The Satanic Verses controversy in 2000. Meanwhile, in America, the director of the Near East Studies Center at UCLA, George Sabbagh, told an interviewer that Khomeini was "completely within his rights" to call for Rushdie's death. In May 1989 in Beirut, Lebanon, British citizen Jackie Mann was abducted "in response to Iran's fatwa against Salman Rushdie for the publication of book the Satanic Verses and more specifically, for his refuge and protection in the United Kingdom". He joined several Westerners held hostage there. Two months earlier a photograph of three teachers held hostage was released by Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine with
Haroun and the Sea of Stories of the story deal with the problems of censorship: an issue particularly pertinent to Rushdie because of the fatwa against him backed by Ayatollah Khomeini. The book is highly allusive and puns in multiple languages. Many of the major character's names allude to some aspect of speech or silence. It was made into an audiobook read by Rushdie himself. At the beginning of the story, protagonist Haroun Khalifa lives with his father Rashid, a famous storyteller, and his mother Soraya, until the latter is seduced by their neighbor 'Mr. Sengupta' to leave home. Thereafter Rashid is hired to speak on