FT NT P TAT C 1 (XPQf Associated Press Nebraska!!
^ 1 t w w k^ JL-^ XCa\^ l7 Edited by Diana Johnson Tuesday, February 14,1989
Moslems say Rushdie novel must be banned
^ ISLAMABAD, Pakistan ~ Mos
lem fundamentalists around the
world demand that Salman Rushdie’s
novel “The Satanic Verses” be
banned as blasphemy against Islam,
and this weekend the campaign
turned violent.
At least five people were killed
and more than 80 injured Sunday
when police fired on a mob trying to
storm the U.S. Information Center in
Islamabad. The protesters demanded
the book be banned in the United
States.
Fundamentalists say the book
does not recognize Islam as the one
true religion and ridicules the most
precious Moslem beliefs. Pakistan
and other Moslem nations banned the
book after its publication last year.
Rushdie, 41, was bom in India to
Moslem parents and educated in Brit
ain, where he lives. His other books
include “Midnight’s Children,”
which won Britain’s prestigious
Booker prize, “Shame” and “The
Jaguar Smile.”
The literary success of “The Sa
tanic Verses,” a complex work that
focuses on good and evil, has been
i
confined to a fairly small intellectual
readership in Western nations. Ir.
November, the book won the “new
novel” category in the annual liter
ary competition sponsored by the
Whitbread brewing giant, but it did
not win the overall Whitbread prize.
Leaders of the Islamabad march
said it was intended to be peaceful but
police reacted improperly.
Government officials, speaking
on condition of anonymity, said the
protest apparently was inspired by
reviews last week in international
news magazines. One official said:
‘‘The reviews had the first details
anyone had about the book. Nobody
here has read the book.”
‘‘The Satanic Verses” is a ram
bling fantasy on the birth of religion,
modem history and human relations.
It begins with two men tumbling from
a jumbo jet destroyed by a terrorist
bomb and chronicles their adven
tures.
A part of the novel fictionalizes
certain episodes from the Koran, the
Moslem holy bode, and the life of the
prophet Mohammed in what Western
H-I
book critics say is clearly satire. They
have praised the book for imaginative
vision and depth.
The author says his book is a work
of fiction that does not attack Islam,
contains no blasphemy and is not
intended to offend anyone.
“It is not a source of satisfaction to
me to be banned in the Moslem
world,” he said in a recent interview
with the Herald, a Pakistani maga
zine.
Moslem leaders describe the
novel as an attack on Mohammed
intended to insult Moslems and lead
them astray.
Sycd Mohammed Younus Kazmi,
a Pakistani Moslem leader, said:
“The book has fictitious characters
that caricature the holy prophet and
his companions. The book contains
insulting and derogatory remarks.” ’
Kazmi and other Islamic theologi
ans say the book must be banned
because it does not treat Mohammed
as the prophet of the world’s one true
religion. They believe Mohammed
and the Koran must be portrayed only
as representing divine truth.
“Rushdie has offended millions
-7--1
of Moslems around the world,”
Kazmi said in an interview. “Such a
person cannot be allowed to do these
things.”
Fundamentalist leaders claimed
Sunday’s march was not an anti
American protest, even though many
of their followers see the United
States as a corrupt secular culture and
enemy of Islam. Protesters chanted
‘‘American dogs” and other slogans
against the United States.
‘ ‘It was not an attack on the United
States. We just hoped to create moral
support for our cause to slop this
unholy book being printed again,”
Kazmi said.
Leaflets circulated by fundamen
talist groups characterize the novel as
a blasphemous, semi-pornographic
attack that says the prophet was in
spired by the devil, his wife was a
prostitute and his companions were
evil.
“There are insulting remarks in
this book,” said Mohammed Sadiq, a
theology student. “There arc lies in
this book. We want this book banned
in America and around the world.”
According to the author, his novel
has been distorted by fundamentalists
who have not read it and oppose any
idea that does not reflect their fanati
cal literal faith. He said he has re
ceived death threats.
Rushdie has declared himself fas
cinated by religion and its develop
ment and role in history.
He has been quoted as saying re
ligions arc ‘ ‘codes with which human
beings have tried to understand their
presence on the planet and discuss
their moral behavior. My point of
view is that of a secular human being.
1 do not believe in supernatural enti
ties, whether Christian, Jewish, Mos
lem or Hindu.”
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto
and other government leaders called
the protest at the American center an
attack by fundamentalist parties
trying to drive her from office by
straining relations with Pakistan’s
ally, the United States.
Rushdie says he has every right to
deal with Islam in a creative fashion,
and ‘ ‘I am not going to run away from
the subject because it is my subject
and it is my birthright and nobody can
take that away from me.”
Study suggests:
Adolescent beliefs predict
drinking habits as adults
NEW YORK -- A questionnaire
assessing beliefs about alcohol can
identify young adolescents at risk for
later problem drinking, according to
a study that one expert calls an excit
ing development in fighting alcohol
abuse.
When tested with 637 junior high
school students, the 90-item ques
tionnaire was an impressively strong
predictor of problem drinking a year
later, alcohol experts said.
Students who believed alcohol
could help them think or improve
their physical coordination tended to
be at particular risk, said study co
author Mark Goldman.
