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As the red-and-black flag of the Sandinistas flew high over Managua yesterday in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Nicaraguan revolution, Daniel Ortega claimed that the US would once again try to invade the Central American nation. Addressing thousands of supporters in the Plaza de Fe, President Ortega said that America had orchestrated the recent coup in Honduras and planned to turn Colombia into “an occupied country”, filling it with military bases from which to threaten leftist governments in the region. “The US is filling Colombia with military bases to threaten all our brothers in Latin America, to threaten...

One would think a novelist would understand the concept of “creative license.” But not Salman Rushdie. He’s offended that Slumdog Millionaire contains scenes that (gasp) aren’t realistic. The Indian-born author recently told an audience at Atlanta’s Emory University that the Academy Award-winning film “piles impossibility on impossibility.” Rushdie, who gained more fame for hiding than he ever did for writing, spent years cowering in a closet after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwah against him in 1989. The author of “The Satanic Verses” was in a tizzy that the...

Famed author's new love is 28 years younger HE used to turn heads with sultry actress Padma Lakshmi on his arm. Now, author Sir Salman Rushdie is drawing stares again with his new lady, model Aimee Mullins. At 1.75m tall, the slender beauty is 28 years younger - and at least 5cm taller - than her portly 60-year-old beau. And they are the latest May-December pairing which has raised eyebrows. Rushdie and Mullins turned up at a Manhattan party earlier this month and guests were left in little doubt that, following the end of his fourth marriage to Lakshmi, 37,...

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- In Salman Rushdie's new novel, "The Enchantress of Florence," the exasperated Mughal emperor Akbar the Great agrees to let a mysterious Florentine adventurer, Mogor dell'Amore, finish a tale. But as the troublesome Mogor prepares to continue, Akbar says with a touch of venom: "A curse on all storytellers. And a pox on your children, too." It wasn't so long ago that the Indian-born author was a hunted man, placed under guard in an undisclosed location, because of an Islamic edict, or fatwa, against his life issued by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. All for telling a story --...

"Queen Elizabeth II on Wednesday knighted the controversial author Salman Rushdie, an award which caused protests by Muslims around the world when it was announced last year. ADVERTISEMENT Rushdie was knighted for his services to literature. When the knighthood was announced in the queen's birthday honours list in June last year, it sparked condemnation from a number of Muslim countries and organisations, and a threat against Britain from Al-Qaeda."

As you read this, Ayaan Hirsi Ali sits in a safe house with armed men guarding her door. She is one of the most poised, intelligent and compassionate advocates of freedom of speech and conscience alive today, and for this she is despised in Muslim communities throughout the world. The details of her story have been widely reported, but bear repeating, as they illustrate how poorly equipped we are to deal with the threat of Muslim extremism in the West. Hirsi Ali first fled to the Netherlands as a refugee from Somalia in 1992 after declining to submit to a...

Democracies like ours are full of well-intentioned people who want desperately to be “fair”, and in Great Britain and in the USA, the well-intentioned among us are unwitting allies of those who hate us and hate themselves. The theoretical definition of multiculturalism is deceptively unthreatening: to treat all cultures as equals. Of course, this is absurd; a cannibal culture on a remote island consisting of people who sacrifice humans and only live into their forties is obviously an inferior culture, but this isn’t the worst of it.

'Mohammad cartoon' publisher appalled at reaction to Rushdie's knighting Chad Groening OneNewsNow.com July 9, 2007 The man responsible for publishing the controversial cartoons that angered the Islamic world almost two years ago says he's seeing similar reaction to the decision by Queen Elizabeth to knight author Salman Rushdie, who received death threats for writing The Satanic Verses. Hear this Report Flemming Rose is the cultural editor for Jyllands Posten, the Danish newspaper that published the "Mohammad cartoons" that sparked one of the most significant discussions of free speech of this generation. He sees similarities between Muslim reaction to that and...

