Khomeini Offers Bounty: Rushdie's Satanic Verses

A dying theocrat declared a death sentence from across the world, and a novelist went into hiding for a decade. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on February 14, 1989, calling on Muslims worldwide to kill Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses. On February 24, an Iranian foundation raised the bounty to $3 million, transforming a religious edict into a formal contract killing backed by state resources. Khomeini had not read the novel. Few of those calling for Rushdie's death had. The Satanic Verses, published in September 1988, contained a dream sequence featuring a character based on the Prophet Muhammad and prostitutes who took the names of his wives. For Rushdie, a British Indian novelist who had won the Booker Prize, it was a work of magical realism exploring migration, identity, and faith. For millions of Muslims, it was blasphemy. Book burnings had already erupted in Bradford, England, and riots in Pakistan and India had killed several people before Khomeini intervened. The fatwa forced Rushdie underground immediately. British police provided round-the-clock protection under the codename "Operation Malachite," moving him between safe houses for years. The cost to British taxpayers eventually exceeded ten million pounds. Rushdie's Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, was stabbed to death in 1991. His Italian translator was seriously wounded. His Norwegian publisher was shot three times and survived. The affair became a defining test of free expression in the late twentieth century. Western governments condemned the fatwa while nervously trying not to inflame tensions further. Many writers rallied to Rushdie's defense; others — including Roald Dahl and John le Carre — argued he had been needlessly provocative. Iran formally dissociated itself from the fatwa in 1998, though hardline foundations continued to increase the bounty. In 2022, Rushdie was stabbed at a literary festival in New York, losing sight in one eye, demonstrating that the threat Khomeini launched thirty-three years earlier had never truly expired.