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The Satanic Verses Controversy
The ''Satanic Verses'' controversy, also known as the Rushdie Affair, was a controversy sparked by the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie's novel ''The Satanic Verses''. It centered on the novel's references to the Satanic Verses of the Quran, and came to include a larger debate about censorship and religious violence. It included numerous killings, attempted killings (including against Rushdie himself), and bombings by perpetrators who supported Islam. The affair had a notable impact on geopolitics when, in 1989, Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie. The Iranian government has changed its support for the fatwa several times, including in 1998 when Mohammad Khatami said the regime no longer supported it. However, a fatwa cannot be revoked in Shia Islamic tradition. In 2017, a statement was published on the official website of the current supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, stating that "the decree is as Imam Khomeini (ra) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salman Rushdie
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie's second novel, ''Midnight's Children'' (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize. After his fourth novel, '' The Satanic Verses'' (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats, including a '' fatwa'' calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. On 12 August 2022, a man stabbed Rushdie after rushing o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hanif Kureishi
Hanif Kureishi (born 5 December 1954) is a British playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker and novelist of South Asian and English descent. In 2008, ''The Times'' included Kureishi in its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Early life Kureishi was born in Bromley, South London to a Pakistani father, Rafiushan (Shanoo) Kureishi, and an English mother, Audrey Buss.Emily Ballou"Whims of the father" ''The Australia'', 15 November 2008. His father was from a wealthy Madras family, whose members moved to Pakistan after the Partition of British India in 1947. Rafiushan came to the UK in 1950 to study law but due to financial reasons he worked at the Pakistani embassy instead. Here he met his wife-to-be, Buss. He wanted to be a writer but his ambitions were frustrated. The couple were married, the family settled in Bromley where Kureishi was born. In an interview, Kureishi notes:My aternalgrandfather, an army doctor, was a colonel in the Indian army. Big family. Servants. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muammar Al-Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, . Due to the lack of standardization of transcribing written and regionally pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi's name has been romanized in various ways. A 1986 column by ''The Straight Dope'' lists 32 spellings known from the US Library of Congress, while ABC identified 112 possible spellings. A 2007 interview with Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi confirms that Saif spelled his own name Qadhafi and the passport of Gaddafi's son Mohammed used the spelling Gathafi. According to Google Ngram the variant Qaddafi was slightly more widespread, followed by Qadhafi, Gaddafi and Gadhafi. Scientific romanizations of the name are Qaḏḏāfī ( DIN, Wehr, ISO) or (rarely used) Qadhdhāfī (ALA-LC). The Libyan Arabic pronunciation is (eastern dialects) or (western dialects), hence the frequent quasi-phonemic romanization Gaddafi for the latter. In English, it is pronounced or . (, 20 October 2011) was a Libyan revolutionary, politician and pol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Libya
Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad to the south, Niger to the southwest, Algeria to the west, and Tunisia to the northwest. Libya is made of three historical regions: Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica. With an area of almost 700,000 square miles (1.8 million km2), it is the fourth-largest country in Africa and the Arab world, and the 16th-largest in the world. Libya has the 10th-largest proven oil reserves in the world. The largest city and capital, Tripoli, is located in western Libya and contains over three million of Libya's seven million people. Libya has been inhabited by Berbers since the late Bronze Age as descendants from Iberomaurusian and Capsian cultures. In ancient times, the Phoenicians established city-states and tradin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1986 Bombing Of Libya
The 1986 United States bombing of Libya, code-named Operation El Dorado Canyon, consisted of air strikes by the United States against Libya on Tuesday 15 April 1986. The attack was carried out by the U.S. Air Force (USAF), U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps via air strikes, in retaliation for the West Berlin discotheque bombing ten days earlier, which U.S. President Ronald Reagan blamed on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. There were 40 reported Libyan casualties, and one U.S. plane was shot down. One of the claimed Libyan deaths was of a baby girl, reported to be Gaddafi's daughter, Hana Gaddafi. However, there are doubts as to whether she was really killed, or whether she really even existed. Origins Libya represented a high priority for President Ronald Reagan shortly after his 1981 inauguration. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was firmly anti-Israel and had supported violent organizations in the Palestinian territories and Syria. There were reports that Libya was attempting to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the replacement of his government with an Islamic republic under the rule of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a leader of one of the factions in the revolt. The revolution was supported by various leftist and Islamist organizations. After the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, Pahlavi had aligned with the United States and the Western Bloc to rule more firmly as an authoritarian monarch. He relied heavily on support from the United States to hold on to power which he held for a further 26 years. This led to the 1963 White Revolution and the arrest and exile of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1964. Amidst massive tensions between Khomeini and the Shah, demonstrations began in October 1977, developing into a campa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
