“Freedom is not absolute. It’s something which somebody is always trying to take away from you. And if you don’t defend it, you will lose it.” – Salman Rushdie

On Valentine’s Day, 1989, Salman Rushdie received a call from the BBC. Earlier that day, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, had issued a fatwa, an official ruling according to the sharia or Islamic law. Rushdie had written and published a book entitled The Satanic Verses. The title comes from a controversial episode in the Prophet Muhammad’s life in which he made a proclamation venerating three pagan goddesses from Mecca, then later recanted and claimed Satan had fooled him. This story appeared in early biographies of the Prophet but was rejected by Islamic scholars because it contradicted his infallibility.

Rushdie was born to a Kashmiri Muslim family in British India, though they were secular and later moved to Pakistan. He read the fantastical tales of the Ramayana and Thousand and One Nights and viewed them through a polytheistic lens as he grew up in plural societies. At university, he studied Islamic theology and graduated with a degree in history. It was when he first came across “the satanic verses” and found them as fascinating a story.

Publication, Banning and Burnings

Before The Satanic Verses was published, Viking Penguin received warnings from their editorial consultant that it might cause controversy. Even Rushdie admitted he knew it could anger some people. After its publication on September 22, 1988, in the U.K., it immediately received critical acclaim, a nomination for the Booker Prize, which Rushdie had won in 1981 for Midnight’s Children, and the Whitebread Award for Novel of the Year. The book’s character was named Mahmoud, and British reviewers were mostly unaware of its connection to Islam.

Just as quickly, Viking Penguin received letters and phone calls from members of Muslim communities who felt the book was blasphemous and demanded its withdrawal. By the end of 1988, The Satanic Verses was banned in several countries, from India to South Africa. There were protests and book burnings, and it would be banned as far as Venezuela and Indonesia the following year. On February 12, 1989, over 2,000 protesters marched to the American Cultural Center in Islamabad and six people were killed. Twelve more died in another protest in Bombay. Two days later, Ayatollah Khomeini issued his edict.

At its U.S. publication, on February 22, the American Library Association (ALA) took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, promising the book would be available at bookshops and libraries across the country in honor of “ America’s commitment to free expression.” Writers’ unions from Boston to San Francisco held rallies. PEN America, then headed by the late great Susan Sontag, organized readings. Norman Mailer, Joan Didion and E.L. Doctorow were among those who lent their voices.

The Situation in Iran

The book’s publication coincided with the end of an eight-year war between Iraq and Iran. Initiated in 1980, when Iraq invaded, it would result in half a million casualties and lost territory for Iran. After being forced to accept a ceasefire with Saddam Hussein, Khomeini’s regime was in crisis. His once-revolutionary policies had become unpopular. His religious circle saw the fatwa as an opportunity to reassert his authority in Iran. It was also to symbolize his self-proclaimed leadership throughout the Muslim world.

The fatwa was broadcasted on Iranian radio condemning the author “along with all the editors and publishers aware of its publication” and called for “all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill them without delay.” One of Khomeini’s religious foundations offered a 1 million dollar reward, $3 million if an Iranian does it.

Bombings and Penalties for Possession

Immediately after, several bookstores that carried the book were bombed, including two of Charing Cross’ largest bookstores. Riverdale Press, a weekly newspaper, also had its Bronx office firebombed for an editorial criticizing bookstores who stopped selling the book. Bombings, bomb threats and discoveries of unexploded devices continued.

In March, the Islamic Conference called for member states to prohibit the novel. Numerous Muslim-majority countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Kenya and Sierra Leone, imposed penalties of up to three years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines for possessing the book.

Secret Houses and Apologies

Rushdie went into hiding, with around the clock protection from the Special Branch of London’s Metropolitan Police. He hoped it would all blow away and he could return to his family in a short time. He lived in secret houses for the next ten years. Over half a dozen attempted assassinations were made on his life.

During this time, he wrote a book based on tales he often told his young son. Haroun and the Sea of Stories is about a storyteller who has lost his gift and is fighting to reclaim it despite a tyrant who imposes “silent laws” on his subjects. Amidst a seemingly endless nightmare, he wrote his most tender and beautiful story.

To quell the violence, he issued formal apologies in 1990 – first to Muslims worldwide and then to his critics. In an essay, In Good Faith, he reaffirms his respect for Islam. At the end of the year, he met with Muslim leaders and signed a declaration, again affirming his faith and asked publishers to halt further translations and the paperback edition of The Satanic Verses. Privately, he was an atheist but had high regard for the Islamic culture and civilization. It was the reason he had studied them. As there was no appeasing his detractors, he would later regret making these concessions.

