Iran: Officials Object to Event With Salman Rushdie

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/world/middleeast/iran-officials-object-to-event-with-salman-rushdie.html

Version 0 of 1.

Iran’s cultural opening is being put to the test by next week’s Frankfurt Book Fair, where Salman Rushdie is scheduled to speak. Iran has asked the organizers of the fair to cancel Mr. Rushdie’s speech, Deputy Culture Minister Abbas Salehi told The Tehran Times. In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic, ordered Muslims to kill Mr. Rushdie after some deemed his book “The Satanic Verses” blasphemous. In 1998 Iran’s government said it no longer sought Mr. Rushdie’s death, but Ayatollah Khomeini’s edict cannot be retracted because he died months after issuing it. More than a dozen Iranian publishing houses and scores of independent publishers are to participate in the fair.