The Satanic Verses controversy the message that it "would take revenge against" all institutions and organisations that insulted in one way or another "members of the Prophet Mohammed's family". McRoy (2007) claimed that "In Islamic society a blasphemer is held in the same hostile contempt as a pedophile in the West. Just as few if any people in the West mourn the murder of a child molester, few Muslims mourn the killing of a blasphemer". Khomeini's fatwa was condemned across the Western world by governments on the grounds that it violated the universal human rights of free speech, freedom of religion, and that Khomeini
The Satanic Verses controversy "a mere hundred copies a week of the book in mid-January 1989", it "flew off the shelves" following the fatwa. In America it sold an "unprecedented" five times more copies than the number two book, "Star" by Danielle Steel, selling more than 750,000 copies of the book by May 1989. B. Dalton, a bookstore chain that decided not to stock the book for security reasons, changed its mind when it found the book "was selling so fast that even as we tried to stop it, it was flying off the shelves". Rushdie earned about $2 million within the first year