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
Knighthood of Salman Rushdie a pretext to do something against (Britain). ... When your Queen awards Salman Rushdie and turns him into a knight, what do you expect? This is a blasphemy. This is an insult to all the prophets of the world." After Friday prayer services on 22 June 2007 Prominent cleric Hojatoleslam Ahmad Khatami spoke to worshipers by broadcast on state radio from Tehran. He addressed the death sentence issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini against Rushdie, saying "In the Islamic Iran that revolutionary "fatwa" of Imam [Khomeini] is still alive and cannot be changed." He went on to say that "The old