Word: authors
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Then, most astonishing of all, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, 88, spiritual ruler of fundamentalist, revolutionary Iran, announces that the author must be killed for the sin of insulting Islam, the Prophet and the holy Koran, and for good measure exonerates any Muslim who manages to perpetrate this deed and promises him the rewards of martyrdom. And not only the author, but anyone else involved in the publication of the book. A day later, another Iranian cleric announces that a bounty has been placed on the author's head: $2.6 million if the avenger is an Iranian, $1 million...
...novel. After Khomeini's call to murder, many Muslim leaders worldwide disagreed with the ferocity of his action, but none had a friendly word for Rushdie, his literary intentions or his right to free speech. To be sure, few of his prosecutors had read the book, as the author pointed out repeatedly; most seemed to feel they had learned enough from printed excerpts or merely word of mouth to convict the author of blasphemy compounded by apostasy, the crime of renouncing one's religious faith. In the Muslim faith, the traditional punishment for an apostate is death...
...Britain, Rushdie had no shortage of defenders. A group of writers led by playwright Harold Pinter presented a petition in Rushdie's behalf at No. 10 Downing Street. Author Anthony Burgess, writing in the newspaper the Independent, stated the Western position precisely: "What a secular society thinks of the Prophet Muhammad is its own affair, and reason, apart from law, does not permit aggressive interference of the kind that has brought shame and death to Islamabad," where the rioting took several lives. "If Muslims want to attack the Christian or humanistic vision of Islam contained in our literature," Burgess observed...
...Bring up the "Darman book," and its author wants to change the subject. A talented writer who enjoys the craft, Darman writes occasional essays, sometimes leavening abstruse material with sports metaphors. He began a major analytical book on the process of governance 14 years ago, during one of his brief recesses from public service. He treated the work as a secret, showing pieces of it only reluctantly to a few friends. Elliot Richardson, his first Washington mentor, recalls it as "marvelously prescient and penetrating," in part because of Darman's gift for dispassionate analysis. Says Richardson: "Dick never allowed...
...lance career during which he wrote about theater, film and TV for the New York Times and other publications. Since joining TIME in 1984, he has contributed to nearly every section of the magazine. During a three-year stint as the Law section writer, he found time to profile author Susan Sontag and survey Hispanic culture for TIME's special issue on that topic...