Abdullah al-Ahdal Abdullah al-Ahdal Abdullah bin Muhammad al-Ahdal, a native of Saudi Arabia, was the great Imam of Belgium. He died in 1989 in Brussels. On March 29, 1989, while he was rector of the Great Mosque of Brussels, a gunman entered and shot him. The Lebanese terrorist organization Soldiers of the Right claimed credit for the murders Belgian authorities and the news media linked the killings to "The Satanic Verses" controversy: the previous month Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had issued a fatwā ordering Muslims to kill novelist Salman Rushdie because of their objections to the publication of his book "The Satanic
Knighthood of Salman Rushdie of nearby Pakistan (see below). Hosseini noted that not only had he immediately condemned the knighthood as Islamophobia, but in a seeming reversal of his nation's previous stand said "The stance of the Islamic Republic of Iran with regard to this issue has not changed from what was put forward by Imam Khomeini." In a similar statement Parliamentarian for Tehran, Mehdi Kuchakzadeh, said "Rushdie died the moment the late Imam (Ayatollah Khomeini) issued the "fatwa"." Also on the 25th, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission appeared with his Norwegian counterpart (Olaf Akselsson) to respond