The crescent and the pen : the strange journey of Taslima Nasreen

Hanifa Deen
Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2006

ISBN: 0275991679

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Book description
This is a book about a writer, Islamic fundamentalism, mythmaking, and international literacy politics. It is the story of Taslima Nasreen.

A former medical doctor and protest writer, Taslima shot to international fame in 1993 at the age of 34 after she was accused of blasphemy by religious fanatics in Bangladesh, and her book Shame was banned. In order to escape a warrant for her arrest, the controversial writer went underground and, as the official story has it, fled to the West where she became a human rights celebrity. Her fame increased further in 1994, when she was awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament and was feted by presidents, chancellors, mayors, and famous writers and intellectuals around Europe for two years. She is still remembers and widely admired as a modern-day feminist icon who fought the fundamentalists in her worn country and whose life was in danger as a result.

That is the official story and the one that is widely believed around the world. However, as The Crescent and the Pen reveals, the true story behind the international campaign to save Taslima has not been told - until now.

Writing in the style of a literary detective tale as she follows Nasreen's trail, Deen questions the reasoning behind the international "crusade" to save the writer, in the process debunking much of the current thinking that has shaped Islam into the new global enemy. She discovers that the story of what really happened is a fascinating labyrinth, where memory and myth have merged. What remains is a tale with a hundred different authors, a tale that has acquired a life of its own.

About the author
Hanifa Deen is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Muslim Minorities at Monash University.

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