Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 40 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

”Atheists are more generous than religious people”

A homeless man said, ‘Atheists are more generous than religious people’

This homeless man in the USA is holding a sign that says ‘which religion cares the most about the homeless?’ and he put nine begging bowls in front of him.

Each bowl is labelled as ‘Muslim’, ‘atheist’, ‘Hindu’, ‘Jewish’, ‘Buddhist’, ‘spiritual’, ‘agnostic’, ‘pagan’, and ‘Christian.
The homeless man says, ”The atheists are winning”. It means atheists are giving him more money than others.

Religious people generally help the poor more than atheists. But they do it to get rewards in afterlife. Most of them are simply selfish and greedy. They do not help to really help others, they help others to help themselves. Mostly they donate money to build churches, mosques, temples, gurudwaras, pagodas, synagogues. They do not give a damn to the eradication of poverty programs. When atheists help, they help out of sympathy and solidarity, love and compassion. They do it to make the world a better place. They do not do it to go to heaven. They have no bad selfish motive behind helping others. Atheists’ help is real cool and clean help. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have given billions of dollars to charities. Both of them are atheists.

Monkey business!

We would have done the same if we were hungry. Why do they need to steal food? Hindus have a monkey god. Monkey worshipers should provide enough food for monkeys that live in the monkey temples.

Some men in India and Pakistan force monkeys to be their slaves. This monkey business is so ridiculous. Monkeys are chained. They have to play clowns to make people laugh.They have to do everything those monkey abusers ask them to do. I do not think monkeys are even given a piece of banana after their whole day’s hard work.

This must be stopped. Free the monkeys. Let them live happily in their forests! They will live in the forests with many dangerous animals, but those animals are obviously less dangerous than humans.

We behave like vervet monkeys.

Vervet Monkeys can adopt local traditions.

Two new studies, both published in Science, have highlighted the importance of social learning and culture in two very different animals: vervet monkeys and whales. The study with vervet monkeys is unique in that it’s the first time that non-human primates in the wild have been shown to adopt a local tradition, instead of using their own individual knowledge. In humans, we know that we will often adopt what other individuals are doing when we enter a new group. For example, when you travel to a foreign country you might copy where the locals are eating, as you presume that their local knowledge is better than your own, or perhaps just because you want to fit in. It seems that vervet monkeys might do the same thing.

The same vervet monkeys adopted the local culture of Caribbean islands soon after they were brought from West Africa 300 years ago. They were brought along with slaves who were forced to work on the sugar plantations. Monkeys tasted alcohol by eating fermented sugar canes left in the fields. Today they drink at the local bars. Some of them are really addicted to alcohol. Vervet monkeys are just like us.

His crime is he is ‘too handsome’.

Omar Borkan Al Gala. He is sexy. Isn’t he?

He is a poet, photographer, and an actor. He looks too sexy because of his qualities. He was one of those handsome men who were deported from Saudi Arabia for being ‘too handsome’.Saudi authorities feared that all Saudi women would be crazy for three handsome men.

Saudi authorities were really very intelligent and wise! If Omar Borkan were in the Jenadrivah Heritage & Culture Festival in Riyadh, it would have been a disaster. No woman would have looked at anything else in the festival but Omar and two other beautiful men. Saudi women were so sick and tired for being suppressed that they could leave their husbands and children for those brown and handsome.

Handsome men came from the UAE. So the Saudi authorities could deport them from Saudi Arabia. But what if some Saudi men are found too sexy and too handsome? Saudi authorities would not be able to deport them from their own country. In that case they should seriously think of forcing sexy men to wear burqas. All beautiful women wear burqas in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Society is now calm and quiet. If all beautiful men wear burqas, everybody will find tranquility they need. Ugly fat men can walk around freely. No one looks at them anyway.

I like Omar. I tell you the truth why I like him so much. I like him for wearing eye-liner. His eye-liner has made him look so cute and yummy!

Bush Library! ROFL.

Rich people make money. Poor people die.

“It’s unbelievable that brands still refuse to sign a binding agreement with unions and labour groups to stop these unsafe working conditions from existing. Tragedy after tragedy shows that corporate-controlled monitoring has failed to protect workers’ lives.” – Sam Maher

A few months ago, a fire in a garment factory in Bangladesh killed 117 people. They were burned to death because the building had no emergency exits.

An eighth storey garment factory building collapsed in Bangladesh. More than 300 dead bodies are found till now. Many people are trapped inside the rubble. Many dead bodies are there. Let’s learn how it happens.

They are mostly girls. Poor girls are hired to work for garment factories in Bangladesh. Girls are cheaper. It is easy to exploit them. They work for the US and Europe. They work day and night without holidays and leaves .

They get harassed, abused, raped on their way back to home at late night. Their monthly salary is less then $37. This small amount of money can’t help make their dreams come true. The country will feel sorry for them for a couple of days. Then the poor girls will be forgotten again.

