Knighthood of Salman Rushdie government's attempts to secularize Muslims and reward apostates. Rushdie is a hate figure across the Muslim world. This honour will have ramifications here and across the world. The awards pass across his (Blair's) desk and he could easily have blocked it, knowing it would offend Muslims everywhere." He pointed to the protests in Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia as proof that the outcry was growing. Another protestor told reporters "We've come to demonstrate against the apostate Salman Rushdie. He has insulted Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Salman Rushdie is the devil. We have a responsibility – he should be punished, he
The Satanic Verses controversy in January 1989 when some of its members organised a public book-burning of "The Satanic Verses", evoking as the journalist Robert Winder recalled "images of medieval (not to mention Nazi) intolerance". In February, when the US edition was published, a new round of reviews and criticism began. March 1989 saw it banned in Kenya, Thailand, Tanzania, Indonesia, and Singapore. The last nation to ban the book was Venezuela, in June 1989. In the United States, the FBI was notified of 78 threats to bookstores in early March 1989, thought to be a small proportion of the total number of threats.