Nobody can hold a grudge like these people. It’s been 23 years since Ayatollah Khomeini issued his death fatwa.
(NYDN) — Iran, already allegedly at work on nuclear weapons, is now developing another weapon, one intended to curb sin among its westward-looking youth.
According to the UK’s Guardian, Iranian video game developers have “completed initial phases of production” of “The Stressful Life of Salman Rushdie and Implementation of his Verdict,” a brainchild of the Islamic Association of Student that has been three years in the making.
While the title itself isn’t quite as catchy as, say, “Call of Duty” or “SimCity,” it does give fairly unambigious hints of what the game will be about — and how Iranians still feel about an author they once revered, one who in recent years has become less known for his writing than his dating.
The fatwa against Rushdie was handed down by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 by Ayatolla Ruhollah Khomeini, then the supreme religious leader of Iran, one not generally known for his patience with experimental fiction. His ire was incited by Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses,” which he found to be blasphemous against the Prophet Muhammad.
Presumably, the new video game will have Iranian youth chasing down and killing the author in the West, perhaps even on the very streets of New York.