Rushdie went into hiding. His novel’s Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, was murdered because he had translated a novel.
Hassan Rouhani, the president of the Iranian regime, affirmed the fatwa for assassination of the British author Salman Rushdie on a number of occasions. He sanctioned and advocated the calls for assassinating Salman Rushdie as recent as 2009.
Rouhani commenting on Khomeini’s fatwa to assassinate Rushie underscored in 2009: “We say this is the duty of Muslims. And this duty is determined by God, and this is not only Iran’s view but all Muslim scholars have also asserted this fatwa.… Its overseers are all Muslims, whose duty it is to carry out the order if it is within their power. We as the government of Iran have not sent troops to invade a city, or arrest or assassinate a person.”
His views were published in Volume 3 of Andishahha-ye Siyasi-e Islam published in Persian in Tehran in 2009.
According to Rouhani’s world view , the issue is not limited to Salman Rushdie, he elaborated in that publication: “Even if Salman Rushdie is killed, the fight won’t be over, but will only start from a different point. So it’s not about whether we have freedom of political parties or women’s rights as they (the West) define it. The war is a war of two cultures…”
