Susan Sontag PEN writers' organization. After Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a "fatwa" death sentence against writer Salman Rushdie for blasphemy after the publication of his novel "The Satanic Verses" that year, Sontag's uncompromising support of Rushdie was crucial in rallying American writers to his cause. A few years later, during the Siege of Sarajevo, Sontag gained attention for directing a production of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" in a candlelit theatre in the Bosnian city. In the "Daily Telegraph", Kevin Myers called it "mesmerisingly precious and hideously self-indulgent." and wrote, "By my personal reckoning, the performance lasted as long as the
Political thought and legacy of Ruhollah Khomeini subordinate to the revolution, he affirmed against tradition that the fatwa pronounced by a grand ayatollah survived that ayatollah (such as the fatwa to kill Salman Rushdie), and defrocked Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari, a political opponent. In "Fiqh", (Islamic jurisprudence) some scholars have argued Khomeini championed innovative reinterpretations of doctrine, prompted by the challenges of managing a country of 50 million plus. "Esmat" is perfection through faith. Khomeini believed not only that truly just and divine Islamic government need not wait for the return of the 12th Imam/Mahdi, but that "divinely bestowed freedom from error and sin" ("esmat") was not