Salman Rushdie Bounty Increased

[nanuq]

Bounty increased for Salman Rushdie's head

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/bounty-increased-for-salman-rushdies-head/story-fnd134gw-1226475224763

AN IRANIAN foundation has reportedly increased a bounty for the death of Salman Rushdie, saying that if the British writer had previously been killed for blasphemy an anti-Islam film currently enraging Muslims would never have been made.

Iranian media quoted Hassan Sane'i, a cleric heading the 15 of Khordad Foundation, as saying in a statement that he was "adding another $US500,000 ($474,000) to the reward for killing Rushdie."

With the increase, the foundation was now offering $US3.3 million for the death of Rushdie, who since 1989 has been the target of a Iranian fatwa calling for his murder for allegedly blaspheming Islam and its Prophet Mohammed in his book "The Satanic Verses."

The foundation's statement was quoted saying that, unless Rushdie were killed, "the movie offending the prophet will not be the last contemptuous attempt."

It added that "these days are the most appropriate time to carry it (Rushdie's murder) out."

Violent protests erupted this week in several Muslim countries against the American-made movie, which crudely lampoons Mohammed and associates him with sexual deviancy. Devout Muslims consider it blasphemous to depict the prophet in any way.

Indian-born Rushdie, 65, spent a decade in hiding after Iran's spiritual leader, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued the 1989 fatwa against him for his book.

Although Iran's foreign ministry in 1998 assured Britain that Iran would do nothing to implement the fatwa, current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in January 2005 reaffirmed in a message carried by the official IRNA news agency that Rushdie was considered an apostate whose murder was authorised under Islam.

[Kurt]

That has been a slow Fatwa.

I suppose it is like watching porn on a 16mm projector with bad sound up against a wall only to get a knock on the door to be informed that your daughter has just made a higher quality porno in 2 minutes with the neighbor kid's phone and some peach schnapps and twittered to millions before you even got your film threaded.

Its like the Iranians are jealous that "Innocence of Muslims" surpassed "The Satanic Verses" as riot worthy so quickly.

I wrote an editorial about this in my college newspaper in 1989 (in defense of Rushdie...I was more innocent then) and now I am old enough to die of a heart attack and grunt when I get up from a chair and THIS FATWA IS STILL HAPPENING.

[rickshaw92]

That has been a slow Fatwa.

Well they live in the dark ages dontcha know.

[sparrow]

Bounty increased for Salman Rushdie's head

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/bounty-increased-for-salman-rushdies-head/story-fnd134gw-1226475224763

AN IRANIAN foundation has reportedly increased a bounty for the death of Salman Rushdie, saying that if the British writer had previously been killed for blasphemy an anti-Islam film currently enraging Muslims would never have been made.

Iranian media quoted Hassan Sane'i, a cleric heading the 15 of Khordad Foundation, as saying in a statement that he was "adding another $US500,000 ($474,000) to the reward for killing Rushdie."

With the increase, the foundation was now offering $US3.3 million for the death of Rushdie, who since 1989 has been the target of a Iranian fatwa calling for his murder for allegedly blaspheming Islam and its Prophet Mohammed in his book "The Satanic Verses."

The foundation's statement was quoted saying that, unless Rushdie were killed, "the movie offending the prophet will not be the last contemptuous attempt."

It added that "these days are the most appropriate time to carry it (Rushdie's murder) out."

Violent protests erupted this week in several Muslim countries against the American-made movie, which crudely lampoons Mohammed and associates him with sexual deviancy. Devout Muslims consider it blasphemous to depict the prophet in any way.

Indian-born Rushdie, 65, spent a decade in hiding after Iran's spiritual leader, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued the 1989 fatwa against him for his book.

Although Iran's foreign ministry in 1998 assured Britain that Iran would do nothing to implement the fatwa, current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in January 2005 reaffirmed in a message carried by the official IRNA news agency that Rushdie was considered an apostate whose murder was authorised under Islam.

Religion + goverment = Does not work and comes off as idiocy.

Note to the Iranian government - this is what you look like. You need to adapt. Check out what the Chinese have done lately. And yes I know they are not a theocracy. But you should still have a look.

P.S. None of your young people are buying it. You need a new plan. Before you become the country that is glass in the mountains. And none of you any longer exists.

[vagabond]

P.S. None of your young people are buying it. You need a new plan. Before you become the country that is glass in the mountains. And none of you any longer exists.

