ABSTRACT
Rushdie Affair, the The Rushdie Affair was prompted by the publication of Salman Rushdie's controversial novel The Satanic Verses on 25 September 1988. The novel was banned in Pakistan in October, and, early in the following year, separate protests in India, Pakistan and Bradford were backed up with Ayatollah Khomeini's infamous fatwa, pronounced on 14 February 1989. The latter drove Salman Rushdie into hiding for almost a decade. Khomeini's fatwa was followed by further Muslim demonstrations, the banning of Penguin books in forty-five Islamic countries, the fire-bombing of bookshops and public burnings of The Satanic Verses, as well as the killing of a Belgian imam, his assistant and a Japanese translator of Rushdie's work. It is these
268 Rushdie, Salman
events that are generally regarded as constituting 'the Rushdie Affair'.
