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- The Satanic Verses controversy, also known as the Rushdie Affair, was a controversy sparked by the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. It centered on the novel's references to the Satanic Verses of the Quran, and came to include a larger debate about censorship and religious violence. It included numerous killings, attempted killings (including against Rushdie himself), and bombings by perpetrators who supported Islam. The affair had a notable impact on geopolitics, when, in 1989, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie. The Iranian government has changed its support for the fatwa several times, including in 1998 when Mohammad Khatami said the regime no longer supported it. However, a fatwa cannot be revoked in Shia Islamic tradition. In 2017, a statement was published on the official website of the current supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, stating that "the decree is as Imam Khomeini (ra) issued" and in February 2019, the Khamenei.ir Twitter account stated that Khomeini's "verdict" was "solid and irrevocable". The issue was said to have divided "Muslims from Westerners along the fault line of culture," and to have pitted a core Western value of freedom of expression – that no one "should be killed, or face a serious threat of being killed, for what they say or write" – against the view of some Muslims that non-Muslims should not be free to disparage the "honour of the Prophet" or indirectly criticize Islam through satire – and that religious violence is appropriate in contemporary history in order to defend Islam and Prophet Muhammad. English writer Hanif Kureishi called the fatwa "one of the most significant events in postwar literary history". (en)
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