NEW YORK -- The unprecedented international furor over Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel, “The Satanic Verses,” continued unabated, forcing the author’s Manhattan publisher to close because of bomb threats Friday, while the two biggest U.S. bookstore chains ordered the book removed from shelves, and Canada temporarily halted shipments at the border.
CAIRO -- Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, overruling his president and other Iranian moderates, declared Sunday that British author Salman Rushdie must be killed and sent “to hell” for writing “The Satanic Verses,” a novel that many Muslims believe blasphemes Islam.
WASHINGTON -- Iran’s Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri resigned Tuesday as heir apparent to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in what is widely seen as a swing in the political pendulum back to the even more fanatical tone of the revolution’s early days.
