Apostasy in Islam taken place. Justifications offered for the alleged executions vary, but one of the most common theories advanced is that they were in retaliation for the 1988 attack on the western borders of Iran by the PMOI Mujahedin. However, this does not fully account for the targeting of other leftist groups who opposed the Mujahedin invasion. Salman Rushdie is a prominent contemporary figure accused of apostasy. In 1989 a fatwa was issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, the ruler of Iran at the time, calling for the death of Salman Rushdie for the blasphemy of authoring the book "The Satanic Verses". Hossein Soodmand,
Cat Stevens' comments about Salman Rushdie if Salman Rushdie entered a restaurant in which I was eating, I said, "I would probably call up Ayatollah Khomeini"; and, rather than go to a demonstration to burn an effigy of the author, I jokingly said I would have preferred that it'd be the “real thing”. The content of the broadcast was reported in "The New York Times" on 23 May 1989, a week before the show's planned airing. He and other Muslim participants "objected to cuts" that "omitted the Muslim justification for punishment of blasphemy." According to Stevens, his last comments on the innocence of Rushdie, were not