Cat Stevens' comments about Salman Rushdie wikipedia
EXCERPT:
Cat Stevens' comments about Salman Rushdie
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Following Ayatollah Khomeini's February 14, 1989 death threat fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, convert to Islam and recording artist Yusuf Islam, previously known as Cat Stevens, made statements widely interpreted as endorsing the fatwa. This generated a furor among a number of celebrities, and free speech activists who spoke out about his comments on radio stations, and newspaper editorials in the West. In response, Yusuf Islam denied [1] that his statements were in support of the fatwa, and claimed he was merely giving his interpretation of Islamic law.[2] Critics claim several independent reports, including statements on video, belie his denials.[3] As of late 2008 videos on the issue are no longer available on the internet. [4]

[edit] Statements
On February 21, 1989, Yusuf Islam addressed students at Kingston University in London about his conversion to Islam and was asked about the controversy in the Muslim world and the fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie's execution. He replied, "He must be killed. The Qur'an makes it clear - if someone defames the prophet, then he must die." [5]

Newspapers quickly denounced what was seen as Yusuf Islam's support for the assassination of Rushdie and the next day Yusuf released a statement saying that he was not personally encouraging anybody to be a vigilante,[1] and that he was only stating that blasphemy is a capital offense according to the Qur'an.

However on March 8, 1989, while speaking in London's Regents Park Mosque, Yusuf Islam was asked by a Christian Science Monitor reporter how he would "cope with the idea of killing a writer for writing a book." He is reported to have replied:

In Islam there is a line between let's say freedom and the line which is then transgressed into immorality and irresponsibility and I think as far as this writer is concerned, unfortunately, he has been irresponsible with his freedom of speech. Salman Rushdie or indeed any writer who abuses the prophet, or indeed any prophet, under Islamic law, the sentence for that is actually death. It's got to be seen as a deterrent, so that other people should not commit the same mistake again.

Macbeth and Shakespeare
EXCERPT:
An examination of Macbeth and Shakespeare’s sources leads us to formulate several conclusions concerning the motives behind the dramatists alterations. It can be argued that the changes serve three main purposes: the dramatic purpose of producing a more exciting story than is found in the sources; the thematic purpose of creating a more complex characterization of Macbeth; and the political purpose of catering to the beliefs of the reigning monarch, King James the First. And, in the grander scheme, Shakespeare’s alterations function to convey the sentiment echoed in many of his works – that there is a divine right of kings, and that to usurp the throne is a nefarious crime against all of humanity.


Smith satanic verses
EXCERPTs:
1) The Satanic Verses were infamously burnt at a protest in Bradford. This protest formed part of the growing international demonstrations against the novel's publication, which culminated in a fatwa (a religious ruling or decree) being issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran, against Salman Rushdie on 14th February 1989 (see 'Ayatollah Khomeini', BBC, in Further Reading).

2) It's rather a long passage so for copyright reasons we are unable to include it here. It starts with a quotation from Shakespeare's Sonnets, 'Thy black is fairest in my judgement's place...', and it ends ' "By William Shakespeare: ODE TO LETITIA AND ALL MY KINKY-HAIRED BIG-ASS BITCHEZ." '. It can be found in White Teeth, pp. 270-272.]

Shakespeare: ODE TO LETITIA.......
EXCERPT:
Shakespeare: ODE TO LETITIA
AND ALL MY KINKY-HAIRED BIG-ASS BIT CHEZ

The Satanic Verses wikipedia
EXCERPT:
In the United Kingdom, the book received positive reviews. It was a 1988 Booker Prize Finalist (losing to Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda) and won the 1988 Whitbread Award for novel of the year.[2]

In the Muslim community, however, the novel caused great controversy for what many Muslims believed were blasphemous references. The book was banned in India, was burned in demonstrations in the United Kingdom, and was the subject of a violent riot in Pakistan. In February 1989, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling on all good Muslims to kill or help kill Rushdie and his publishers.[3] Following the fatwa, Rushdie was put under police protection by the British government. As of early 2010 Rushdie has not been physically harmed, but two of his translators were stabbed (one fatally), one of his publishers was shot, and many others have been killed during violent protests against the book.[4] Individual purchasers of the book have not been harmed.

Shakespearean Rushdie pdf
EXCERPT:ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 31.2 (December 2009): 9–22
ISSN 0210-6124
Shakespeare in Rushdie/Shakespearean Rushdie Geetha Ganapathy-Doré University of Paris 13 geetha.dore@univ-paris13.fr Postcolonial readers situate Shakespeare at the starting point and Salman Rushdie at the other end of the spectrum of multicultural authors who have laid claims to universality. While the fact that Rushdie’s epoch-making novel Midnight’s Children adapted for the theatre by Tim Supple, was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2003 would have come as a surprise to many, the Bard himself, his birthplace, allusions to and quotations from his work, parodic rewriting of his plots and brilliant recasting of his characters have always punctuated Rushdie’s fiction and non-fiction. The linguistic inventiveness of Shakespeare and Rushdie and the Ovidian intertext in both bring them even closer. This paper argues that the presence .................................................

