The Fatwa Against Salman Rushdie

The Satanic Verses was published in the United Kingdom in September 1988. Protest began in India, which banned its import within weeks, and spread through Britain, where copies were burned in Bradford in January 1989, and to Pakistan, where police fired on a demonstration in Islamabad on 12 February and several people were killed. The ruling was broadcast on Iranian radio the following day and dated 14 February 1989.

It is short. It informs the Muslims of the world that the author of the book, and those involved in its publication who were aware of its contents, are condemned to death, and calls on Muslims to execute them wherever they are found so that no one will dare to insult the sanctities of Islam again. A separate announcement by an Iranian foundation attached a monetary reward, which was raised more than once in later years.

Two features distinguish it from an ordinary fatwa. A fatwa is a legal opinion answering a question, and this was issued unprompted. And its claimed jurisdiction is universal: it addresses Muslims everywhere, over a book published in another state by a citizen of that state. Scholars of Islamic law both inside and outside Iran disputed at the time whether it satisfied the conditions for a ruling of this kind at all, among them that the accused be tried and be given opportunity to answer. Those objections were made publicly and did not affect its practical operation.

The consequences fell hardest on people other than the author. Hitoshi Igarashi, who translated the novel into Japanese, was murdered at his university in 1991. Ettore Capriolo, its Italian translator, was stabbed in Milan the same year and survived. William Nygaard, its Norwegian publisher, was shot outside his home in Oslo in 1993 and survived. In July 1993 an arson attack on a hotel in Sivas in Turkey, where the novel's Turkish translator was attending a cultural festival, killed thirty-seven people; the translator escaped. Bookshops in Britain and the United States were bombed. The author lived under police protection for a decade.

The legal question is whether the ruling stands. In September 1998, as part of a settlement of diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom, the Iranian government stated that it had no intention of threatening the author's life and would not encourage anyone to do so. That is a statement of state policy. It is not a revocation of the ruling, and the Iranian government did not claim that it was. Clerical bodies in Iran, and the foundation that had offered the reward, took the position that a ruling of this kind cannot be rescinded after the death of the jurist who gave it, and the reward has been publicly reaffirmed since.

In August 2022 the author was attacked on stage in New York State and severely injured, losing the sight of one eye.

The atlas records the status as contested. It does not decide it.