In India, representatives of the Religion of Peace™ are offering a reward to any Muslim who decapitates a well-known Bangladeshi female author. (Hat tip: sr_soph.)

LUCKNOW, India - An Indian Muslim group has offered a 500,000 rupee (11,319 dollar) bounty for the beheading of controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen. The president of the All India Ibtehad Council said on Friday he had declared the reward for anyone who carried out the “quatal” or ”extermination” of the “notorious woman.”

“Taslima has put Muslims to shame in her writing. She should be killed and beheaded and anyone who does this will get a reward from the council,” Taqi Raza Khan said in a statement received in the northern city of Lucknow.

The council, based in Bareilly town also in Uttar Pradesh state, is a splinter group of the influential All India Muslim Personal Law Board. Khan said the only way the bounty would be lifted was if Nasreen ”apologises, burns her books and leaves.”

Nasreen has incensed conservative Muslims for writing a novel ”Lajja” or “Shame” depicting the life of a Hindu family facing the ire of Muslims in Bangladesh. The book is banned in Muslim-majority Bangladesh along with her autobiographical works on grounds of being anti-Islamic. The author was forced to flee her homeland in 1994 after radical Muslims decried her writings as blasphemous and demanded her execution.

UPDATE at 3/17/07 10:49:57 am:

It’s important to realize that these death sentences against authors such as Nasreen and Salman Rushdie are not the isolated acts of extremists, but in fact are part of a long historic tradition dating back to the days of Mohammed himself—who was the first to sanction the murder of those who criticized him: Understanding the Death Fatwa on Taslima Nasreen.