Iran said on Tuesday that the fatwa or religious edict condemning British author Salman Rushdie to death over his novel The Satanic Verses will remain in force forever.
The announcement was made on the anniversary of the 1989 edict issued by the leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and comes amid global Muslim outrage over cartoons denigrating the prophet Muhammad.
“Imam Khomeini’s fatwa on the apostate Salman Rushdie will remain in force for eternity,” said the Martyrs Foundation, which has offered a bounty $2,8-millon bounty for Rushdie’s head.
The novelist, born in 1947 in Bombay, India, to a Muslim family, sparked fury from Muslims worldwide because of alleged blasphemy and apostasy in the novel.
“I inform the proud Muslim people of the world that the author of the Satanic Verses book which is against Islam, the prophet and the Qu’ran, and all involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death,” the ayatollah said in the fatwa.
Rushdie, who won Britain’s Booker Prize in 1981 with his second novel Midnight’s Children spent several years in hiding after the fatwa was issued. – AFP