, title = Shahanshah Aryamehr Bozorg Arteshtaran , image = File:Shah_fullsize.jpg , caption = Shah in 1973 , succession = Shah of Iran , reign = 16 September 1941 – 11 February 1979 , coronation = 26 October 1967 , predecessor = Reza Shah , successor = ''Monarchy abolished''Ruhollah Khomeini as Supreme Leader , birth_date = , birth_place = Tehran, Sublime State of Persia , death_date = , death_place = Cairo, Egypt , burial_place = 29 July 1980 Al-Rifa'i Mosque, Cairo, Egypt , spouse = , issue = , regnal name = Mohammad Reza Shah fa, محمدرضا شاه , native_lang1 = Alma mater , native_lang1_name1 = , house = Pahlavi , father = Reza Shah , mother = Tadj ol-Molouk , religion = Twelver Shi’ism , signature = , module = Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ( fa, محمدرضا پهلوی, ; 26 October 1919 – 27 July 1980), also known as Mohammad Reza Shah ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto ( ur, بینظیر بُھٹو; sd, بينظير ڀُٽو; Urdu ; 21 June 1953 – 27 December 2007) was a Pakistani politician who served as the 11th and 13th prime minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996. She was the first woman elected to head a democratic government in a Muslim-majority country. Ideologically a liberal and a secularist, she chaired or co-chaired the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) from the early 1980s until her assassination in 2007. Of mixed Sindhi and Kurdish parentage, Bhutto was born in Karachi to a politically important, wealthy aristocratic family. She studied at Harvard University and the University of Oxford, where she was President of the Oxford Union. Her father, the PPP leader Zulfikar Bhutto, was elected Prime Minister on a socialist platform in 1973. She returned to Pakistan in 1977, shortly before her father was ousted in a military coup and executed. Bhutto and her mother Nusrat took contro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zia Ul-Haq
General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq HI, GCSJ, ร.ม.ภ, (Urdu: ; 12 August 1924 – 17 August 1988) was a Pakistani four-star general and politician who became the sixth President of Pakistan following a coup and declaration of martial law in 1977. Zia served in office until his death in a plane crash in 1988. He remains the country's longest-serving ''de facto'' head of state and Chief of Army Staff. Educated at St. Stephen's College, Delhi , Zia was commissioned in the British Indian Army in the Guides Cavalry on 12 May 1943 after graduating from the Officer Training School (OTS) Mhow as British Army Officer and fought against Japanese forces in World War II in Burma and Malaya, before opting for Pakistan in 1947. He fought as a tank commander in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. In 1970, he led a military training mission to Jordan, proving instrumental to defeating the Black September insurgency against King Hussein. In recognition, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Zulfikar (or Zulfiqar) Ali Bhutto ( ur, , sd, ذوالفقار علي ڀٽو; 5 January 1928 – 4 April 1979), also known as Quaid-e-Awam ("the People's Leader"), was a Pakistani barrister, politician and statesman who served as the fourth President from 1971 to 1973, and later as the ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1973 to 1977. Bhutto is an icon of leadership for his efforts to preserve and lead the nation after the Bangladesh Liberation War. His government drafted the Constitution of Pakistan in 1973, which is the current constitution of the country. He was the founder of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and served as its chairman until his execution. Bhutto's execution in 1979, till this day is widely recognised as a judicial murder ordered by then dictator General Zia-ul-Haq. His daughter, Benazir Bhutto later led the PPP and became the 11th and 13th Prime Minister of Pakistan; his grandson, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is the current chairman of PPP and is s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shame (Rushdie Novel)
''Shame'' is Salman Rushdie's third novel, published in 1983. This book was written out of a desire to approach the problem of "artificial" (other-made) country divisions, their residents' complicity, and the problems of post-colonialism when Pakistan was created to separate the Muslims from the Hindus after Britain gave up control of India. The book is written in the style of magic realism. It portrays the lives of Iskander Harappa (sometimes assumed to be Zulfikar Ali Bhutto), and General Raza Hyder (sometimes assumed to be General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq), and their relationship. The central theme of the novel is that begetting "shame" begets violence. The concepts of 'shame' and 'shamelessness' are explored through all of the characters, with the main focus being on Sufiya Zinobia and Omar Khayyám. Characters Shakil family * Omar Khayyám Shakil – The main character of the story who is raised by Chunni, Munnee, and Bunny. * Chunni, Munnee, and Bunny Shakil – Mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman à Clef
''Roman à clef'' (, anglicised as ), French for ''novel with a key'', is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction. This metaphorical key may be produced separately—typically as an explicit guide to the text by the author—or implied, through the use of epigraphs or other literary techniques. Madeleine de Scudéry created the ''roman à clef'' in the 17th century to provide a forum for her thinly veiled fiction featuring political and public figures. The reasons an author might choose the ''roman à clef'' format include satire; writing about controversial topics and/or reporting inside information on scandals without giving rise to charges of libel; the opportunity to turn the tale the way the author would like it to have gone; the opportunity to portray personal, autobiographical experiences without having to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
