The World - News from March 16, 1989

Muslim foreign ministers attending a conference in Saudi Arabia argued about whether Islamic law would allow British author Salman Rushdie to be killed without trial, as Iran wants, or whether he must be given a chance to repent. According to sources, none of the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s other 45 members are likely to support the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s order that Rushdie be executed for blaspheming Islam in his novel “The Satanic Verses.” In Peshawar, Pakistan, a bomb exploded and tore a two-foot hole in the roof of a British library, and a library official linked the bombing to continuing Muslim outrage over the book. Rushdie’s novel, meanwhile, moved to the top of the New York Times’ best-seller list, the newspaper announced.