In the Shadow of the Sword (book) tale by the ears, conjuring the half-vanished past with such gusto that characters and places fairly bound from the page." Jones goes on to finish his review by asking, "Is this Satanic Verses territory?" Holland quotes Salman Rushdie at the very beginning of the book, acknowledging, wryly, another British author who ventured onto the sticky wicket of Islam’s origin myths." Ziauddin Sardar, writing for the "New Statesman", was highly critical of the book. He says "the real aim of the book is to examine the validity of 'Muslim sources' and to assess the extent of Muslim scholarship down the centuries.
The Satanic Verses controversy why one of the few groups to speak out in Muslim countries against Khomeini and for Rushdie's right to publish his book were other writers. Nobel prize winners Wole Soyinka of Nigeria and Naguib Mahfouz of Egypt, both attacked Khomeini, and both received death threats as a result, with Mahfouz later getting stabbed in the neck by a Muslim fundamentalist. Some Western politicians and writers did criticise Rushdie. Former United States president Jimmy Carter, while condemning the threats and fatwa against Rushdie, stated, "we have tended to promote him and his book with little acknowledgment that it is a direct