It only took a few pages of one of his novels for Salman Rushdie to find himself in mortal danger. By publishing The Satanic Verses, a passage of which was deemed blasphemous by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, the British author was targeted by a fatwa according to which Tehran offered three million dollars to anyone who shot the writer.
On August 12, during a conference in New York State, Salman Rushdie was the victim of a violent knife attack, which he survived after being rushed to hospital by helicopter. However, he is not the only victim of this Iranian fatwa. Two of its translators were stabbed: the Japanese, Hitoshi Igarashi, died of his wounds, but the Italian, Ettore Capriolo, survived. Another translator – Turkish – was targeted in 1993 by arson in Sivas, Turkey. He managed to escape from the burning hotel, but 37 people were killed in the fire, including 33 intellectuals.