Salman Rushdie and other Satanic Verses

The hard-line Revolutionary Guards renewed a death sentence issued 14 years ago by the founder of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, against the British author Salman Rushdie for his book "The Satanic Verses," the Islamic Republic News Agency reported. In a statement, the Revolutionary Guards said, "The edict was irrevocable."
—Nazila Fathi, Iran: Rushdie Death Sentence Is Renewed

We bring this up because it's important when an author is targeted for death on the basis of a work of fiction. It means that imagination, that incredible faculty we alone as a sentient species possess, is under attack. It should always be defended because it is the tool of the poets who are the genius and saviors of mankind...
—The Raven

This is something that's very straightforwardly perceived by tyrants of every kind. The very existence of imagination means that you can posit an existence different from the one you are living. If you are trying to create a repressive society in which people will submit to whatever you give them, then the very fact of them being able to imagine something else — not necessarily better, just different — is a threat. So even on that very simple level, imagination is dangerous...
—David Cronenberg

["Poems Not Fit for the White House"] was named in honor of Sam Hamill, who was invited to a White House poetry reading and responded by soliciting antiwar poems, with the intention of presenting them to his host, Laura Bush; Ms. Bush responded by postponing the event. This story (recounted in the program guide) set an odd tone: it was proof, perhaps, that the most effective poetry reading is the one that never happens. Faced with the responsibility of speaking as the nation's moral conscience, most of the poets at Fisher Hall did the only sensible thing: they ducked. Hardly any of the poets read poems of their own, and as each new presenter arrived onstage, you could hear the unmistakable sound of a buck being passed.
—Kelefa Sanneh, Ambiguity Is a Guest at a Readers' Evening