Salman Rushdie Afghanistan, which began in 2001, but was a vocal critic of the 2003 war in Iraq. He has stated that while there was a "case to be made for the removal of Saddam Hussein", US unilateral military intervention was unjustifiable. In the wake of the "Jyllands-Posten" Muhammad cartoons controversy in March 2006—which many considered an echo of the death threats and "fatwā" that followed publication of "The Satanic Verses" in 1989—Rushdie signed the manifesto "Together Facing the New Totalitarianism", a statement warning of the dangers of religious extremism. The Manifesto was published in the left-leaning French weekly "Charlie Hebdo" in
Salman Rushdie Rushdie himself has been prevented from entering Pakistan, however. A former bodyguard to Rushdie, Ron Evans, planned to publish a book recounting the behaviour of the author during the time he was in hiding. Evans claimed that Rushdie tried to profit financially from the "fatwa" and was suicidal, but Rushdie dismissed the book as a "bunch of lies" and took legal action against Evans, his co-author and their publisher. On 26 August 2008, Rushdie received an apology at the High Court in London from all three parties. A memoir of his years of hiding, "Joseph Anton", was released on 18