Currently watching "The Satanic Verses Affair" on BBC2. It is over 20 years since the fatwā (religious edict) requiring the execution of Sir Salman Rushdie over his book The Satanic Verses, was announced by Ayatollah Khomeini, then ruler of Iran.
If it wasn't for this programme I'd have forgotten that it was the 20th anniversary of the publication of The Satanic Verses and the fatwā on its author. I suppose everyone now wishes the book had never been published in the first place and hoped the whole issue would quietly fade away.
Except that The Satanic Verses won't fade away. It exposed a cultural schism which is still here today - one only has to look at the controversy surrounding the Danish Cartoons and recently, Fitna.
Anniversary of Rushdie book fatwa
Satanic Verses' polarising untruths
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