Shakespeare and the Sufi Sect
EXCERPT:
The respected academic Dr Martin Lings will put forward this thesis in his lecture on 23 November. 'Shakespeare would have delighted in Sufism,' said Lings, who is 96 and an adherent of Sufism. 'We can see he obviously knew a lot about some kind of equivalent sect or order.'

Lings argues that the guiding principles of Sufi thought are evident in Shakespeare's writing. The plays, he believes, depict a struggle between the dawning modernist world and the traditional, mystical value system. And, like the Sufis, the playwright is firmly on the side of tradition and spiritualism.

'It was the end of the Middle Ages and the birth of atheism,' he says. 'It was the beginning of the ideas of enlightenment and the beginning really of the modern era. Shakespeare is the last outpost of tradition.'

Sufi Muslim Survivors - you're not alone
Sufi Muslim Survivors - you're not aloneSufism is often described as the mystical branch of Islam. It is portrayed by some Muslims and the press as a peaceful, mystical alternative to extremism as well as traditionally conservative cultural interpretations of Islam. Perhaps this is true in some respect. But not in the West.

Sufism has appealed to Western Muslims for a the better part of two decades. Many of them are the children of immigrants, mainly from South Asia, but others are converts to Islam. Although there are Sufis from working class backgrounds, in the West, they tend to be very middle class and upper class people. Sufism also had a major influence on people who converted to Islam in the 60s.

In the wake of the disintegration of the fundamentalist Salafi movement, a movement known as 'Traditional Islam' has come in to take its place. Traditional Islam places importance on adhering to classical interpretations of Islamic law with the added dimension of following the shaykhs, or wise men, of the Sufi brotherhoods, known as tariqahs or tariqat. Seekers, known as dervishes or murids, take pledges of loyalty to their shaykhs, called a bayah. Different shaykhs use bayah differently. Some use it to exact extreme discipline and control on their murids, in the name of purifying them, while others are quite casual and do not interfere in the lives of their dervishes.

Traditional Islam gained a following in North America and the UK with the emergence of a man named Hamza Yusuf (Mark Hanson) from the United States. He is the founder of the Zaytuna Institute in California and a world known speaker and teacher of Islam. Although a bad experience from his youth causes him to place some distance between himself and the tariqat, it is Yusuf's Sufi-friendly teaching, his American evangelical style of teaching, and his middle class approachability that opened up a new generation to Sufism. Yusuf played a key role in introducing and promoting some of today's 'best known' Sufi teachers in North America and the UK. Among the men that he or his early students and followers introduced to the scene were Muhammad al-Yaqoubi of Syria (Shadhilli), Nuh Ha Mim Keller (Shadhilli), an American in Jordan, and Habib Ali al Jifri of Yemen (Ba-Alawi). Other Sufis who became popular in the wake of the rise of Traditional Islam are the many branches of Naqshbandism, mainly the Cypriot branch, the Jerrahis of Turkey, the Chishtis, the Mevlevis, and Sidi Jamal al Rifa'i of Jerusalem (Shadhilli), whose group has been written about on these forums before. An existing tariqah that had some limited appeal to Western Muslims was the Murabitun.

The past ten years have seen the rise and growth of the TM movement, as well as the growth of Sufism. The past two or three years, we are now seeing people leaving these brotherhoods, the movement and even Islam in droves. The problems we found are the same that you find in most any cult: pressure to give all or some of our earnings, inheritance, and other monies to the shaykhs; dodgy business and land schemes; outrageous claims of spiritual powers; sexual exploitation; and the forced isolation of followers in some groups. (As is usually the case, it is the women who are subject to most abuses.)

Diva behavior is common among Muslim leaders, but it seems as though the shaykhs take it to a new level. Demanding money and gifts is de rigeur, but some have taken it to new heights, demanding first class plane tickets everywhere they travel, and even that homes be purchased for them. The grumbling about ‘rock stars’ and ‘milk shaykhs’ has been going on for years.

Our tariqat had the added dimension of the authority of Islam. Our shaykhs are or claim to be authorities in Islamic law, and so their pronouncements carried the weight of heaven and hell, literally.

We know that some of the ex-murids have spent a long time online googling cults, sufis, tariqa, the names of shaykhs, and so on looking for stories from fellow survivors. You're not alone. We are here. We are the ones who walked away, we are the parents and families of those who are still in deep. Islamic law is telling us to be silent out of respect for the scholarly class. There is no place on the internet except for a few blogs where the issue of Islamic cults is being addressed. The blog scandals about the Sufis are just the beginning of people who say they're not going to be silent anymore. You're not crazy, you're not a bad Muslim. It is okay to leave. If something seems wrong to you that a shaykh is doing, it probably is.



Sufism wikipedia
EXCERPT:
Sufism or taṣawwuf (Arabic: تصوّف‎) is, according to its adherents, the inner, mystical dimension of Islam.[1][2][3] A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a ṣūfī (صُوفِيّ). Another name for a Sufi is Dervish.

Classical Sufi scholars have defined Sufism as "a science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else but God."[4] Alternatively, in the words of the Darqawi Sufi teacher Ahmad ibn Ajiba, "a science through which one can know how to travel into the presence of the Divine, purify one’s inner self from filth, and beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits."[5]