The Satanic Verses controversy so great as when it feels it has a god on its side." One of the lawyers involved, Geoffrey Robertson QC, rehearsed the arguments and replies made when 13 Muslim barristers had lodged a formal indictment against Rushdie for the crime of blasphemous libel: it was said that God was described in the book as "the Destroyer of Man", yet he is described as such in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation, especially of men who are unbelievers or enemies of the Jews; that the book contained criticisms of the prophet Abraham, yet the Islamic, Christian and Jewish
Salman Rushdie September 2012. Joseph Anton was Rushdie's secret alias. In February 1997, Ayatollah Hasan Sane'i, leader of the bonyad panzdah-e khordad (Fifteenth of Khordad Foundation), reported that the blood money offered by the foundation for the assassination of Rushdie would be increased from $2 million to $2.5 million. Then a semi-official religious foundation in Iran increased the reward it had offered for the killing of Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million. In November 2015, former Indian minister P. Chidambaram acknowledged that banning "The Satanic Verses" was wrong. In 1998, Iran's former president Mohammad Khatami proclaimed the fatwa “finished”; but it