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 has reached us and we are in the process of preparing for you a precise response". Concerning the recording the British Foreign Office stated "The Government has already made clear that Rushdie's honour was not intended as an insult to Islam or the Prophet Muhammad." Prime Minister Gordon Brown replied to the threat saying "Nothing can justify either threats to the United Kingdom or any form of terrorist activity and it must be the right of the United Kingdom to make its own decisions on all these issues." Knighthood of Salman Rushdie In mid-June 2007 Salman Rushdie, the British Indian