Word: furor
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...Sunni Muslim Grand Mufti of Lebanon, called Rushdie "an insignificant writer who has attacked a great prophet." He asked, "What harm has befallen the Prophet?" In Egypt the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque, Sheik Gad el-Haq Ali Gad el-Haq, noted that the net effect of the furor had been to increase the book's sales and profits "by astronomical figures." It would be far better, he suggested, if Islamic scholars prepared their own book refuting Rushdie's "lies." The English-language Egyptian Gazette argued that the Ayatullah's pronouncements "will do more to damage the image...
...unprecedented international furor surrounding the fictional novel The Satanic Verses still rages, more than a week after Iran's spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini first called for the death of its British author Salman Rushdie, promising Paradise to his murderer. This controversy has put to test some of our most valued beliefs, including the sanctity of human life and of our rights to free speech...
Last year's furor over the Martin Scorsese motion picture The Last Temptation of Christ demonstrated that Christians, particularly those who believe in the literal interpretation of Scripture, are similarly sensitive about fictional portrayal of the sacred, though their protest generally takes less violent forms. Even secular gods are sometimes held by their followers to be above scrutiny; in earlier times the Kremlin was notoriously thin-skinned about revelations concerning the private lives of Lenin and other members of the Communist pantheon...
...December 17th issue of The Crimson, you published a front-page story entitled "Alum Barred From Campus For Harassing Currier Tutor." Appearing during the furor surrounding the rape of a Harvard employee in the Science Center, the article made it appear that the "Harvard Alum," Mr. Laurence O. McKinney, had been prohibited from the campus for threatening students at the University. In fact, there have been no incidents of harassment excepting for the claims of a single graduate student. These allegations, made in March, 1985, were without witnesses, formal complaints or other substantiation. They were contested...
...acknowledgment of three female deities and his later repudiation of these verses as satanically inspired. If Muhammad himself was willing to admit that he had been deceived, it is difficult to see why a tangential, fictional version of this long-ago event should cause such contemporary furor...