europe, it never felt like home. However, I felt a deep connection with India; I felt I knew the people; I had grown up somewhere very similar, almost indistinguishable. I felt the need to do something for this country and its people. There was a burning desire within me to see that women become educated and independent, that they stand up for, and demand their rights and freedom. I wanted my writing to invigorate and contribute in some way to the empowerment of these women who had always been oppressed and suppressed. Moreover, I wanted to do everything possible to make people aware of the need for secular education to become enlightened, tolerant, rational, and peace loving.

Not many people understand why I, as a European citizen and a permanent resident of the U.S., am so eager to live in India! I know it is not easy to live here; my book was banned in this country, five fatwas were issued against me, prices were set on my head, religious fanatics physically assaulted me. I was bundled out of West Bengal, I was thrown out of Rajasthan, I was put under confinement in a “safe house” in Delhi, I was forced to leave the country — but I did not give up. I came back again and again to live in the land that abandoned me and humiliated me.

I asked why the world’s largest democracy, a secular state, could not shelter a person whose entire life has been spent for the cause of secular humanism, a person without a country to call her own, someone who regarded India as her home. I have been struggling to settle in my beloved country; it has now become a challenge. I want India to prove that a secular state can honour a secular writer. I want India to honour the nation’s tradition of great hospitality and its democratic principle.

India is a land of plurality, with people from different religions, ethnicities, languages and cultures coexisting together. I want her neighbouring countries to learn from India how to secularise the state and how not to violate anyone’s right to freedom of expression. I believe that India, unlike Bangladesh, will triumph over all kinds of fundamentalism. The love and respect I get from Indians makes me feel this is my true home. I still believe that for a sincere, honest, secular writer in the subcontinent, India is the safest refuge, the only refuge.’

Manage your penis.

Suzanne Moore advised men to follow 10 rules to manage their penises. All 10 rules are important. But 3 rules are more important than other rules. If men are unable to follow other rules, they must follow these 3 rules.

2) Do not neglect your penis. I am talking hygiene. Women are subjected to pharmacy aisles full of fresheners, wipes and sprays that encourage us to believe that without them our genital area is just a smelly, slimy mess, but there is no equivalent for men. Surely there is a gap in the market for products to encourage men to stay boxfresh under their boxers. And if they must encase themselves so prominently in Lycra and skinny jeans in this weather … something has to be done. Urgently.

5) Do not ever put your penis into someone who does not want this. Do not ever fool yourself that they really do. Even if they are drunk. Or you are married to them. This is rape. It is not difficult to know the difference between someone who is consenting to penetration and someone who isn’t. There is never any excuse. Ever.

10) Do not mistake your penis for your brain. The silly idea that men possess wicked willies and can’t help acting on impulse is surely rather insulting? If Freud is right and all women suffer from penis envy then all I can say is if I had one I would love, cherish it and put it only where desired. Is that so much to ask?

I am inviting everyone to add more rules for men to manage their penises. I am adding two rules: 1. Never tell your new girlfriend a lie about the size your penis. If your penis is 3 or 4 inches long, tell her that it is 3 or 4 inches long, do not tell her that ‘it is like 9 or 10 inches long.’ It is not good to be caught red-handed later. You should not be considered a liar only because you are embarrassed telling the truth about the size of your penis. Be brave. Tell the truth. 2. You must not insist a woman to suck your penis when you have no intention to give her oral sex. It is not good to make your penis selfish. A selfish penis may end up being a loser.

You ban women from singing, laughing, going outside without veils, because you believe men are bad.You insult men.

Muftis are misogynists. If they truly believe in religion, they have no other alternative but to force themselves to become woman-haters.

Grand Mufti in Jammu and Kashmir issued fatwa against music in February this year. He said, ‘music is un-Islamic’.

Leading religious scholar of Jammu and Kashmir, Grand Mufti Mohammad Bashiruddin, on Sunday issued fatwa against the region’s only all-girls rock band run by the teenage girls and against Chief Minister Omar Abdullah for extending support to them.

The Grand Mufti termed the three teenage girls, who formed the rock band, ‘non serious’, saying such an approach leads to ‘gang rape’. “Shameful incidents like gang rapes, that happened in Hindustan recently, are a result of all this. It happens when women are given freedom to roam around, sing and dance,” Bashiruddin told The Tribune.