British authorities were seeking three men Friday after police defused two car bombs that they said could have caused “significant injury or loss of life” in London. The three men are believed to be from the Birmingham area, a center of radical Islamic unrest in Britain, U.S. officials who had been briefed on the developments told NBC News. Police said the two cars, a light green and a light blue Mercedes-Benz, were found early Friday morning in London’s theater district. The green Mercedes was defused at the site. The blue Mercedes was not discovered to be a threat until early...

The “patio gas” bomb defused in Haymarket would have generated a fireball the size of a house and a shock wave spreading out over a diameter of at least 400 yards, explosives experts said today. The propane cylinders and petrol used in the device would have triggered a huge conflagration, as well as causing shrapnel and blast injuries from the exploding car chassis and the nails packed around the bomb, according to Hans Michels, Professor of Safety Engineering at Imperial College, London. Just one 13kg propane canister — the type sold by Calor under the brand name “Patio Gas” —...

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British police have a "crystal clear" picture of the man who drove the bomb-rigged silver Mercedes outside a London nightclub, and officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com he bears "a close resemblance" to a man arrested by police in connection with another bomb plot but released for lack of evidence. Officials say the suspect had been taken into custody in connection with the case of al Qaeda operative Dhiren Barot (pictured), who was convicted of orchestrating a vehicle bomb plot involving targets in London, New York, Newark, N.J. and Washington, D.C. Officials say a surveillance camera caught the suspect "staggering...

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A second car found on a London street on Friday contained possible bomb materials, sources told CNN, hours after police disarmed an explosives-filled car in the city's busy theater district. The second car was towed from Trafalgar Square to Park Lane overnight, because it was illegally parked, the sources said.At the Park Lane garage, workers called authorities when they became suspicious after news of the first incident, because the car smelled of gas.Police and security sources say the car was found to contain components very similar to the first car -- definitely fuel, and possibly much...

Car Bomb Found in London 20 Days After al Qaeda Suicide Bomber 'Graduation Ceremony' June 29, 2007 7:02 AM Brian Ross Reports: The discovery of a massive car bomb set to detonate in central London comes just three weeks after what was described as an al Qaeda graduation ceremony of suicide bomb teams to be dispatched to Europe and the United States. A videotape obtained by ABC News from a Pakistani journalist shows groups of dozens of men al Qaeda says have gone through a terror training camp somewhere in Pakistan. Teams of 50 to 60 men were supposedly dispatched...

Sky News sources say one of the first police officers on the scene of the London West End car bomb may have saved dozens of lives by diffusing the explosives before the bomb squad arrived. It is believed the quick-thinking cop recognised that the car was wired to blow up, jumped in and disconnected the trigger device, thought to be a mobile phone. This backs up an eye-witness account of a police officer briefly entering the metallic green Mercedes before running for cover. People are being warned to stay vigilant after the discovery of the "massive" car bomb, which could...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York police took unspecified precautions on Friday after explosives experts in London defused a car bomb packed with gasoline, gas and nails, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "We'll take a little bit of extra precaution," Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show on WABC. "We're going to ramp up a little bit, not dramatically. Some you will notice, some you will not." New York normally puts police on heightened alert in response to security incidents in other countries. As a city that has twice been attacked by Islamic extremists -- a truck bombing of the World...

An explosive device found in a car in central London has been defused. Police were called to reports of a suspicious vehicle parked in The Haymarket area shortly before 02:00 this morning. The area was cordoned off by police who examined the car. They discovered what appeared to be a potentially explosive device, which was then made safe. An investigation has been launched by the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command. More follows...

London faced a fresh terror alert tonight as police hunting the gang behind the nightclub bomb plot evacuated Hyde Park.Fresh details emerged of how the gang - believed to be linked to al Qaeda - came within moments of causing carnage with a 'massive bomb' attack on a West End club.Park Lane, on Hyde Park's eastern edge, is closed from Marble Arch to Hyde Park corner, with a 200-metre cordon around a suspicious vehicle in an underground car park. It is not known however if this vehicle also contains a bomb.

Khomeini figured: Why import the false ideologies of a failing civilization? Doesn't it make more sense to export Islamism to the dying West? And, for a guy dismissed by most of us as crazy, Khomeini made a lot of sense. The Rushdie fatwa established the ground rules: The side that means it gets away with it. Mobs marched through Britain calling for the murder of a British subject – and, as a matter of policy on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity, the British police shrugged and looked the other way. One reader in England recalled one demonstration at which he...

