The Tailor of Panama had labelled him anti-Semitic for his portrayal of one of the novel's characters. Rushdie responded that he wished Le Carre had expressed similar feelings after Rushdie was subject to a fatwa for "The Satanic Verses", viewed as anti-Islamic by some Muslims. Rushdie opined that Le Carre was an "illiterate, pompous ass," while Le Carre replied that Rushdie was a "self-canonizing, arrogant colonialist." "Guardian" columnist Mark Lawson claimed the two authors appeared to be 'settling old scores', stating that: "The Collected Guardian Correspondence of Salman Rushdie and John Le Carre is in the great tradition of literary poison pen letters: both
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