[Chuck Taylor]

Everyone is afraid to speak out against the Muslim religion.

For example look what happened when Salman Rushdie wrote the "Satanic Verses."

The book was banned in India and burned in demonstrations in the United Kingdom. In mid-February 1989, following a violent riot against the book in Pakistan, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran and a Shi'a Muslim scholar, issued a fatwa calling on all good Muslims to kill Rushdie and his publishers, or to point him out to those who can kill him if they cannot themselves.

Following the fatwa, Rushdie was put under police protection by the British government. Despite a conciliatory statement by Iran in 1998, and Rushdie's declaration that he would stop living in hiding, the Iranian state news agency reported in 2006 that the fatwa will remain in place permanently.

As of today Rushdie has not been physically harmed, but others connected with the book have suffered misfortune. Hitosh Igarashi, the Japanese language translator of the book, was stabbed to death on July 11, 1991; Ettore Capriolo, the Italian language translator, was seriously injured in a stabbing the same month, and William Nygaard, the publisher in Norway, barely survived an attempted assassination in Oslo in October of 1993.:booo: