Sir Salman Rushdie remains in hospital in the US, a fortnight after suffering “life-changing” injuries in a stabbing in New York state.
The Satanic Verses author has faced death threats for more than 30 years, ever since Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa – a formal proclamation by an Islamic legal scholar – calling for him to be killed.
Before the February 1989 decree, publicly at least, Iran had largely ignored the controversial book – but then, just hours before the fatwa was issued, a meeting took place at Tehran’s main airport between two British imams and an Iranian government minister.
Bad weather closed in on the Iranian capital as Kalim Siddiqui and Ghayasuddin Siddiqui arrived at Mehrabad Airport. Both men had been attending a conference in Tehran to mark a decade since the country’s Islamic Revolution. They were now trying to get home to the UK.
Inside the airport, they bumped into an Iranian government minister – Mohammad Khatami – who asked to have a private word with Kalim.
“They went to a corner and chatted,” Ghayasuddin would later explain in the BBC’s 2009 documentary, The Satanic Verses Affair.
When Kalim returned, he explained what they had spoken about. “He was asking my view about Salman Rushdie – and I told him, ‘You know, something drastic has to happen,'” recounted Ghayasuddin.
Kalim told his travelling companion that the minister had been on his way to see Iran’s then-Supreme Leader and top Shia Muslim religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
A few hours later, the ayatollah issued the fatwa.
Not only was it made against the Satanic Verses’ author, but also its publishers, editors and translators.
“I call on all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill them without delay, so that no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth,” it read.
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