Simply Politics and News

[SamIam]

The British are something else aren't they? We out do them here in the U.S. of course as far as b ing hypocrits, bigots and bastards.

It puzzles me why the Brits want to sell nuclear materials to Iran. Does it puzzle you?

In the least, doesn't it bother you Saudi Arabia, home of the so many islamic, who want to kill the infidel, are barely mentioned in the press?



http://www.business-standard.com/lifeleisure/storypage.php?leftnm=lmnu4&subLeft=6&autono=288...
Sir Salman`s Satanic Legacy
SPEAKING VOLUMES
Nilanjana S Roy / New Delhi June 19, 2007
As Sir Salman Rushdie prepares to celebrate his new knighthood along with cricketer Ian Botham, journalist Christine Amanpour and the few others honoured on the Queen’s birthday, the only party poopers are the Iranian government. Teheran protested the honour bestowed on Sir Salman, calling it an example of “Islamophobia” on the part of the British government.


It’s been 18 years since Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, not one of the world’s greatest defenders of freedom of speech, reacted to the publication of Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses by calling for a fatwa and demanding Rushdie’s death. One commentator described this as an act of “extreme literary criticism”. The fatwa forced Rushdie into hiding for the next decade and triggered a slew of protests across the world.

The Satanic Verses begins with two actors, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, falling out of an airplane, conversing on their way down. Thanks to the efforts of magical realism rather than gravity, they land safely, but discover that Gibreel is transforming into the Archangel Gabriel while Saladdin Chamcha is becoming the Devil. In a controversial section, Rushdie’s fictional prophet Mahound writes and then repudiates what are known as the “Satanic Verses”—verses where he apparently agrees to the worship of three desert goddesses.

Rushdie was aware of some of the risks of what he was doing, if not the full implications: the Satanic Verses also includes a character called Salman, employed as a scribe to the prophet, who takes the liberty of changing some of the prophet’s words. For his blasphemy, he is told that the punishment will be death—but in the book, the prophet Mahound eventually relents.