Goldman, a psychology professor
at the University of South Florida in
Tampa, reported the study re 'ills
with co-authors from the Univc.sity
of Wisconsin Medical School,
Wayne State University in Detroit
and Hope College in Holland, Mich.
The work appears in this month’s
issue of the Journal of Consulting and
Clinical Psychology.
Peter Nathan, director of the
Rutgers-affiliated Center of Alcohol
Studies in Piscataway, N.J said the
study represents an advance n identi
fying “what looks like a raher irv
portant difference’’ that distin
guishes early adolescents at risk of an
alcohol problem.
The predictions were not perfect,
but their accuracy was "pretty im
pressive."
Goldman said that since writing
the paper, researchers have found the
questionnaire also indicates a risk of
problem drinking within two years
and possibly three.
The questionnaire measured how
strongly students believed that alco
hoi could aid them in such ways as
helping them relax, be sexier, think
better, enjoy social gatherings more,
or perform belter socially or athleti
cally.
Prior research shows that such
“expectancies” strongly affect the
way a person behaves after drinking,
quite apart from chemical effects of
alcohol, Goldman said.
The research followed the theory
that “the stronger they believe that
alcohol has (hose positive effects, the
more at risk they are for problem
drinking,” Goldman said.
If such beliefs can be undermined
early, that might reduce the attrac
tiveness of alcohol and prevent prob
lem drinking, he said. The question
naire may help by pinpointing the key
beliefs that pul individual teen-agers
at risk, he said.
The study focused on 637 sevenih
and eighth-graders who filled out the
questionnaire and a confidential sur
vey on drinking habits. A year later,
they again reported on their drinking.
In that intervening year, the per
centage of students who got drunk at
least twice a year jumped from 10
percent to 25 percent. While 7 per
cent said in the first survey that they
had consumed 12 beers or more at a
single sitting, 20 percent said so a
year later.
Analysis showed that the occur
rence or degree of problem drinking
by the students was significantly re
lated to how they had answered the
questionnaire a year earlier. The rcla
ttonship also appeared for the 550
students who had not reported any
sign of problem drinking at the begin
ning of the year.
Chicagoans recall Valentine’s
Day massacre 60 years later
CHICAGO - Sixty years ago
Tuesday, machine-gun fire echoed
from a garage in a Near North Side
neighborhood and seven members
of George “Bugs” Moran’s gang
fell dead in the St. Valentine’s Day
Massacre.
It was the Prohibition era’s
goriest crime and the beginning of
the end of gangster rule.
‘Only the Ca
pone gang kills
like that. ’
-Moran
Now Prohibition is dead and the
f;arage is gone but the memories
ive on for some Chicago resi
dents, who vividly recall when
^‘gangland graduated from murder
to massacre,” as news accounts of
the day put iL
A senior citizen’s home borders
the site, and residents of the Lin
coln Park Senior Center say their
narking lot is on the very spot
Where the seven fell. Some resi
dents believe their ghosts still
walk.
“I’d be sitting on my reclining
Chair and hear things moving
around .. knives and forks clang
ing together... I’d hear someone
go out the door,” said Madeline
Bushhaum, 84, who lived in the
tune
fed it was the
the ones that
killed ‘em,” said Mrs. Bushbaum,
who has moved out of the room
closest to the murder site. “I don’t
hear ‘em anymore, but several
people moved out of the building
because they said they were dis
turbed.”
At the time of the massacre,
“Scarface” A1 Capone, leader of
Near South Side bootlegging op
erations, wanted Moran’s territory
up north.
On the morning of Feb. 14,
1929, a day when the temperature
was 10 below zero, four men • two
wearing police uniforms - raided
Moran rs garage headquarters.
They finea the men up against
the wall as if for a routine frisk for
weapons, and instead delivered a
Valentine’s Day hail of gunfire
that riddled the victims, almost
severing limbs.
Mrs. Bushbaum, then a 24
year-old evening telephone opera
tor, was playing pool with the guys
in the back room of Drake Braith
waite undertakers, about three
blocks from the scene. She said she
often helped out, answering the
telephone when the employees
went out “to pick up a stiff.”
“While we were playing, the
garage door flew open and there
were the coppers and the paddy
wagon,” she recalled.
T‘They brought in two bodies on
two slabs and just slid ‘em off on
the floor and said, ‘We goua go
back, we got five more dead out
there!’
“1, saw the guy with haU his.
brains shot out, and I tell you, I
didn't feel so good,” Mrs. Bush
baum said.
Six of the victims died in
stantly.
‘They brought In
two bodes on
two slabs and
lust slid 'em off
on the floor and
said, 'We gotta
go back, we got
nve more dead
out there."
-Bush baum
Frank Gusenberg, fading fast in
his hospital bed, upheld tne gan
gland code when police asked
who'd done the shooting.
“Nobody,” Gusenberg said.
“It’s getting dark, surge. So
long.”
Moran, who was not at his head
quarters that day, later told police:
’'Only the Capone gang kills like
that/
Authorities never proved a
CanpRke connection and the mas
sacre is still listed in police files as
“murder by persons unknown.”
But the violence hastened a
resurgence of law and order that
crushed gangster rule and eventu
ally brought the arrest and down
, All of Capone. ..... ....
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