On August 12, 2022 there was an attempted assassination of the world-class author Salman Rushdie.  Rushdie had twice won the Booker Prize for the best novel in the English language.  Then in 1978 he wrote a book entitled The Satanic Verses.  At that point Iran had just ended its war against Iraq, and Ayatollah Khomeini was on his death bed.  His son came out of his room with a declaration that Rushdie was an apostate who had insulted the Prophet Mohammed and should be killed.  He called upon all faithful Muslims to undertake the task.  Quickly an organization in Iran offered a vast reward to anyone who was successful at this task.  (Today the amount is in excess of $3.0 million).   Rushdie went into hiding for nine years and later wrote a memoir entitled Joseph Anton, his code name during  that time. 

I posted this classroom lecture a year ago, but given what happened this week, it deserves another posting.