Khomeini directed the death call not only against Rushdie, but against everyone involved in the publication of the novel.Ī quarter of a year earlier, Reinhold Neven DuMont, then head of publishing at Kiepenheuer & Witsch, had acquired the book rights for the German-language market. 'Fatwa led to paralysis' for German publisher Rushdie immediately went into hiding, living in secrecy and under personal protection for nine years. He could have done that in five minutes instead of working on a book for five years, he said.Īlmost half a year after the novel's publication, Khomeini issued a fatwa, or Islamic legal opinion, calling on all Muslims to kill the British-Indian writer for alleged blasphemy. Rushdie later said that he never wanted to insult Islam. In fact, Rushdie's novel is not a critique of Islam, but a narrative about postcolonialism and migration. "The Satanic Verses" in German Image: Carsten Koall/dpa/picture alliance The title of the novel refers to two verses that are said to have been whispered to the Prophet Muhammad by Satan and therefore erased from the Koran. One becomes an archangel the other resembles the devil. Rushdie's story is about two Indian actors who survive a plane crash. In London, where Rushdie was living at the time, there were also violent protests, arson attacks and threats against bookstores selling the novel.
South Africa, India and Pakistan stopped the import of the book people ended up dying during demonstrations.
Muslims quickly protested against the novel and its author. "The Satanic Verses" was first published in Britain, then in the United States, Italy and France. Now, nearly 34 years later, numerous festivals and literary associations have invited people to solidarity readings - not to mark this year's anniversary, but because of the assassination attempt against Rushdie decades after Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the author's murder in February 1989. When Salman Rushdie's fourth novel, "The Satanic Verses," appeared in its English-language first edition on September 26, 1988, the writer could not yet have imagined that this book would fundamentally change his life.
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