17 Sep 2012 | Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa, minipost, News and features
An Iranian religious group has increased a reward offered for the murder of British author Salman Rushdie after blaming him for an anti-Islam film. As Rushdie recounts in his new autobiography, in 1989 Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned him to death for insulting the prophet in his novel The Satanic Verses. Rushdie has no links to the film — which has caused riots across the Middle East— he dismissed it as ‘idiotic’, but Ayatollah Hassan Sanei of the 15 Khordad Foundation said the film would never have been released had Rushdie been killed after the fatwa was declared. Sanei increased the reward by $500,000 USD, making the total sum $3.3million USD.
17 Sep 2012 | Middle East and North Africa
Anti-Islam film: Padraig Reidy asks if this time is different from previous blasphemy rows
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15 Sep 2012 | Americas, Middle East and North Africa, News and features
The protests against controversial film “Innocence of the Muslims” follow a pattern familiar since the days of the Satanic Verses fatwa, says James Kirchick. And so do the reactions of many western liberals
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7 Sep 2012 | Russia
Stanislav Samutsevich, 73, is the father of the imprisoned Pussy Riot member, Ekaterina Samutsevich. She, together with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, was sentenced to two years in the women’s prison colony on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after performing an anti-Putin protest songin Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral.
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