As a poet, Sharmila Seyyid is used to dealing in imagination, but even she couldn’t have imagined that an innocuous remark in an innocuous BBC interview would trigger a chain of events that would turn her world upside down--ultimately forcing her to go into hiding in a place far away from her home.
A Muslim woman journalist, writer and activist, Seyyid is being hounded by fundamentalist groups –not in one but two countries--because of her outspoken criticism of certain “Islamic” practices such as the purdah system, and her warnings against creeping “Talibanisation” of the Muslim community.
A Tamil-speaking Sri Lankan and a single mother with a small child, she finds herself stuck in a safe house in Chennai after being forced to flee her home in Batticaloa, eastern Sri Lanka. This followed a systematic and vicious campaign of intimidation, including death threats and threats to kidnap her young sister with whom she ran an English language school. The school was attacked, and an attempt was made to burn it down.
But if Seyyid thought that moving to India would buy her peace, she had not reckoned with the long reach of her tormentors. For, far from dying down, the hate campaign against her has grown in recent weeks with Indian Muslim fanatics taking over where their Sri Lankan comrades left off. Full story...
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A Muslim woman journalist, writer and activist, Seyyid is being hounded by fundamentalist groups –not in one but two countries--because of her outspoken criticism of certain “Islamic” practices such as the purdah system, and her warnings against creeping “Talibanisation” of the Muslim community.
A Tamil-speaking Sri Lankan and a single mother with a small child, she finds herself stuck in a safe house in Chennai after being forced to flee her home in Batticaloa, eastern Sri Lanka. This followed a systematic and vicious campaign of intimidation, including death threats and threats to kidnap her young sister with whom she ran an English language school. The school was attacked, and an attempt was made to burn it down.
But if Seyyid thought that moving to India would buy her peace, she had not reckoned with the long reach of her tormentors. For, far from dying down, the hate campaign against her has grown in recent weeks with Indian Muslim fanatics taking over where their Sri Lankan comrades left off. Full story...
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