Human rights literature suffer persecution as authorities recognize their unique power and ability to impact on the masses. Salman Rushdie, an awarded British-Muslim novelist and essayist of Indian origin became a target following the publication his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988). The book was the center of a major controversy in the Islamic world because of what was perceived as an irreverent depiction of Muhammad. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwā issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989 and a bounty was offered for Rushdie's death. Rushdi was forced to hide and
Political thought and legacy of Ruhollah Khomeini Rushdie in particular was seen by some as a deft attempt to create a wedge issue that would prevent Muslims from imitating the West by "dividing Muslims from Westerners along the default lines of culture." The fatwa was greeted with headlines such as one in the popular British newspaper the "Daily Mirror" referring to Khomeini as "that Mad Mullah", observations in a British magazine that the Ayatollah seemed "a familiar ghost from the past - one of those villainous Muslim clerics, a Faqir of Ipi or a mad Mullah, who used to be portrayed, larger than life, in popular histories