The Satanic Verses controversy traditions themselves see Abraham as not without fault and deserving of criticism; that Rushdie referred to Mohammed as "Mahound", a conjurer, a magician and a false prophet, yet these remarks are made by a drunken apostate, a character with whom neither reader nor author has any sympathy; that the book insults the wives of the Prophet by having whores use their names, yet the wives are explicitly said to be chaste and the adoption of their names by whores is to symbolise the corruption of the city then being described (perhaps symbolising Mecca in its pre-Islamic state); that the book
Islam and blasphemy controversies raised in the non-Muslim world, especially over depictions of Muhammad, questionning issues relating to the religious offense to minorities in secular countries. A key case was the 1989 fatwa against English author Salman Rushdie for his 1988 book entitled "The Satanic Verses", the title of which refers to an account that Muhammad, in the course of revealing the Quran, received a revelation from Satan and incorporated it therein until made by Allah to retract it. Several translators of his book into foreign languages have been murdered. In the UK, many supporters of Salman Rushdie and his publishers advocated unrestricted