Rushdie himself became a key culprit in fomenting that hatred against Islam and Muslim
The publication of Rushdie’s book in 1988 sparked a culture war in Britain between those in the Muslim community who considered the book blasphemous – dueRushdie directed at masses of millions of Muslims living dangerously exposed around the globe. The free-minded of the people around the globe called for the book to be banned
Protests, which began in Bradford with book burning, soon spread across the UK and to the rest of the Islamic world
Pakistan banned the book in November 1988.
On 12 February 1989, a 10,000-strong protest against Rushdie and the book took place in Islamabad, Pakistan. Six protesters were killed in an attack on the American Cultural Centre, and an American Express office was ransacked. As the controversy spread, the importing of the book was banned in India.
After February 1989, it ceased to be read on its own merits or maladies. It became an allegory, an icon, a dead certainty – non-Muslims used it to explain or to camouflage their anti-Muslim hatred, and Muslims – to denounce “the West” and its plots against the Muslim world.
Satanic Verses stopped being a novel and became a manifesto.
And like his work, Rushdie, too, met the same fate. He continued to write and publish one book after another, but not a single word of fiction he wrote after that fateful fatwa could possibly be read without the prism of “the Salman Rushdie affair”.
Rushdie had begun on the colonial sites of India and Pakistan and moved to the immigrant mayhem of Europe.
In early 1989, Imam Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the execution of Salman Rushdie, an Indian-born British author.
Imam Khomeini stated that the action against Rushdie's was a religious duty for Muslims because of his alleged blasphemy against Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) in his novel, "The Satanic Verses".
Rushdie's book contains passages that some Muslims — including Ayatollah Imam Khomeini — considered offensive to Islam and the Prophet.
Imam Khomeini was totally rejecting any act of violence and terrorism, which are basically against the Islamic laws and jurisprudence. In this case also Imam just undertook to issue a decree in accordance with the laws of Islam on Rushdie's act, while others may directly go for execution and then take the responsibility.
Read more:
Imam exposed ant-Muslim plots by Rushdie and imperialistic western powers