Richard Webster (British author) Satanic Verses". The book was widely praised in the immediate aftermath of the controversy. While condemning the Ayatollah Khomeini's threats against Rushdie, Webster also tried to explain the hurt "The Satanic Verses" caused Muslims and argued that we should not arbitrarily defend the liberty to publish books that may cause distress to minorities or increase racial tension. Webster noted that he named the book after the fourth section of "The Crime of Blasphemy", a pamphlet issued by the International Committee for the Defence of Salman Rushdie and his Publishers, and that his work is influenced by historians Karen Armstrong and
Salman Rushdie a Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism. In November 2010 he became a founding patron of Ralston College, a new liberal arts college that has adopted as its motto a Latin translation of a phrase ("free speech is life itself") from an address he gave at Columbia University in 1991 to mark the two-hundredth anniversary of the first amendment to the US Constitution. In 2017, Salman Rushdie appeared as himself in Episode 3 of Season 9 of "Curb Your Enthusiasm", sharing scenes with Larry David to offer advice on how Larry should deal with the fatwa that has been