Equally applicable to Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Arab world. Seems like lots of young, unemployed males is a waiting catastrophe.

[Sri Lanky]

Rushdie actually apologized to the Islamic world for writing Satanic verses back in 1990 or so. What a coward. The only reason he did so was in order to have the fatwa lifted. Instead,as Kurt wrote,it's going to be a long tortuous mindfuck. You have to wonder what this does to a person's psyche over the long run.

There are a lot of people that have a bounty on their booty but still go about their everyday business. Fuck it,I say.

[El Presidente]

This poor fuck just can't win. There's no end to these pricks.

[Fansy]

I discussed with my wife today whether it would be worth it for us if i were to go take him out. I'd do some time but we'd be set money-wise for life and more importantly we'd live on as heros forever and ever until everyone died on this planet. we've made no final decision as yet.

[nanuq]

How do you know they'd pay up afterward though? Its not as if you could send the bill to a collection agency...

[Fansy]

have a little faith in fundamentalists bro

[vagabond]

Maybe it's a promotional tie-in for his new book:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0812992784/ref=nosim/0sil8

On February 14, 1989, Valentine’s Day, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he had been “sentenced to death” by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being “against Islam, the Prophet and the Quran.”

So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. He was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and combinations of their names; then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov—Joseph Anton.

How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, how and why does he stumble, how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir Rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of one of the crucial battles, in our time, for freedom of speech. He talks about the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and of the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom.

It is a book of exceptional frankness and honesty, compelling, provocative, moving, and of vital importance. Because what happened to Salman Rushdie was the first act of a drama that is still unfolding somewhere in the world every day.

Also, a piece in the New Yorker about the fatwa: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/17/120917fa_fact_rushdie?currentPage=all

[Devlin]

With an ex wife like this he is still ahead of the game.

[friendlyskies]

The fatwa that sold a bazillion books.

Seriously, would you have read The Satanic Verses had it not been banned? That was the era of Tipper Gore and her parental warning labels, which convinced me to buy trash like Def Leppard despite their glamorous hair and makeup. (To be fair, "Poor Some Sugar on Me" was a tight little song.) Thus primed by the censorship system, I purchased and read The Satanic Verses, probably 15hrs of my life that I will never get back.

I know, I know, people say he's a great writer blah blah blah. But when I finally sloughed my way through all those fucking adverbs and run-on sentences, I felt the same way as I did after reading Ezra Pound - that I'd been had. I'd been tricked by the critics into absorbing unusually tedious mediocrity. Phillip Roth, Frank Baum, Mark Twain, Abbie Hoffman - all the other banned books I'd been reading were fun and entertaining. But the Iranians hadn't had the sense to let Rushdie's behemoth die on the shelves, smothered by its own pretensions. Instead they tacked a tempting fatwa onto it, lighting a candle on each cover so moths like myself would be pulled inextricably into its pages.

Anyway, the guy puts out a new book, he gets a new fatwa deal. Well, how about that. But I, for one, will not be falling for it this time.

[vagabond]

The fatwa that sold a bazillion books.

Seriously, would you have read The Satanic Verses had it not been banned? That was the era of Tipper Gore and her parental warning labels, which convinced me to buy trash like Def Leppard despite their glamorous hair and makeup. (To be fair, "Poor Some Sugar on Me" was a tight little song.) Thus primed by the censorship system, I purchased and read The Satanic Verses, probably 15hrs of my life that I will never get back.

I know, I know, people say he's a great writer blah blah blah. But when I finally sloughed my way through all those fucking adverbs and run-on sentences, I felt the same way as I did after reading Ezra Pound - that I'd been had. I'd been tricked by the critics into absorbing unusually tedious mediocrity. Phillip Roth, Frank Baum, Mark Twain, Abbie Hoffman - all the other banned books I'd been reading were fun and entertaining. But the Iranians hadn't had the sense to let Rushdie's behemoth die on the shelves, smothered by its own pretensions. Instead they tacked a tempting fatwa onto it, lighting a candle on each cover so moths like myself would be pulled inextricably into its pages.

Anyway, the guy puts out a new book, he gets a new fatwa deal. Well, how about that. But I, for one, will not be falling for it this time.

The Streisand Effect before the internet.

[el3so]

@Fansy: the loot and fame are swell too, but plz remember why you should really do it.

primed by the censorship system

Sure, everyone is cool with distributing forbidden books, but mention What Gets Me Hot (1984) and people start giving you funny looks.