CALCUTTA (AP) - A powerful Muslim cleric in India has offered cash to anyone who smears tar on the face of exiled Bangladeshi feminist writer Taslima Nasrin.
"I will give 20,000 rupees ($440 US) to anyone who can tar her face or put around her a garland of shoes," Syed Noor-ur-Rehman Barkati said Friday after prayers at a mosque in Calcutta. Both acts are considered grave insults in Islam.
About 5,000 worshippers leaving the mosque shouted slogans against Nasrin and the government of West Bengal state, which allowed the visit. "Taslima, go back," they shouted, and "Government, stop supporting Taslima."
Nasrin fled her native Bangladesh in 1994 to live in Europe and the United States after Islamic groups threatened to kill her, claiming her first book, Lajja, criticized Islam.
She arrived Wednesday in Calcutta, West Bengal's capital and India's literary centre, for this month's launch of her fourth autobiographical novel. The state banned the previous instalment.
Nasrin's first book was banned in Bangladesh after Muslim literary figures claimed she'd maligned them by portraying them as drunkards and philanderers.
The writer has declined to speak to journalists since her arrival. She has been meeting literary friends in Calcutta and going over the proofs of her next book, expected to be launched before Jan. 28, her publishers said.
The Calcutta Muslim cleric, Barkati, said on Friday that Nasrin "is illiterate and evil. She knows nothing about Islam. Then, why is she being given so much of respect?"
He said he had offered the reward in his capacity as chairman of the council of chief clerics of the city's mosques.
"All the Shahi Imams (chief clerics) support this offer. We want her to go away," he said.