The story
On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, broadcast on Iranian radio a fatwa, a religious ruling, declaring that the author and publishers of The Satanic Verses who knew its contents were condemned to death and calling on Muslims to carry out the sentence. It came after protests, book burnings and a day of deadly riots in Pakistan, and a few months before Khomeini's own death in June 1989. Iranian foundations later offered a bounty.
Salman Rushdie was placed under British police protection and spent most of the next decade in hiding, moving between safe houses. Britain and Iran broke diplomatic relations in 1989, and other countries recalled ambassadors. The Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi was killed in July 1991, the Italian translator Ettore Capriolo was stabbed the same month, and the Norwegian publisher William Nygaard was shot in 1993, though he survived. In 1998 Iran's government said it would not act on or encourage the threat, and Rushdie began to live more openly, although the religious ruling was never formally revoked. On August 12, 2022, Rushdie was stabbed at a lecture in western New York State and lost sight in one eye, and he later wrote about the attack in Knife (2024).
Why it mattered
- The fatwa became the best-known case of a writer threatened with death for a book.
- It spurred the creation of groups defending writers at risk and strengthened the idea of free expression as an international concern.
- It sharpened Western and Muslim debates about blasphemy and freedom of speech.
- Rushdie's later memoirs and the 2022 attack kept the case in public view three decades later.
Sources
- Iran: Eight years of death threats: Salman Rushdie Amnesty International
- Iran: Rushdie fatwa 25th anniversary RFE/RL
- Satanic stabbings Red-T
Community notes
Loading notes…