'Sir' title sought for bin Laden to avenge Rushdie knighthood Posted on : 2007-06-20 | Author : DPA News Category : Asia Islamabad - A hard-line Pakistani parliamentarian and head of a religious political party on Wednesday demanded a "sir" title for Osama bin Laden, the lead of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, in retaliation for Britain knighting author Salman Rushdie. "Muslims should confer the 'sir' title and all other awards on bin Laden and Mullah Omar in reply to Britain's shameful decision to knight Rushdie," Sami ul Haq, leader of the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, said in a statement, referring also...

Salman Rushdie's knighthood has provoked protests around the Islamic world and a diplomatic row. So how was the decision made, and why did no-one appear to consider the consequences? "Ahmed Salman Rushdie - author, for services to literature" - this simple entry in the Queen's birthday honours follows several years of deliberations, form-filling, lobbying and secretive committee meetings. The lengthy process involved makes it all the more surprising to critics that little consideration was given to a likely backlash. Fresh demonstrations have broken out in Pakistan The Queen's birthday honours are aimed at rewarding individuals' personal bravery, achievement, or service...

Salman Rushdie, who went into hiding under threat of death after an Iranian fatwa, has been knighted by the Queen. His book The Satanic Verses offended Muslims worldwide and a bounty was placed on his head in 1989. But since the Indian-born author return to public life in 1999, he has not shied away from controversy. A devout secularist, he backed Commons Leader Jack Straw over comments on Muslim women and veils and has warned against Islamic "totalitarianism". The son of a successful businessman, Sir Salman was born into a Muslim family in Mumbai in 1947. He was educated in...

Pakistan demanded on Monday that Britain withdraw a knighthood awarded to author Salman Rushdie, as a government minister said the honour gave a justification for suicide attacks by Muslims. Angry protesters in several cities torched British flags and beat them with their shoes in protest at the accolade for the Indian-born writer of "The Satanic Verses" and chanted "Death to Britain, death to Rushdie." "If somebody has to attack by strapping bombs to his body to protect the honour of the Prophet, then it is justified," Pakistani Religious Affairs Minister Ijaz-ul-Haq told the national assembly. Iran has already accused British...

Rushdie Suicide Attack Threat Updated: 14:56, Monday June 18, 2007 A Pakistani minister says Muslims would be right to launch suicide attacks over the Queen's decision to award Salman Rushdie a knighthood. Religious Affairs Minister Mohammed Ijaz ul Haq told parliament: "This is an occasion for the (world's) 1.5 billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision. "The West is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. "If someone exploded a bomb on his body he would be right to do so unless the British government apologizes and withdraws the 'sir' title." The comments follow a demand from Pakistan...

No Rest for a Feminist Fighting Radical Islam ("INFIDEL" by Hirsi Ali) A Somali by birth, recently elected member of Dutch Parliament, Ms. Hirsi Ali waged a personal crusade to improve the lot of Muslim women. Her warnings about dangers posed to the Netherlands by unassimilated Muslims made her Public Enemy No. 1 for Muslim extremists, a feminist counterpart to Salman Rushdie.The circuitous, violence-filled path that led Ms. Hirsi Ali from Somalia to the Netherlands is the subject of “Infidel,” her brave, inspiring and beautifully written memoir.... from Mogadishu to Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya, and her desperate flight to...

On the evening of September 11th, Rosemary Righter, the senior leader writer (“leader” is British for “editorial”) at The Times of London, was due at a dinner party. She arrived late, and found the tone, after a hard day at the office, oddly smug and triumphalist. Leaving early, she gave a lift to another guest. “Rosemary,” he said, “isn’t it marvelous to think that the arrogant bloody Americans have finally got it in the neck?” Involuntarily, she braked. Hard. Though not hard enough to precipitate him through the windshield, sadly. Miss Righter was one of the first to experience an admittedly...

