Anyone recall the controversy created by the book "The Satanic Versus" by Author Salman Rushdie?
They called for his death. Yea, Freedom embracing and peace loving my a$$...
The Satanic Verses controversy concerns Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. In particular it involves the novel's alleged blasphemy or unbelief; the 1989 fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie; and the killings, attempted killings, and bombings that resulted from Muslim anger over the novel.[1]
The controversy was notable for being the first time in modern times a government had publicly called for the killing of a private individual in a foreign country; and the second time that a book, or calls for a book's censorship, caused an international diplomatic crisis.[2]
The issue divided "Muslim from Westerners along the fault line of culture,"[3] pitting the core Western value of freedom of expression– that no one "should be killed, or face a serious threat of being killed, for what they say or write" [4]–against the core belief of many Muslims–that no one should be free to "insult and malign Muslims" by disparaging the "honour of the Prophet" Muhammad.[5]
Muslim anger
In Islamic communities the novel began causing controversy almost at once because of what some Muslims considered blasphemous references. By October 1988 letters and phone calls began to come into Viking Penguin from Muslims angry with the book and demanding it be withdrawn.[8] Before the end of the month the book was banned in India.[8] In November 1988 it was also banned in Bangladesh, Sudan, and South Africa.[8] By December 1988 it was also banned in Sri Lanka.[8] March 1989 saw it banned in Kenya, Thailand, Tanzania, Indonesia, and Singapore.[8] The last nation which banned the book was Venezuela in June 1989.[8]
In the United States, the FBI was notified of 78 threats to bookstores in early March 1989, thought to be a small proportion of the total number. B. Dalton bookstore chain received 30 threats in less than three hours. Bombings of book stores included two in Berkeley California. In New York, the office of the community newspaper The Riverdale Press was all but destroyed by firebombs in retaliation for an editorial defending the right to read the novel and criticizing the bookstores that pulled it from their shelves.[22] But the United Kingdom was the country where violence against bookstores occurred most often and persisted the longest. Two large bookstores in Charing Cross Road, London,(Collets and Dillons) were bombed on April 9. In May, explosions went off in the town of High Wycombe and again in London, on Kings Road. Other bombings include one at a large London department store (Liberty's), in connection with the Penguin Bookshop inside the store, and at the Penguin store in York. Unexploded devices were found at Penguin stores in Guildford, Nottingham, and Peterborough.
The bombings meant that hardly a single bookstore sold Rushdie's novel openly in the UK. In the United States, it was unavailable in about one-third of the bookstores. In many others which carried the book, it was kept under the counter.[23]
Peace...
