Word: fatwas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Salman Rushdie, whose 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses” triggered the Supreme Leader of Iran to issue a fatwa against him that sentenced Rushdie to death and forced him into hiding for many years, braved the Harvard community Friday night to speak at Memorial Church for what he described as a “little black Sabbath.” Rushdie’s appearance at Memorial Church was the first event of the three-day long conference called “The New Humanism” hosted by the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University. Humanism...
...Like Indonesia, Malaysia is struggling to determine how Muslim to be. Unlike Indonesia, which is governed by a secular constitution, Malaysia already counts Islam as its official faith-although the constitution also guarantees freedom of religion. Each state has a fatwa committee that makes religious decrees applicable to Malaysian Muslims, most of whom are Sunni. In Kelantan state, Muslim women must wear headscarves in public, while several states have made forsaking Islam a crime that can result in prison time. "We should not limit Islam to a few rituals," says Sulaiman Abdullah, former president of the Malaysian Bar Council. "Malaysia...
...urban society, chipping away at Indonesia's multiethnic heritage. At many public schools in Jakarta, female students and teachers are strongly encouraged to wear the jilbab on Fridays-and face stigmatization if they don't. In 2005, the nation's top religious body, the Indonesia Ulema Council, issued a fatwa stating that "religious teachings influenced by pluralism, liberalism and secularism are against Islam." Equally worrisome, some of Indonesia's homegrown terrorists, whose bombing campaign has claimed hundreds of lives since 2002, profess their violence is justified by Salafi teachings-even if most conservative clerics disagree. "If we don't promote...
...literary heritage was not so lucky. Gone were many of Hall's slavishly hand-written manuscripts and letters, including his lifelong correspondence with English writer Robert Graves. Fire couldn't erase Hall's favorite memories of the place, including a visit from Salman Rushdie at the height of his fatwa, but recently his family made the difficult decision to put the property on the market after 32 years. "What we couldn't face was the shell of the house without all the things that made it what it was," he explains. "If you built it again, it would almost...
...Salman Rushdie booked for the week the fatwa was issued,” the owner of the Harvard Book Store, Frank Kramer, excitedly explained while pointing to a promotional poster for Rushdie’s appearance on the wall. “Borders and Waldenbooks pulled his books from their displays, but we talked to all our employees and said, ‘You don’t have to work now if you don’t want to, but we’d like to keep the books...