The row over Muslim women's dress codes reignited today after author Salman Rushdie declared that "veils suck". Rushdie, whose book The Satanic Verses triggered death threats from Islamic clerics, gave his full backing to Leader of the Commons Jack Straw for raising the issue. Rushdie was forced into hiding for 10 years after Iranian cleric Ayatollah Khomeini served a "fatwah" on him over his book's alleged slight on the prophet Mohammed. He had round-the-clock police protection costing nearly £1 million a year, although that has been downgraded in recent years after Iran indicated the death sentence no longer applied. But...

Novelist Salman Rushdie will join the faculty of Emory University and donate his archive to the institution, marking the writer's first extended relationship with a university, Emory officials said Friday. Rushdie will join the school in the spring of 2007 and lead a graduate seminar, participate in undergraduate courses and deliver lectures during his five-year appointment. "We'll have one of modern literature's giants on our faculty," said Emory President James Wagner. "And students will have access to his records - and the man himself. We're very, very pleased." Rushdie, the author of "The Satanic Verses," was forced into hiding for...

WASHINGTON -- Religious fanatics, regardless of what name they give their jealous god, invariably have one thing in common: no sense of humor. Particularly about themselves. It's hard to imagine Torquemada taking a joke well. Today's Islamists seem to have not even a sense of irony. They fail to see the richness of the following sequence. The pope makes a reference to a 14th-century Byzantine emperor's remark about Islam imposing itself by the sword, and to protest this linking of Islam and violence: -- In the West Bank and Gaza, Muslims attack seven churches. -- In London, the ever-dependable radical...

In 1988, the novelist and British citizen Salman Rushdie published his novel, The Satanic Verses. A bitter satire on Islam which understandably gave serious offence, its publication provoked uproar in the Islamic world with protests in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, that led to the deaths of five Muslims. Shortly afterwards, in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, sentencing Rushdie to death for writing the book, along with 'all involved in its publication who were aware of its content'. As a result, Rushdie was forced to go into hiding for many years and to live the life of a highly guarded...

Though the violence continues to heat up over the Prophet Muhammad cartoons, it is widely seen in Japan as just a fire on the other side of the river; but it has evoked some bitter memories about The Satanic Verses murder. Hitoshi Igarashi, Tsukuba University assistant professor of literature and translator of the novel by Salman Rushdie, was found murdered on the morning of July 12, 1991 near his office on the university campus in Ibaraki prefecture, 69 kilometers north of Tokyo. He was stabbed in the abdomen and his neck was slashed. Police found only footprints and stains of...

The subscription site, STRATFOR or Strategic Forecasting, Inc. - issues almost daily a TERRORISM INTELLIGENCE REPORT with a self described "track record on accurate, insightful global intelligence and analysis earning itself a reputation as the world’s most respected private intelligence company". Strafor's Fred Burton updates the ongoing cartoon controversy (02.21.2006)as follows : "Fatwas and Rewards: An Inflection Point in the Cartoon Controversy" (I have highlighted key points received today via e-mail). "Two minor Shariah courts in India's Uttar Pradesh state have issued fatwas calling for the death of a Danish cartoonist who drew caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. The fatwas,...

"Not believing in God is no excuse for being virulently anti-religious or naïvely pro-science," says Dylan Evans, a professor of robotics at the University of West England in Bristol. Evans has written an article for the Guardian of London deriding the old-fashioned, "19th-century" atheism of such prominent thinkers as Richard Dawkins and Jonathan Miller, instead proposing a new, modern atheism which "values religion, treats science as simply a means to an end and finds the meaning of life in art." Indeed, he says, religion itself is to be understood as "a kind of art, which only a child could mistake...

For most Americans, February 14 was Valentine's Day, the most insipid holiday on the calendar. The date deserves to be better known for another reason. On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader and revolutionary dictator of Iran, pronounced a fatwa (an Islamic legal judgment) against the British novelist Salman Rushdie. It said: It is not outlandish to think of the World Trade Center towers as The Satanic Verses, magnified immeasurably but not beyond all recognition. "In the name of Him, the Highest. There is only one God, to whom we shall all return. I inform all zealous...

