Taslima Nasrin: A Woman of Courage without a Country

Point of Inquiry

Taslima Nasrin is a world-renowned author and secular activist from Bangladesh. A physician by training, she has written a plethora of novels, poems and papers standing for the rights of women and criticizing religious extremism. Nasrin’s brave and influential writings have angered both governments and Islamists, forcing her to leave her home country, and take up residence in several different countries, at one point settling in India until very recently.

Dr. Nasrin tells her story in this special episode of Point of Inquiry, recorded before a live audience at the Center for Inquiry’s Reason for Change conference. In conversation with Lindsay Beyerstein, she discusses her life as a skeptical child in Bangladesh, her perspective on the Islamisation of her home country, and her rise to the dangerous status of human rights hero and “enemy number one” of Islamic extremists.

To this day her writing still causes outrage in Islamic extremists, and she was recently named as a target for murder by the same Al Qaeda-linked Islamists who claimed responsibility for the deaths of other secular bloggers, including Avijit Roy. In response to this threat, the Center for Inquiry took action to bring her to safety in the United States. Even thought Nasrin has lost the home she knows and loves but the Bangladeshi government and Islamic regime will never be able to take away her pen. Nasrin continues to write for freedom and justice, offering a voice to millions who do not have one.