There's a fatwa, and then there's a fatwa

Last week, Salman Rushdie reluctantly withdrew from the Jaipur Literature Festival in his homeland of India because of death threats. He said he would attend and speak; then, after he was warned of assassins on his trail, he said he would not attend but would address the crowd by video. Then leaders of the festival said they wouldn’t air his video.

So the fatwa lives. More than 20 years ago, after the publication of Rushdie’s novel “Satanic Verses,” the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the religious leader of Iran, issued a death sentence against the novelist. The word “fatwa” actually means “opinion” in Arabic, but it carries the weight and authority of the Muslim cleric who orders it. In the case of the ayatollah, the fatwa came with orders to hunt down and execute the author and anyone associated with the publication of the book. Khomeini said that Rushdie’s writing was blasphemous against Islam and disrespectful to Muhammad and the Koran.

In the years following the fatwa, which Rushdie refers to as the “plague years,” he attempted to apologize and reconcile with Muslim religious leaders, but they spurned his overtures. Numerous attempts against him were thwarted by extensive and expensive 24/7 security. His translator was blown up. His driver was stabbed. Rushdie and his wife at the time, novelist Marianne Wiggens, moved 56 times, every three days, until the marriage crumbled under the stress of the situation.

Rushdie was born in Mumbai 64 years ago, and has returned a few times to his homeland, quietly and without fanfare. His book was banned there shortly after the fatwa was issued. It is particularly devastating to him that he cannot speak in his own country, despite the fact that his works have won numerous accolades, including the Booker Prize, arguably the highest and most prestigious literary award for novelists.

“Nothing about my plague years … has hurt me more than this rift,” Rushdie has said. “I felt like a jilted lover left alone with his unrequited, unbearable love. You can measure love by the size of the hole it leaves behind.”