The Satanic Verses: Here's All About The 33-year-old Fatwa Against Salman Rushdie

Friday's knife attack on Salman Rushdie comes more than 33 years after the fatwa against him by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in which he sentenced him to death.

The fatwa

Every year on Feb 14, Salman Rushdie receives a reminder from Iran that he is still living under a death sentence first imposed by Ayatollah Khomeini on that date in 1989. Khomeini who died in the same year was an Iranian political and religious leader who served as the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death.

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A $2.8-million bounty was put on the writer¡¯s head and the then 89-year-old Khomeini said anyone who was killed trying to carry out the death sentence should be considered a ¡°martyr¡± who would go to paradise.

In the religious decree, Khomeini urged ¡°Muslims of the world rapidly to execute the author and the publishers of the book¡± so that ¡°no one will any longer dare to offend the sacred values of Islam.¡±

And, why? Salman Rushdie authored a book called 'The Satanic Verses' in September 1988. The book fictionalised parts of the life of the Prophet Muhammad with depictions that many Muslims found offensive and some considered blasphemous.

Rushdie has been living under a death sentence since about six months after the publication of his novel. The Satanic Verses is the fourth novel of British-Indian writer.

But, what is it?

A fatwa is basically a legal pronouncement. It is the opinion of someone called a mufti; that is an Islamic legal scholar who is capable of pronouncing his judgements, his opinions on any kind of legal issue with regard to Islam. In some cases, however, a fatwa may call for death.

Salman Rushdie

The controversial book

Even before the fatwa, the book was banned in a number of countries, including India, Bangladesh, Sudan and Sri Lanka. Many died in protests against its publication, including 12 people in a riot in Bombay in February 1989 and six more in another riot in Islamabad.

Books were burned. Reaction intensified after the publication of the book in the United States that same month, even as more countries banned it. There were attacks on bookstores and threats to many more.

After the fatwa, a halfhearted apology from Rushdie, which he later regretted, was rejected by Iran.

His life after fatwa

Rushdie, who lived in London at the time the fatwa was issued, immediately went into hiding with 24-hour protection from the British police, moving every three days from place to place until a fortified safe-house was prepared for him. He lived there for most of the next 10 years.

For almost 13 years he moved between safe houses under the pseudonym of Joseph Anton, changing base 56 times in the first six months. His solitude was worsened by the split with his wife American novelist Marianne Wiggins, to whom "The Satanic Verses" are dedicated.

"I am gagged and imprisoned," he recalled writing in his diary in his 2012 memoir, "Joseph Anton". "I can't even speak. I want to kick a football in a park with my son. Ordinary, banal life: my impossible dream."

Salman Rushdie

Rushdie gradually emerged from his underground life in 1991, but his Japanese translator was killed in July that year. His Italian translator was stabbed a few days later and a Norwegian publisher shot two years later, although it was never clear the attacks were in response to Khomeini's call.

Many Muslims were furious when Rushdie was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007 for his services to literature. Rushdie was by then living relatively openly in New York where he moved in the late 1990s, and where his recent novels are set. After many years living in the shadows, he became something of a socialite and is seen by many in the West as a free speech hero.

Until Friday's knife attack, he had very much resumed a normal life.