Salman Rushdie Controversy

The book The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie started controversies worldwide. The entire controversy was even given the name The Satanic Verses Controversy, it was also called The Rushdie Affair. The man who had written the book had actually had a bounty put on his head by the government of his country. That bounty is still in position to this day. There are many different parts of this book that can be seen as controversial. The spelling of some of the names and the characters that those names are associated with. Even the fact that it had the work satanic in the title made it a taboo if someone was reading the book in public others would avoid them. The story itself is somewhat hard to follow unless you are paying very close attention to

The first is Gibreel who grew up tough, as a teenager, he was a paper delivery boy until his parents died. After his parent's death, he lived with a foster family who set him up to become an actor. Gibreel went on to become a very successful actor and was loved by many. The other main character is Saladin. He did not grow up as poor as Gibreel, however, he did have some hardships in his early life, like getting molested by an older man. He went to boarding school in London, was not close with his father, and he also ended up working in entertainment. However, he was not as successful only becoming a voice

The Pakistani government decided to flat-out ban the book altogether. But Iran is a completely different story, The government of Iran wanted Rushdie dead. Many Muslims took this book so seriously many people who were only associated with the book, like in printing or editing it were murdered. Salman Rushdie even had a fatwa put out on him by none other than the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A fatwa is, for the most part, a kill order. Many Muslims went passed the order to kill just Rushdie and decided to kill others along with him. This one book was the cause of many deaths, attempted murders, and bombings. The Iranian government had even backed the fatwa on Rushdie, they wanted to see him dead as much as everybody else. The bounty for his head was around 3.3 million dollars, and in 2016 on the anniversary of the fatwa 300,000 dollars was added to that bounty. The fatwa was first instituted in 1989 a year after the book was published and is technically still in place. Although in 1998 the Iranian government had stated that they no longer backed the fatwa so for a time Rushdie was somewhat free, but it was again put into place in 2005 and has not been recalled since.
There are other deaths of people who are related to this book. In Tokyo Hitoshi Igarashi was stabbed to death, he was Salman Rushdie’s Japanese translator. And then