Word: christian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...conflict cut to the heart of Muslim and Judeo-Christian values, with centuries of cultural misunderstanding and mistrust finding a flash point in Rushdie's 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...
...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, "they will find more vicious travesties than Mr. Rushdie...
Others, looking for parallels to the Rushdie case both inside and outside Islam, referred to Muslim resentment of the medieval Christian mystery plays, with their satanic portrayals of the Prophet as "Mahound," the name Rushdie gives his crypto-Prophet. In 1977 a fanatical band of Hanafi Muslims shot their way into three buildings in Washington, took more than 100 hostages and, among other things, tried to halt the showing of a $17 million movie epic called Muhammad, Messenger of God at theaters in New York City and Los Angeles. Though the tone of the movie was reverential, the producers...
...Thanatology, a New York City-based organization devoted to studying bereavement, as well as the Dallas Morning News and the Milwaukee Journal, the three-day symposium covered everything from obituaries to the role of "Media as Murderer." "The press has been covering crime and death for centuries," says Texas Christian University journalism professor Tommy Thomason, "but we are just beginning to think about how we cover...
...based in West Germany, with new longer-range weapons. That is a touchy subject for West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Modernization has become a hot-button issue in German politics, and Kohl would like to postpone modernizing the weapons until after national elections in December 1990. Already Kohl's Christian Democrats have suffered thrashings in six recent local elections, and his government might not survive an unpopular pledge to accept new nuclear weapons. Bush will try to nudge Kohl into a compromise before the NATO summit this spring...