The August Attack on Salman Rushdie: Muslim Leaders revisit their positions against the Satanic Verses

75-year-old “The Satanic Verses” author Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie was attacked on Friday 12th August at the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York where he was to speak about the importance of America giving asylum to exiled writers.He sustained multiple life-threatening injuries and  was put on a ventilator1. 24-year old Hadi Matar has been arrested…

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Imam Calls for Muslim British Armed Forces Boycott

A Birmingham Imam has said that Muslims should not fight in the British armed forces on conscientious grounds due to their presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shaykh Asrar Rashid, a visiting cleric at the city’s mosques, also told the BBC the Queen was “a disgusting woman” for knighting author Salman Rushdie. In 1989 Iran’s leaders…

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Theatre Review: Hanif Kureishi’s play “The Black Album” at Cottesloe Theatre, London

Hanif Kureishi has turned his own vibrant 1995 novel into a play. The result is a busy, hectic affair that raises all kinds of issues about religious and political faith, fatwas and censorship and the purpose of art. But, as so often with adaptations, you get the bones without the thickness of texture that was…

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20-year anniversary of fatwa on Rushdie finds him more secure, still critical of religious dogma

Accompanied by the sneers of his former fellow travelers and under the protection of his old adversary, embodied by the British secret service, Salman Rushdie went underground for ten years after the release of The Satanic Verses. He slept in windowless apartments and changed his accommodation several times a week. Often enough he woke up…

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    What happened to the Rushdie book burners?

    Twenty years ago Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa called on to kill the author Salman Rushdie after weeks of protests had been going on about one of his books. Many British Muslims despised The Satanic Verses for blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad and burned copies of Rushdie’s book on British streets. This aroused strong sentiments on all sides,…

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