Ahmed Deedat convert to Christianity. Hindus and Christians had respected his oratory skills and arguments until then. But now, they rejected Deedat and united with other South African Muslim organisations in denouncing his attacks on other religions. Two years later, Jews joined the criticism after Deedat published "Arab and Israel – Conflict or Conciliation?" In 1988, following the publication of Salman Rushdie’s fictional work "The Satanic Verses", Deedat supported the fatwā of the Ayatollah Khomeini calling for Rushdie's death. He said that Rushdie "is a hypocrite and has blasphemed holy personalities. He should not be pardoned." In his last tour to Australia,
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