Born August 25, 1962
Mymensingh, Bangladesh

Writer, women’s rights activist, poet, and medical doctor

Taslima Nasrin came into the public eye in 1993, when she published a novel criticizing the religious laws of her homeland, Bangladesh, and advocating equal rights for women. The following year Nasrin stated in a newspaper interview that the Koran (the holy book of the Muslim religion) should be revised. Despite her claim that she was misquoted, Islamic fundamentalists called for her death. Nasrin was forced to flee her home in Bangladesh and was given asylum in Sweden. She has become an international symbol of the intolerance of religious fundamentalism.

Conservative upbringing

Nasrin was born in 1962 in Mymensingh, Bangladesh (at that time, East Pakistan; Bangladesh gained its independence in 1971). She was raised in a very conservative area of what is one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in the world. Nasrin...