Ruhollah Khomeini in his hearing and in his presence." Though Rushdie publicly regretted "the distress that publication has occasioned to sincere followers of Islam", the fatwa was not revoked. Rushdie himself was not killed but Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of the book "The Satanic Verses", was murdered and two other translators of the book survived murder attempts. In a speech given to a huge crowd after returning to Iran from exile 1 February 1979, Khomeini made a variety of promises to Iranians for his coming Islamic regime: a popularly elected government that would represent the people of Iran and with which
The Satanic Verses riot against the book in Pakistan, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Supreme Leader of Iran and a Shi'a Muslim scholar, issued a fatwa calling for the death of Rushdie and his publishers, and called for Muslims to point him out to those who can kill him if they cannot themselves. Although the British Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher gave Rushdie round-the-clock police protection, many politicians on both sides were hostile to the author. British Labour MP Keith Vaz led a march through Leicester shortly after he was elected in 1989 calling for the book to be banned, while the Conservative