Salman Rushdie: Author of The Satanic Verses no stranger to death threats, violence

NEW DELHI: Salman Rushdie, the Mumbai-born author of the controversial book 'The Satanic Verses', was attacked by a man who stormed the stage during an event in New York on Friday while he was getting ready to deliver a lecture. Rushdie was allegedly stabbed in the neck.

The Booker Prize winner is no stranger to threats and violence.

He suffered years of death threats and was forced into hiding for nine years after releasing The Satanic Verses in September 1988.

Continuing controversyIndia banned the novel's importation a month after it was published. Over two dozen other countries have also banned the book, with some enforcing harsh punishment for possession of the novel.

Several Muslim-dominated countries, including Pakistan, saw violent riots break out against the author. India too saw mobs rallying against the book and 12 people were killed in Mumbai in February 1989 during a large anti-Rushdie riot.

A year after the book's publication, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa and called for Rushdie's execution for the book's blasphemous content against the Prophet.

Since the 1980s, Rushdie's writing has led to death threats from Iran, which has offered a $3 million reward for anyone who kills him. In 1989, Iran had severed diplomatic relations with the UK over the book.

Rushdie's Japanese translator for the book, Hitoshi Igarashi, was found stabbed to death on July 13, 1991. Ten days prior to Igarashi's killing, Rushdie's Italian translator Ettore Capriolo was seriously injured by an attacker at his home in Milan by being stabbed multiple times.

William Nygaard, the Norwegian publisher of The Satanic Verses, was critically injured after he was shot three times by an assailant on October 11, 1993 in Oslo.

The book's Turkish translator Aziz Nesin was the intended target of a mob of arsonists who set fire to the Madimak Hotel after Friday prayers on July 2, 1993 in Sivas, Turkey, killing 37 people, mostly Alevi scholars, poets and musicians.
(With inputs from agencies)