The other R-word this month: Rushdie

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At the expense of J.K. Rowling, a little bit of virtual space should be given to a novelist whose difficult situation has been forgotten in all the Harry Potter hype: Salman Rushdie. Our media columnist and book critic Tim Rutten wrote about the public’s stunning indifference to renewed Muslim threats against Rushdie’s life after the British crown announced his knighthood last month.

Now, Sign and Sight is posting among today’s items that a German writer is seeking permission to hold a reading of Rushdie’s 1988 novel, ‘The Satanic Verses’ -- which led to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s pronouncement of a fatwa calling for his death -- in a Cologne mosque after its construction is completed. Journalist and author Günter Wallraff (‘The Undesirable Journalist,’ ‘Lowest of the Low’) casts this reading as a crucial part of an open dialogue between East and West that would have ‘an extremely liberating effect. Just imagine the scene in the mosque: The reading takes place, some find what they hear to be not bad at all, and some even laugh. That would open a lot of doors.’

Nick Owchar