Wow. I didn’t think anyone remembered the fatwa on Rushdie.
KevinC
1737
Has the $3 million reward for his death been adjusted for inflation by the Ayatollahs?
Waaaaay back in my college days I was hanging out in the newsroom of the college paper when one of my colleagues walked in with a really puzzled look and said, “I think I just passed Salman Rushdie on the stairs.”
And then someone else realized that he was giving an interview to the college radio station upstairs.
Our photogs ran out of the newsroom with cameras but he was already gone.
And that was the closest I ever got to Salman Rushdie. (And $3 million)
Thrag
1739
Sounds like he was in a rush.
Holy shit. A stabbing at Chautauqua Institute! I have a lot of family history in that place… grew up going there every summer. What a shock this must be in such an idyllic place.
Yeah, Chautauqua is pretty much the antithesis of violence.
The Iranians rescinded, or at least said they would not pursue, the fatwa many years ago. Of course, whack jobs with a misguided sense of divine mission never give up the ghost, sadly.
Man, imagine how pissed this whacko will be when he tries to put in a claim via the Iranian Department of Fatwa Renumeration. Everyone knows the IDFR don’t play (or in this case, pay).
colors available: orange?
Enidigm
1746
That’s the real damage Al Ghazali did to Islamic intellectual civilization - he argued it was right and correct that certain beliefs were so bad that those who held them could be killed. It took several centuries for that stuff to “trickle down” (he was writing in the 11th Century after all) but much of that literal sharpness that’s so offputting about much of Muslim civilization to Western minds came from him.
Well, other folks can’t be smug about it either. Jews and Christians had their proponents of intellectual containment by threat of death as well, sadly enough.
jpinard
1748
What year did they stop vaccinating people for Polio?
Menzo
1749
Children still get vaccinated. Or at least 93% of them in the US, but only about 60% in that area of NYC.
jpinard
1750
Oh good, so I don’t need a new vax then?
Houngan
1751
Question of time, I think. When everyone is getting vaccinated at a young age then the disease can never take hold, so it’s not so important for older people to get it, even if their immunity has waned. Plus polio seems to be a neurologically targeted virus, so young people are going to be hurt by it much more than old people where the development is more or less complete. Talking completely out of my ass here, but that makes sense in my head. Other side is a respiratory/heart bug like COVID beats the shit out of older people because those systems are declining while young people shrug it off.
Holy shit. From the initial reports, it sounded like his injuries were minor. Obviously not.
What a tragedy. :(
I saw a report earlier that says he was stabbed 20 times. Can’t find it now.
And people wonder why I hate religion with a fiery passion. On balance, the fanaticism and evil that religion breeds is not worth whatever positives come out of it. I really do have sympathy with all the revolutionaries throughout history who have tried to eradicate religion, even though humans are too stupid and venal to ever get rid of it.
