God Is Not Great the prayer meeting breaks up". He discusses the 1989 fatwa issued on author and friend Salman Rushdie by the Ayatollah Khomeini because of the contents of Rushdie's book "The Satanic Verses". He criticises several public figures for laying the blame for the incident on Rushdie himself. He also writes about the events following the September 11 attacks, describing how religion, particularly major religious figures, allowed matters to "deteriorate in the interval between the removal of the Taliban and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein". Hitchens discusses the prohibition on eating pigs ("porcophobia" as Hitchens calls it) in Judaism, also adopted by
Embassy of the United Kingdom, Tehran 1988, the UK's Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe agreed with Iranian Foreign Minister Velayati to resume diplomatic contact. Staff returned in January 1989. On 14 February 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie and his publishers. European Community Foreign Ministers agreed to withdraw their heads of mission from Tehran in response. The British Government withdrew all UK-based staff. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait made it desirable to re-establish relations once more, in September 1990. The UK and all other EU countries withdrew their heads of mission in April 1997 when a German court issued a verdict that members of the