Word: muslimism
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...that acknowledges the centrality of faith to culture without the author's pious participation. From his astounding breakthrough work, Midnight's Children, through his current The Enchantress of Florence, he has been obsessed with both formal and informal belief, but from the point of view of a highly-educated Muslim-born sceptic. This potentially flammable combination combusted in 1989 when Iran's then supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, sanctioned Rushdie's execution by the faithful for alleged blasphemies in his fictional exploration of Islam's origins, The Satanic Verses...
...course, the occasion of that pulpit stint was the fourth anniversary of Khomeini's fatwa, over which Britain broke off diplomatic relations with Iran and during which time Rushdie, on whose head a private Muslim foundation had placed a $2 million bounty, was under police protection. Finally in 1998 Iran said it would neither "help nor hinder" Rushdie's execution, and Rushdie resumed his version of a normal life: there was no obvious security at last week's event. But that experience allowed him to make a strong indirect point in favor of the new Institute. Conservative clerics and talk...
...Parliamentarians who voted in favor of the bill deny this. "We are only giving voice to our constituents who are concerned with what they see on television and a sense of moral degradation," explains Zulkiflimansyah from the Muslim-oriented Prosperous Justice Party. Still other supporters say the law chiefly aims to regulate the distribution of adult materials, which circulate freely across the country in both big cities and small villages...
...Indonesia, advocates for the rights of religious and ethnic minorities say the problem will not be righted by the new legislation. They point to existing provisions in the criminal law as sufficient to deal with the problem, and complain that the new law poses a threat to non-Muslim Indonesians. "The law imposes the will of the majority that embrace Islam, is a form of religious discrimination and against the spirit of tolerance taught by the country's founders," says Theophilus Bela, chairman of the Christian Communication Forum. "It is an effort to divide the country...
...Four provinces with sizeable non-Muslim populations - Bali, Yogyakarta, Papua and North Sulawesi - have already rejected the law and said it will not be enforced in their regions. It remains to be seen how and if that will be tolerated by Jakarta. Major protests are planned for this month in Bali, where the governor has been a vocal opponent of the law and pledged that it will not be implemented. Many Balinese are now calling for greater autonomy and say dire consequences lie ahead if their demands are not met. "There is even a possibility that Bali will...