Since 1989, threats to Salman Rushdie have sparked support and debate on free speech

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August 19th, 2022

In 1989, after Iran's religious leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for the death of author Salman Rushdie, readings of his works were organized around the United States. At this one in San Francisco, novelist Alice Walker reads aloud from Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. (Eric Risberg/AP)

Eric Risberg / Eric Risberg

In a small meeting hall in downtown Manhattan in 1989, more than 20 prominent writers stood in turn to read aloud the work of writer Salman Rushdie and denounce the fatwa that had just ordered his death.

Back then, the fatwa prompted an outpouring of support for Rushdie while also igniting a debate about the complicated collision of art and free expression with offensiveness.

Now, more than three decades later, those outpourings and debates have come back to the fore in the wake of a brutal knife attack on Rushdie at an art and literary retreat in New York.

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