Why Kill Salman Rushdie Over a Book? A Reposting (but worth your time)

Send us Fan MailOn August 12, 2022 there was an attempted assassination of the world-class author Salman Rushdie.  Rushdie had twice won the Booker Prize for the best novel in the English language.  Then in 1978 he wrote a book entitled The Satanic Verses.  Part of the book focused upon a dream of a delusional man about a "city in the sand' where a group of false believers had embraced a false prophet. It is the kind of book that a world-class novelist would write.  At that point Iran had just ended its war against Iraq, and Ayatollah Khomeini was on his death bed.  His son came out of his room with a declaration that Rushdie was an apostate who had insulted the Prophet Mohammed and should be killed.  He called upon all faithful Muslims to undertake the task.  Quickly an organization in Iran offered a vast reward to anyone who was successful at this task.  (Today the amount is in excess of $3.0 million).   Rushdie went into hiding for nine years and later wrote a memoir entitled Joseph Anton, his code name during  that terrifying time.   It is very good.  A subsequent Iranian government declared that the issues were in the past and the declaration was no longer in effect.  But today, there is a new sheriff in town. I posted this classroom lecture a year ago (it has over 400 downloads)  but given what happened this week, it deserves another posting.