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
The Blasphemers' Banquet The Blasphemers' Banquet The Blasphemers' Banquet is a film-poem created in 1989 by English poet and playwright Tony Harrison which examines censorship arising from religious issues. It was created in part as a response to the Salman Rushdie controversy surrounding his publication of "The Satanic Verses". It was aired by the BBC 1 programme "Byline" on 31 July 1989. The verse-film is set at the Omar Khayyám restaurant in Bradford where Harrison is holding a banquet with invited guests such as Omar Khayyám, Salman Rushdie, Voltaire, Molière and Byron. The film at the time of its airing created a controversy