Assistant Secretary-General at the Muslim Council of Britain, Inayat Bunglawala, on not expressing regret for murderous threats:
So on February 14 1989, when the Iranian Islamic leader, Imam Khomeini delivered his fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie’s death, I was truly elated. It was a very welcome reminder that British Muslims did not have to regard themselves just as a small, vulnerable minority…
Looking back now on those events I will readily acknowledge that we were wrong to have called for the book to be banned.
Inayat Bunglawala on Comment Is FreeI used to be a book burner
Satanic Verses Death Timeline
- February 12, 1989: Six people are killed and 100 injured during anti-Rushdie protests in Islamabad, Pakistan.
- February 13, 1989: One person is killed and 60 injured in anti-Rushdie riots in Srinagar, India.
- February 24, 1989: Twelve people die in anti-Rushdie rioting in Bombay, India.
- 1990: Five bombings target bookstores in England.
July 1991: Hitoshi Igarashi, the novel’s Japanese translator, is stabbed to death - July 1991: Ettore Capriolo, its Italian translator, is seriously wounded.
- July 2, 1993: Thirty-seven Turkish intellectuals and locals participating in the Pir Sultan Abdal Literary Festival, die when their hotel in Sivas, Turkey, namely the Madimak Hotel, is burnt down by 2000 members of various anti-democratic, pro-sharia radical islamist groups protesting against Aziz Nesin, Rushdie’s Turkish translator.
- October 1993: The novel’s Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, is shot and seriously injured
