Salman Rushdie

From Conservapedia

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is one of the leading living novelists in the English language. His most famous work, Midnight's Children, depicts the independence and partition of India and Pakistan in allegorical form. It won the Booker Prize for the best novel of the year by an author writing in English in a Commonwealth country or Ireland. It subsequently won the 'Booker of Bookers' for the best of the first 25 winners of the Booker Prize.

His later novel The Satanic Verses aroused controversy, angering many Muslims who believed that Rushdie's portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad (an illustration of a legend surrounding the prophet) was heretical and irreverent. Rushdie's book tells the story of original instructions from Muhammad that the Muslim people should worship three ancient pagan goddesses that had been worshipped in Mecca before the time of Islam. According to the story, Muhammad later recanted the verses, saying that the devil had persuaded him to add them as blasphemies. In 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared a fatwa on Rushdie, mandating his execution under Islamic law. Because of this, Rushdie was forced to live under police protection for many years.

Rushdie was knighted in his adopted country of the United Kingdom in June of 2007.