I hadn't realized the fatwa was still even a thing, but apparently Iran added $600k to the bounty for his death in just 2016. I was re-watching old Spitting Image shows from the 1980s and there were sketches about The Satanic Verses, so it's been decades. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-62524833 The article says he was "helped up" which bodes well for his chances of recovery.
How is what Fox is doing not issuing fatwas? Same shit, just with honkies instead of muzzies. This is the world all conservatives want. Even the ones that won't admit it to themselves.
Hopefully he recovers and very soon. Hateful people don't play around. Some of them will spend their entire lives trying to end yours.
It’s not looking good. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/08/12/nyregion/salman-rushdie-stabbed-new-york
The attackers name was Hadi Matar. But hey, let's not rush to judgment. Maybe Rushdie's neck just did that by itself and the guy was trying to help him.
He’s doing better. https://apnews.com/article/salman-r...ork-stabbing-5ea54212d71b95569ed85df7b0fb5fea
It seems all religions are religions of peace until you have people in them. It might not be the religion, it might just be that when you have a whole bunch of humans doing something some of them are going to be violent asswipes even if you try to say peace and love.
Religions can be peaceful, it's just that religions that don't take up the sword are killed by the ones that do. Then, once they pop their murder cherry, they can't be re-virgin-ed. So, all the religions we see today are the survivors. Everything else is everything you'd expect.
I need to get around to reading The Satanic Verses some day. Is it any good? I've heard something about the central premise and I'm not surprised it pisses Muslims off. (Though not a justification for violence, obviously.)
I’ve never found Rushdie to be an appealing writer. His “Midnight’s Children” was supposed to be revolutionary work of fiction but it reminded me of some of Kurt Vonnegut’s lesser works more than anything.
Oh, and now that I think about it, back in the 90s, when Rushdie was (understandably) in hiding due to the fatwa, I found a book with a blurb by Rushdie praising it. I want to point out that I worked for what was then one of the largest bookstore chains in the US, and when they had previously claimed that they couldn't get a particular book I wanted, I showed them that not only could they get the book, but that the then CEO of the company had signed a contract saying that the company wouldn't support censorship and that by failing to sell me the book they weren't merely in breach of contract, but that I could sue them over it. So, you know, I was more than happy to scrap over the idea of free expression. Anyway, my assumption was that if Rushdie liked the book, it must be good. I read it. It took everything I had not to send him a letter telling him that he needed to get out more. Yeah, it was that bad.
I haven't read "The Satanic Verses," so I can't comment on them, and my disappointment with "Midnight's Children" wasn't so much with the book as it was with the folks who claimed that it was "revolutionary." The aspects of the novel that were so described could literally be found in works by Vonnegut written a decade or more before. I will admit that I can still remember turns of phrase he used in the work some thirty years later. But I wouldn't put his use of language anywhere near as on-par as with Joyce. Certainly, Rushdie's a better writer than a number of other best-selling authors out there, but in literary terms, I can't think that he broke new ground, other than he was a non-Caucasian writing in English about things made possible by the British Empire. So, I wouldn't say he should be avoided, just that there's a number of other authors who should be read first.
