Richard Webster (British author) Satanic Verses". The book was widely praised in the immediate aftermath of the controversy. While condemning the Ayatollah Khomeini's threats against Rushdie, Webster also tried to explain the hurt "The Satanic Verses" caused Muslims and argued that we should not arbitrarily defend the liberty to publish books that may cause distress to minorities or increase racial tension. Webster noted that he named the book after the fourth section of "The Crime of Blasphemy", a pamphlet issued by the International Committee for the Defence of Salman Rushdie and his Publishers, and that his work is influenced by historians Karen Armstrong 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