海角大神

As if Salman Rushdie didn鈥檛 have enough stress in his life, living in the shadow of a 23-year-old death sentence imposed on him by the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Now there is a video game,聽鈥�,鈥� announced in Tehran at Iran鈥檚 second annual International Computer Games Expo, which will allow gamers to carry out the Ayatollah鈥檚 death sentence against Mr. Rushdie.

Ayatollah issued a fatwa, or religious directive, against Rushdie in 1989, because Rushdie had authored the book 鈥淪atanic Verses,鈥� which many Muslims thought had defamed the founder of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad.

It鈥檚 tempting to see Rushdie, who spent the first few years of his fatwa living in hiding, as a champion of modernity against the superstitions of ancient prejudice, and for the non-curious among us, that is how he will likely remain. But consider this irony. Rushdie himself is an unapologetic Luddite, a man who prefers to practice the art of writing with pen and paper, a man who once told an interviewer that Steve Jobs, whose Apple computer company had given the world the iPad, had 鈥渄estroyed the world of literature.鈥� And in Iran, the successors of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the presumed defender of a 1300-year-old religion, are the ones allegedly developing nuclear weapons, and now, creating video games to virtually snuff out a writer.

"We used to have only two weak [Iranian-made] games, but after the issue of computer games came on the agenda of the Council at the order of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution [Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei] we developed around 140 games with Islamic and Iranian contents which can compete with foreign products," Mokhber Dezfouli, secretary of the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution,聽.

In the Clash of Civilizations, the lines can get pretty blurry.

Rushdie, whose novels 鈥淢idnight鈥檚 Children,鈥� 鈥淭he Moor鈥檚 Last Sigh,鈥� and 鈥淗aroun and the Sea Stories,鈥� never set out to tweak the nose of the Ayatollah, or to offend the faith of his fellow Muslim brethren. But despite the Asian locales and Muslim themes that embroidered Rushdie鈥檚 fiction, there was an underlying spiritual core of doubt in the Divine, a challenge to religious authorities, a preference of the individual over the group that Islamists like Khomeini found much more threatening than the latest pot-boiler spy novel from a Western novelist. Ultimately, Rushdie鈥檚 greatest sin, in the eyes of Khomeini, was not that he was modern; he was a traitor, a 鈥渂ad鈥� Muslim.

Since 1989, Rushdie became a media darling and a symbol of free artistic expression. Technology surely should have made it possible for Rushdie to engage with the public, remotely by teleconference, rather than put himself or his audience at risk. But there is a part of Rushdie that remains stubbornly old fashioned. His arguments with Steve Jobs and with Facebook鈥檚 Mark Zuckerberg are famous. Last year, to keep his Facebook identity as 鈥淪alman Rushdie鈥� rather than follow the Facebook rules of using his legal first name, 鈥淎hmed.鈥�

And in a panel discussion at Emory University, Rushdie admitted he prefers the low-tech nature of writing.

鈥淥ne of the things I have liked about the business of putting words on a page is that it is incredibly low technology,鈥� Rushdie said during a . 鈥淵ou need a piece of paper, a pen, and a room, and even the room is not essential.鈥�

Rushdie is by no means the only celebrity to be the target of violent video games. After President , dozens of games were created to give gamers the chance to try their own luck with the 43rd president of the United States.

There are games for giving former French President , and games (unfortunately in Russian) allowing gamers to experience a .

And yes, there is a game for those who want to , who it must be said, is already dead.聽