Don’t make him get out his baseball bat! On February 8, Guy Trebay wrote about Salman Rushdie’s wife, Padma Lakshmi, in the Times. In the “Hindu pantheon,” he observed, “Lakshmi is the domestic deity representing wealth and the embodiment of beauty, grace, and charm . . . In the current fashion pantheon, Ms. Lakshmi similarly stands for a love of money and commodity. A burgeoning brand married to a global brand, she has no problem making public an inventory of brands she chooses to wear.” Understandably, her husband was not amused. Witnesses say Rushdie walked up to Trebay at a...

A FATWA against the author Salman Rushdie was reaffirmed by Iran’s spiritual leader last night in a message to Muslim pilgrims. British officials anxiously played down comments after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told Muslims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that Rushdie was an apostate whose killing would be authorised by Islam, according to the Iranian media. His words came during a lengthy tirade against “Western and Zionist capitalists” and the US-led War on Terror. However, senior British officials swiftly made plain last night that the Iranian Government, which had disassociated itself from the fatwa in 1998, had...

TEHRAN - Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has labelled British author Salman Rushdie an apostate whose killing would be authorised by Islam, according to message carried by Iranian media Wednesday. Khamenei's reference to Rushdie was made in a message to Muslims making the annnual pilgrimage to Mecca, and was part of a lengthy tirade against "Western and Zionist capitalists" and the US-led "war on terror". "They talk about respect towards all religions, but they support such a mahdour al-damm mortad as Salman Rushdie," Khamenei said. In the Sharia, or Islamic law, "mortad" is a reference to someone who has...

I'm disgusted ministers did nothing as Sikhs forced play's closure, says Rushdie By Rajeev Syal (Filed: 26/12/2004) Salman Rushdie, the author given a death sentence by Muslim clerics for writing the novel The Satanic Verses, has expressed outrage at the Government's refusal to criticise last week's violent protests by Sikhs that led to the closure of a play in Birmingham. The author told The Telegraph that ministers should have stepped in to prevent the closure of Behzti, which had been staged at Birmingham's Repertory Theatre, and accused them of helping to endanger Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, the play's author. Salman Rushdie:...

Right-leaning Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi-Ali is in hiding once again, after a threatening five-page letter was found with a knife stuck in the body of dead filmmaker Theo Van Gogh (great-grand nephew of Vincent Van Gogh) in Amsterdam last week."This is an open letter to the unbeliever fundamentalist Hirshi [sic] Ali, of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. Dear Ms. Hirshi [sic] Ali, Since your arrival in the political arena in the Netherlands you have been constantly busy terrorising Muslims and Islam with your statements. You are not the first and not the last who has joined the crusade...

LONDON, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Controversial author Salman Rushdie, who spent years under an Islamic death sentence or fatwa issued by Iran for his book "The Satanic Verses", said on Saturday the religion was central to the U.S. war on terror. "Let's start calling a spade a spade. Of course this is 'about Islam'," he wrote in the Guardian newspaper, directly challenging repeated assertions by the United States and Britain that their anti-terror alliance had no quarrel with the Muslim world. Rushdie, forced into hiding when the late Ayatollah Khomeni declared the fatwa in 1989, accused Islamic fundamentalists of having ...

IRAN'S Islamic Propagation Organisation has approved for sale the music of Cat Stevens, the British singer who converted to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam. "We have chosen to put on the market a selection of songs from Cat Stevens, to show to the Iranian youth that not everything in the West is bad," the organisation's music director Reza Mahdavi told AFP. He said Stevens, a folk icon of the late sixties and early seventies, contrasted with the likes of Michael Jackson - the "King of Pop" facing trial in the US for alleged child abuse. "There may...

City Journal Our Islamic Fifth Column Farrukh Dhondy Autumn 2001 My first name gives rise to confusion. It’s a common Muslim name, so people I meet, or who read my byline, assume that I am of the faith. Most recently, in response to a column I write for an Indian paper, in which I confessed to having met a few terrorists in my time and attempted to analyze their limited grasp of the world, I received a lot of hate mail. Some of the e-mailers clearly thought I was a Muslim apostate and reminded me that the penalty for that...

