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Salman Rushdie on the Fatwa That Endangered His Life

From the New Yorker archive

Salman Rushdie

The New Yorker, 2022

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In August 2022, as Salman Rushdie, 75, prepared to give a lecture in upstate New York, a man stabbed him ten times. Rushdie survived with grave injuries. Death threats had been a constant in Rushdie’s life. In late 1988, Muslims protested his novel, The Satanic Verses, a fictitious version of Prophet Muhammad’s life. Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa telling Muslims to execute Rushdie. Riots protesting the book broke out across the Islamic world, and Rushdie went into hiding. Years passed before he could appear in public without police protection. The New Yorker reprinted his 2012 essay, which eloquently depicts the onset of the fatwa and the beginning of Rushdie’s years of isolation.

Summary

On Valentine’s Day 1989, Salman Rushdie’s previous life ended when Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his execution.

On Valentine’s Day 1989, a BBC reporter called Salman Rushdie at his home in London, England and asked: What’s it like to be given a death sentence by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini? Rushdie gave a pat, innocuous answer, but knew he was in grave danger and that his life as he had known it was essentially over.

Rushdie didn’t know what to do first – nor did the woman with whom he shared a failing marriage. He had a scheduled life: Upcoming were a live CBS television interview and the funeral of his friend, Australian writer Bruce Chatwin. Rushdie didn’t know it yet, but when he left his house that day, he wouldn’t return for years.

When he reached the CBS studios, Rushdie realized he was the day’s main news story. Khomeini’s fatwa proclaimed that Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, was an enemy of Islam and that Muslims worldwide were under an obligation to kill him at their first opportunity.

Rushdie learned early Islamic history...

About the Author

Indian-born British-American novelist Salman Rushdie also wrote Midnight’s Children, Shame, and the essay collection Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981–1991.

Salman Rushdie on the Fatwa That Endangered His Life

From the New Yorker archive

Read or listen offline

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Summary

On Valentine’s Day 1989, Salman Rushdie’s previous life ended when Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his execution.

Rushdie learned early Islamic history...

About the Author

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