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
Salman Rushdie Rushdie, a Cambridge-educated lawyer-turned-businessman, and Negin Bhatt, a teacher. Anis Rushdie was let go from the Indian Civil Services (ICS) after it emerged that the birth certificate submitted by him had changes to make him appear younger than he was. Rushdie has three sisters. He wrote in his 2012 memoir that his father adopted the name Rushdie in honour of Averroes (Ibn Rushd). He was educated at Cathedral and John Connon School in Bombay, Rugby School in Warwickshire, and King's College, University of Cambridge, where he read history. Rushdie worked as a copywriter for the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather,