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In 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses; this fatwa has been reaffirmed by the current Khamenei regime. In 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi, an associate professor of comparative Islamic culture at the University of Tsukuba in Japan and the book’s translator, was found stabbed in the hallway outside his office at the university. While the Japanese government never apprehended the perpetrator, it was widely assumed that Igarashi was murdered because of translating the “blasphemous” book.

Incidentally, this was not the only assault connected with The Satanic Verses. Just prior to the Igarashi murder, the book’s Italian translator, Ettore Capriolo, was stabbed in his apartment in Milan but fortunately survived.