Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. A Second Decade of the Dispute?
Abstract
Salman Rushdie was an author of books well known all over the world, when in 1988 he published his next book fiction under the title of Satanic Verses. It was printed in Great Britain by Viking Penguin Inc. and distributed on the 26th of September 1988. As early as on the 5th of October 1988, on the initiative of Islamic parliamentary groups from Bombay, the distribution of the book was prohibited in India under the pretext of being blasphemous. The same opinion about the book was expressed by the spiritual leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran āyatullāh Ḫōmeynī, who brought about a real row in international—and even inter-civilisation— relations by declaring on the 14th of February 1989 a religious verdict (fatwā). Ḫōmeynī considered the book blasphemous with respect to the Islamic creed, the Qur’ān and Prophet Muḥammad; also he called to execute death sentences against the author and publishers.
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Citation
Jamsheer Hassan, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. A Second Decade of the Dispute?, Studia Arabistyczne i Islamistyczne 8, 2000, pp. 121-136