December 02, 2007	Sunday	Ziqa’ad 21, 1428

NEW DELHI: Indian Muslim groups said they would meet on Sunday to decide whether to keep up demands for the expulsion of Bangladesh author Taslima Nasreen, hounded into hiding by protests against her.

The Milli Ittehad Parishad, an umbrella alliance of 12 Muslim groups, on Saturday announced the meeting, a day after Nasreen promised to remove passages from her autobiography that some Muslims found offensive.

“The Milli Ittehad Parishad has called a meeting to take a unanimous stand on Taslima Nasreen,” Siddikulla Chowdhury, general secretary of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind, one of the member organisations said.

The dozen groups have been demanding her deportation from India for “hurting the religious sentiment of Muslims in India.” Nasreen, who has lived in Kolkata since 2004, said on Friday she hoped the move to take out the controversial passages from her autobiography “Dikhandito” or “Split into Two” would enable her to to live peacefully in India.

The federal government has pledged to protect Nasreen and moved her to a safe house outside New Delhi last weekend after thousands of Muslims rioted in her adopted home city, demanding her ejection from India.

Muslims accused the author of blasphemy over her 1994 novel “Lajja” or “Shame,” which depicts violence against minority Hindus by Muslims in Bangladesh. She fled her homeland the same year.—AFP