The fatwa — an advisory by an Islamic scholar, who has knowledge of theology, religious jurisprudence and law — has been issued by the “Supreme Court of Islamic Shariat” headed by Bashiruddin.

The Grand Mufti asked the girls not to get impressed with support from the political leadership. Bashiruddin also criticised Chief Minister Omar Abdullah for extending solidarity with the teenage girls, terming it as “unnecessary support”. “It will be unfortunate if our society leaves the right path and gets entangled in musical instruments,” the fatwa read.

Omar had yesterday extended support to the rock band after it emerged that the teenage girls have decided to shut their band following a barrage of abuses targeting them and their families.

The girls’ band had come to limelight last December when the three 16-year-old girls made their first and the last public performance at the “Battle of Bands” competition here, where they battled against other bands consisting of boys.

And then again the same stuff that we hear whenever women refuse to be shackled that women are nourishing Western culture. Whatever Muftis do not like, is Western, and Western is always bad.

Referring to the girls’ band, Bashiruddin said, “Such non-serious acts are the first steps towards national disaster”. Criticism also poured in from the hardline separatists led by Syed Ali Geelani, who termed the support extended by the Chief Minister to the rock band as “tragic and surprising”. “There are some values (which) a citizen has to adopt to safeguard the ethical, moral and religious traditions. Kashmir being a sacred place of saintly persons, there is no room to nourish western culture and immoral values,” hardline Hurriyat’s spokesman Ayaz Akbar said.

Though it distanced itself from the threats issued against the rock band, Hurriyat said parents of these girls should have ‘rectified’ their behaviour. “No noble family will allow their girls to choose dancing as a profession which is a thing of pleasure for strangers,” Hurriyat spokesman said.

After the fatwa was issued, Muslim girls who had their own all-girls rock band had to stop singing. They were banned.

But Mufti enjoyed men’s music. It is alright if men sing. Then music is not anymore un-Islamic. It is only un-Islamic when women sing, because women’s soft and nice voices must not be heard by men who are not their close relatives.

Now, another Mufti issued another fatwa against women who use Facebook and Twitter.

The Mufti is not pleased about women being on Facebook to make friends and is definitely against them uploading pictures on the social networking site.

“Women should not post pictures on Facebook or anywhere else on the Internet. This is un-Islamic,” he said.

A Maulana from the minority Shia sect too endorsed the Mufti’s views.

“Women are not allowed to show their faces to anyone apart from their ‘mehram’ (male kin like father and brothers). So posting pictures on Facebook is ‘haraam’ (banned),” Maulana Saif Abbas Naqvi said.

Muftis are against women playing music, women posting pictures on the internet, or women moving their butts. Muftis are not alone. Allah is with them. Allah asked women not to go in front of non-mahran men . If Allah knew about the internet, he would have advised women not to post their pictures on facebook or twitter.

Islam prohibits music. Women’s voices must not be heard by non-Mahran men or strangers. Allah (33:32) told prophet’s wives that they must not ‘soften’ their voices when they talk to male strangers, they should rather make their voices firm and rough. But why is this? Isn’t it very easy to guess! It is because male strangers might get sexual desire if they hear soft and beautiful voices of women.

Because singing requires “softening the voice” and since prophet’s wives are the role models for all women, women’s singing is forbidden in front of unrelated men.

Now, you can say everything Islam and Muftis say in very simple words and sentences so that everybody can understand,– ‘if women sing and if men hear women’s soft voices and if women’s faces and hairs are shown to public, or on the internet—men have no other alternative but to fuck those women, because men are so fucking assholes that they do not know how to control their sexual urges.’

Muftis actually insult men, not women, when they force women to wear veils, or prevent women from going outside home, or stop women from singing in public places. Banning on women proves that men are nothing but a bunch of rapists, their brains are made of dicks and their hearts are made of dicks.

A secular baul!

You know about baul, the troubadours of Bengal. Don’t you?

You may know about Lalon too. Lalon was probably the most secular baul in the baul community.

When Hindus and Muslims were hating each other over the differences of their religious beliefs, Lalon sang songs questioning their beliefs!

Lalon was an illiterate poor man living in a Bengal village. He did not go to schools. But he was a self taught secular philosopher. The man from the 18th century probably could not imagine that his country one day would be divided on the basis of religion, and in the 21st century people would continue hating each other for having a different faith or a different cast.

Good that he does not see the atrocities that we see everyday. Hatred and bloodshed in the name of religion everyday.