Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British writer whose writing about faith and politics has made him controversial in some components of the world.
His first three novels – Grimus (1975), Midnight’s Children (1981) and Shame (1983) – have been all met with reward but it surely was his fourth – The Satanic Verses – that introduced criticism.
Some of the scenes within the 1988 guide depict a personality modelled on the Prophet Muhammad and this was met with anger from some members of the Muslim neighborhood within the UK.
They thought of it blasphemous.
Protests unfold so far as Pakistan in January 1989 and the next month, the non secular chief of revolutionary Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, condemned the guide and issued a fatwa in opposition to him.
A bounty was provided for his execution.
The guide was burned all over the world and translators of the work have been attacked – Hitoshi Igarashi, who translated it into Japanese, was murdered in 1991.
Rushdie adopted an alias and went into hiding underneath the safety of Scotland Yard, though he appeared in public often.
Rushdie continued to put in writing, regardless of the risk to his life
Despite the risk to his life, he continued to put in writing and in 1998 the Iranian authorities stated it might not implement the fatwa.
The fatwa was by no means truly revoked, nonetheless, and The Satanic Verses stays banned in Iran and numerous different international locations.
Rushdie wrote about his expertise within the third-person memoir Joseph Anton in 2012.
Speaking in New York three years later, he stated: “If you’re a free expression organisation, if you believe in the value of free speech, then you must believe in the value of free speech that you don’t like.
“If you solely defend free speech that conforms to your personal ethical framework that is what is generally known as censorship.”
He was knighted in 2007, a transfer that was criticised by the Iranian and Pakistani governments.
Source: information.sky.com”