The Satanic Verses Controversy
The Satanic Verses controversy, also known as the Rushdie Affair, was the heated and frequently violent reaction of some Muslims to the publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses, which was first published in the United Kingdom in 1988. Many Muslims accused Rushdie of blasphemy or unbelief and in 1989 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwā ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie. Numerous killings, attempted killings, and bombings resulted from Muslim anger over the novel.
The Iranian government backed the fatwā against Rushdie until 1998, when the succeeding government of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said it no longer supported the killing of Rushdie.
The issue was said to have divided "Muslim from Westerners along the fault line of culture," and to have pitted a core Western value of freedom of expression—that no one "should be killed, or face a serious threat of being killed, for what they say or write"—against the view of many Muslims—that no one should be free to "insult and malign Muslims" by disparaging the "honour of the Prophet" Muhammad. English writer Hanif Kureishi called the fatwā "one of the most significant events in postwar literary history."
Read more about The Satanic Verses Controversy: Controversial Elements of The Satanic Verses, Early Reaction, Fatwā By Ayatollah Khomeini, Social and Political Fallout, See Also
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—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)
“The night in prison was novel and interesting enough.... I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.”
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