Word: western
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Western intelligence sources scoff, saying they have clear evidence that Barbouti was the key broker for the chemical factory. Though they have yet to find proof that he knew the Libyans planned to make nerve gas there, at least one official flatly labels Barbouti "the central villain" of the plot and "the subject of intense scrutiny for some time." In fact, both the Swiss and West German governments are conducting criminal investigations of his role in the Libyan project, and tax authorities in England and Scotland are looking into his Byzantine business affairs...
...absurdist nightmare, a story that all but defied the Western imagination. A middle-aged author, born in Bombay but for many years resident in London, writes a long, sardonic novel, by turns philosophical and comic and fantastic. In the book's opening scene, two middle-aged Indian actors fall 29,002 feet from a jetliner that has just been exploded by terrorists over the English Channel. They have an animated conversation as they hurtle toward earth; they land safely, but then their troubles begin anew. Along the way, the author writes about his schooling and young adulthood in Britain, about...
...West, political leaders and the general public alike reacted with anger and disbelief to the outrage of a foreign despot declaring a death sentence on another country's citizen whose only crime, at least in Western eyes, was to probe the meaning of his Islamic heritage. In Washington, the State Department said it was "appalled" by Khomeini's statement as well as by the reward for Rushdie's murder. The Dutch Foreign Minister canceled a trip to Tehran. The British government found itself at the center of the controversy -- because Rushdie is a British citizen and because its Tehran embassy...
What exactly did Rushdie do to merit such a threat? By Western standards, nothing -- at least nothing that could not be punished with a bad review. But among Muslims, and not just fundamentalists and extremists, there was an almost universal judgment that he had dishonored the faith (see box). Every Muslim critic seemed to have a favorite offending passage from his book. But, in sum, they felt he had insulted the faith, ridiculed the Prophet, trivialized the sacred -- and that the sin was compounded because it was committed by a born, though not a practicing, Muslim...
...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...