<p>The fall of the Indian government is a huge political shock that strikingly echoes the only comparable electoral upset, the defeat of Indira Gandhi in 1977. Then as now, just about the entire commentariat was convinced that the incumbent would win; then as now, the opposition was widely written off; then as now, India's voters left the politicians and media with egg on their faces. Both elections are high points in the history of Indian democracy. An ornery electorate that doesn't do what it's supposed to do is a fine and cheering thing.</p>

Washington, D.C., April 27, 2004 -- Seyyed Hossein Khomeini, a Shi'ite Islamic cleric like his grandfather the late Ayatollah Khomeini, told the Voice of America had he been in his grandfather's shoes he "would never have taken such an action as issuing the fatwa against Salman Rushdie." In an exclusive interview that aired today, Khomeini told the VOA Persian television show News and Views that, historically, some Shiite leaders and scholars have considered themselves Velayat Faghih (supreme leaders) who expect people to abide by their verdicts, even when they involve death sentences. Although his grandfather was included in this group,...

$100,000 to kill Rushdie TEHRAN: An Iranian extremist Islamic group calling itself the General Staff for the Glorification of Martyrs of the Islamic World has offered a $100,000 (BD37,800) reward for the killing of British novelist Salman Rushdie, a Press report said yesterday. According to the hardline Jomhuri Eslami newspaper, the tiny and little-known group called on "all volunteer Muslims to sign up on its Internet site... to kill Salman Rushdie." "The reward will be paid to anyone who kills Salman Rushdie or his family," the paper said, quoting a member of the group who also pledged the organisation's...

TEHRAN : An Iranian extremist Islamic group calling itself the General Staff for the Glorification of Martyrs of the Islamic World has offered a $100,000 reward for the killing of British novelist Salman Rushdie, a press report said on Sunday. According to the hardline Jomhuri Eslami newspaper, the tiny and little-known group called on "all volunteer Muslims to sign up on its Internet site... to kill Salman Rushdie." "The reward will be paid to anyone who kills Salman Rushdie or his family," the paper said, quoting a member of the group who also pledged the organisation's facilities to help with...

<p>NEW DELHI — Author Salman Rushdie fled the city of his birth last week after demonstrations calling for him to be killed were staged outside his hotel in Bombay.</p> <p>Islamic protesters brandished banners that read, "Kill Salman Rushdie" and "Kill Rushdie, the white-collar terrorist," outside the Taj Mahal hotel, where the author was staying with his girlfriend, model and actress Padma Lakshmi.</p>

Sept. 9 — HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) - A Moroccan accused of helping the suicide hijackers in the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities was a fanatical Muslim who hated Jews, his trial heard on Tuesday. Abdelghani Mzoudi, a 30-year-old electrical engineering student, is charged with being an accessory to 3,066 counts of murder and with membership of a terrorist organization -- the Hamburg-based al Qaeda cell that led the 2001 attacks. Bernd Frost, 37, told the court that he had often discussed politics with Mzoudi when they lived in the same student accommodation building in Hamburg in the mid-1990s....

Readings at the New Glasgow, N.S., public library are usually tame affairs, but then it is not every day an author appears who has written that the local population acts like it is stunned by chloroform. When Dawn Rae Downton read from her new memoir, Diamond, she was met by about 10 hecklers who did not appreciate her unvarnished portrayal of Pictou County, their rural corner of northern Nova Scotia. Ms. Downton never dreamed her book, which is essentially the story of 100 days spent caring for a dying friend, would make her Nova Scotia's own Salman Rushdie. But after...

News, Editorials and Opinions return to the previous page New York Times - Nov 27, 2002 No More Fanaticism as Usual By Salman Rushdie It's been quite a week in the wonderful world of Islam. Nigerian Islam's encounter with that powerhouse of subversion, the Miss World contest, has been unedifying, to put it mildly. First some of the contestants had the nerve to object to a Shariah court's sentence that a Nigerian woman convicted of adultery be stoned to death and threatened to boycott the contest — which forced the Nigerian authorities to promise that the woman in question would...