
The Satanic Verses Affair
The publication of Salman Rushdie's 1988 novel The Satanic Verses sparked global protests, prompting Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a 'fatwa' calling on Muslims to kill the author
About
Salman Rushdie's fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, was published by Viking Penguin in 1988. Shortly after its publication, protests against perceived blasphemy began in India and soon spread to Britain.
In October 1988 the Union of Muslim Organisations of the UK wrote to the government asking for the book to be banned. While the book received bans in several Muslim-majority nations, and in some with a large Muslim minority, it remained uncensored in the UK. Protests in the UK were especially fierce in the northern towns of Bradford and Bolton. South Asian Muslims in these areas had been suffering from considerable racial and social oppression at the time. As well as objections to what they considered to be offensive representations of Islam, and especially the Prophet Muhammad, these social factors fed into their anger with an author whom they had previously considered an ally and advocate. While some British Muslims objected to the novel or sympathized with the objections, others defended Rushdie, including members of the Southall Black Sisters and the group Women Against Fundamentalism.
On 14 February 1989 the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, called on all Muslims to kill the author, his publishers and translators for blasphemy. Commonly described as the 'fatwa', this edict led to Rushdie going into hiding under twenty-four-hour government protection. In the wake of the controversy, bookshops were firebombed and assassination attempts on his translators and publishers followed. The Japanese translator of the novel was killed in a knife attack, and the Italian translator and his Norwegian publishers were severely injured. The Satanic Verses controversy also resulted in the injury or deaths of numerous protesters against the novel. It provoked much debate about freedom of expression, espcially in Britain and across Europe.
Rushdie remained in hiding for around a decade and went on to write about this experience in his memoir Joseph Anton (2012). While the 'fatwa' was lifted in 1998, Rushdie remained vulnerable to attack, and in August 2022 he was stabbed in New York and left with life-changing injuries.
Salman Rushdie
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