The Satanic Verses controversy in 2000. Meanwhile, in America, the director of the Near East Studies Center at UCLA, George Sabbagh, told an interviewer that Khomeini was "completely within his rights" to call for Rushdie's death. In May 1989 in Beirut, Lebanon, British citizen Jackie Mann was abducted "in response to Iran's fatwa against Salman Rushdie for the publication of book the Satanic Verses and more specifically, for his refuge and protection in the United Kingdom". He joined several Westerners held hostage there. Two months earlier a photograph of three teachers held hostage was released by Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine with
Knighthood of Salman Rushdie the knighthood was seen as a "'provocative act' which angered one and a half billion Muslims worldwide." Adams insisted that "the honour was given for Rushdie's services for literature and should therefore not be regarded as insult." Also on the 19th, Mohammad Reza Bahonar vice speaker of the Majlis of Iran, told the nation's parliament that the knighthood "has hurt the feelings of more than 1.5 billion Muslims" and that "Salman Rushdie has turned into a hated corpse which cannot be resurrected by any action. The action by the British queen in knighting Salman Rushdie, the apostate, is an unwise