Attack on His Publishers

In July 1991, his Italian translator, Ettore Capriolo, was stabbed in his apartment in Milan. The wounds weren’t life-threatening, but he was put under police protection. A week later, the Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, was stabbed to death in his office. He had a PhD in Islamic Art, a scholar who had spent his entire life teaching Persian and Arabic literature and history at the University of Tsukuba. He had written and published books on Islam, including The Islamic Renaissance and Medicine and Wisdom of the East.

In October 1993, his Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, who went on with plans for the book’s publication two months after the fatwa, was shot three times outside his home in Oslo. He was hospitalized for several months and was given police protection afterward.

Sivas Massacre

Just that summer, a mob attacked a hotel in Turkey where writer Azis Nessin, who had recently published excerpts of the book, was staying. He was there for a literary festival when 1,000 religious fanatics had marched from the mosque in the city of Sivas in central Turkey, seized the hotel for eight hours, and set it on fire. Nessin survived, but 37 people died. Turkey was the only Muslim-majority country that didn’t outlaw the book.

Out of Hiding

In 1998, in efforts to improve diplomatic relations, the Iranian government made an official declaration that it would no longer support any action taken against the author of The Satanic Verses or anyone else associated with the book. However, requests to withdraw the fatwa were rejected on the basis it could only be retracted by the same person who issued it. Ayatollah Khomeini had died.

“We all owe death a life.” -Midnight’s Children

Slowly, carefully, Rushdie came out of hiding. He moved to New York and resolved to live his life. He went out to dinner with friends. He continued to write books and garner awards for them, including Joseph Anton, an account of his life in hiding titled after the code name he used. It was an amalgamation of his two favorite writers – Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekov. His friends marveled at his ability to write throughout all the madness. Rushdie explained he didn’t know how to do anything else.

Cities of Asylum

In hiding, he had helped form the International Parliament of Authors, which advocates for the safety of writers. He continued his activism in public, giving countless lectures and speaking out for human rights and freedom of speech. He helped create the International Refuge of Cities Network and campaigned to establish cities of asylum – safe places for writers who are endangered in their own countries. Needless to say, it’s something close to his heart.

Henry Reese, the founder of City of Asylum Pittsburgh, first heard Rushdie speak about it in 1997 when he was reemerging into the public world. Together, they raised funds and, in 2004, sponsored a small house for the poet Huang Xiang, who had been sentenced to death in China for participating in the Democracy Wall Movement. During the next two decades, they would provide refuge for ten writers and organize literary events and public programs. In August 2022, Rushdie was invited as a guest speaker for their weeklong Chautauqua Lecture Series. Censorship in the U.S. was at its height – over 1,500 books had been banned the previous year.

The Attack

Rushdie didn’t get the chance to utter a word. He walked on stage, raised his hand to acknowledge a crowd of over 1,000 people applauding, and out of the corner of his right eye, saw a man rush towards him. He thought, “So it’s you. Here you are. Why now, after all these years?” For the next 27 seconds, he was stabbed 15 times.

His attacker, Hadi Matar, was arrested. At 24 years of age, he wasn’t even born when The Satanic Verses was published. He admitted he hadn’t read more than three pages of the book. In fact, when the book was first published, the majority of the Arabic-only speakers condemning it hadn’t, couldn’t read it.

The Knife

Rushdie, who doesn’t believe in miracles, said it was a miracle he survived. Again, the literary world gathered around him like a flood. A week after the attack, PEN America organized a reading on the steps of the New York Public Library. The crowd held up signs that said “#STANDWITHSALMAN.”

He went through 8 hours of surgery, 18 days in the hospital, and three weeks in rehab, plus ongoing therapy. With a new sense of urgency, he began writing a memoir on what happened. It is both a story of survival and a note of gratitude. Again, everyone marvels at what he’s accomplished while in recovery after losing sight in his right eye and with damaged nerves in his hands. And again, Rushdie explains –

“During those empty, sleepless nights, I thought a lot about The Knife as an idea. A knife was a tool, and acquired meaning from the use we made of it. Language, too, was a knife. I could cut open the world and reveal its meaning, its inner workings, its secrets, its truths. Language was my knife. If I had unexpectedly been caught in an unwanted knife fight, maybe this was the knife I could use to fight back. I don’t have any other weapons, but I’ve been using this for a long time.”