The girls who are working for the garment factories and are not dead yet will remain poor throughout their lives. They are not safe anywhere. They will continue to be exploited by their male members at home, by the strangers in the streets, by their employers at work.

Who cares if poor people die!

Good boys were turned into bad boys because of religion

Here is the full story of how good boys turn into bad boys because of religion.

The family started struggling since 1940s. Joseph Stalin was their enemy. They were uprooted from their own land and were forced to live in exile. They were ethnic minorities everywhere. Despite all their exiles and insecurities, good boys were sent to good schools to become better boys. They called themselves Muslims but they were not practicing Muslims, they were not even veiled Muslims. Then Islam came in its unpolished form and destroyed everything. It brought blindness, veils, unreason. Good boys became bad boys. Very very bad boys. They became mass murderers.

Religion is such a powerful evil!

Stupid celebrities!

Cupping therapy is an ancient alternative medicine in which a local suction is created on the skin. Many people including celebrities fall for ancient medicine. They believe cupping can cure almost all kinds of diseases. But the truth is, ancient medicine men did not have much scientific knowledge about diseases and cures. People who have a little bit of common sense should know that cupping therapy is not a cure for any disease. Simply it does not work. And, cupping creates nothing but pain and bruises.

Look at the cupping marks on their back.

Gwyneth Paltrow

Jennifer Aniston

Victoria Beckham

I like what Richard Dawkins says,”There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t work.”
Not only Western celebrities, many Eastern celebrities also run after medicine that doesn’t work.

Everybody should know about alternative therapies.

Alternative therapies lack the requisite scientific validation, and their effectiveness is either unproved or disproved. Many of the claims regarding the efficacy of alternative medicines are controversial, since research on them is frequently of low quality and methodologically flawed. Selective publication of results (misleading results from only publishing positive results, and not all results), marked differences in product quality and standardization, and some companies making unsubstantiated claims, call into question the claims of efficacy of isolated examples where herbs may have some evidence of containing chemicals that may affect health. The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine points to confusions in the general population – a person may attribute symptomatic relief to an otherwise-ineffective therapy just because they are taking something (the placebo effect); the natural recovery from or the cyclical nature of an illness (the regression fallacy) gets mis-attributed to an alternative medicine being taken; a person not diagnosed with science based medicine may never originally have had a true illness diagnosed as an alternative disease category.

Dear Bill Maher

Dear Bill Maher,
I like you for telling the truth. Not many celebrities are as intelligent and courageous as you. But I think, to get more truth, you should visit India and paint Hindu Goddesses naked like M F Hussain. You would most likely be killed by Hindu fanatics, or you would be imprisoned because of laws against blasphemy. Many cases would be filed against you by Hindus for hurting their religious feelings. It is a punishable crime to hurt people’s religious feelings in the Indian subcontinent and many other countries in the world. And if you speak against Christianity, catholic bishops will put your life in danger. You have to run away to save your life like Sanal Edamaruku. In Europe, ninety-nine individuals were convicted last year by the Maltese Courts for public blasphemy, and 119 were convicted previous year. You know three members of Pussy Riot, Russian Music group were sentenced to two years in prison for staging a performance at the Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior. If it were not a church or a cathedral, Pussy Riot members would not be in prison. Dear Bill Maher, why don’t you try to do abortion in some of the states of your country, and see what happens. You know how Christian fundamentalists kill doctors in the name of Christianity. Why don’t you go to Italy just to see how impossible it is to get an abortion?

It is true that Islam is the most rigid, and non-reformed religion in the world and young Muslims get brainwashed to stop their thinking minds and become terrorists. But it is not true that other religions were bad only in the Middle Ages and now they are all good and safe. If Christian/Hindu/Jewish etc. fundamentalists get the opportunities to be terrorists, like Muslim fundamentalists get, they will become as intolerant and dangerous as Muslim terrorists. All religions have the potentials to make terrorists at any time. Even Buddhism, a so called peaceful religion can make terrorists. I hope you know how Buddhists in Myanmar killed and displaced thousands of poor Muslims. No one should forget about anti-Muslim pogrom of Gujarat in 2002. 2000 innocent Muslims were killed by Hindu extremists.

Islam has been used politically more than other religions. If there were no enlightenment era in Europe, most European Christians would have allowed the churches to continue their barbaric inquisition or their crusades against infidels today. Islam has not been given much opportunities to get critical scrutiny like other religions have been given. Muslims have been prevented from going through the enlightenment process other religious communities have been gone through. If the right of ex-Muslim atheists to freedom of expression were not violated, many Muslims would become atheists the way many Christians and Jews became atheists in the West. The problem is, not only foolish Muslim leaders , many clever non-Muslim leaders also want Islam to stay stagnant in the darkness.

You are a visionary man. I am requesting you to broaden your vision a bit.

Humanistically
Taslima