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Episode details

World Service,15 Feb 2010,10 mins

Salman Rushdie's Fatwa

Witness History

Available for over a year

It was on Valentine's Day 1989 that the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to try to kill Salman Rushdie, because of his novel Satanic Verses. He immediately went into hiding, but his friends, like Christopher Hitchens, were able to stay in touch.

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