Fazel Lankarani supported Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie following the publication of "The Satanic Verses" in 1989 and called on Muslims to kill that author. He (along with some other senior clerics) continued to call the killing of Rushdie a "duty" for all Muslims although the Iranian government itself ceased to do so in a 1998 compromise with the British government. In 1998, Lankarani called for the Iranian government to do "its utmost" to protect Shiites in Afghanistan, then reportedly endangered by the Taliban.