Stuck in the past, they - the panel - began the programme last night which I just happened to tune on and the subject was
... Salman Rushdie and the focus of the
Islamic Fatwa against this writer .... on the great work of literature ....
Satanic Verses.
The writer ... Rushdie apparently won the Booker Prize for his highly acclaimed book ... Midnight's Children and this came out in 1981 .... but in discussion Rushdie's - fellow Muslims examine the row that erupted about Satanic Verses and discussed why in the late 1980s . re 1988 that
Salman Rushdie's book was regarded as "offensive".
The Panel of Reviewers were Islamic like Sir Salman Rushdie and believe that the offending section(s) was concerned with a passage about an Islamic Icon ... a Poet who was reputed to have held 6 prostitutes ..and was seen to desert the Islamic Faith and its high regard for Muslim teaching.
The Reviewers put the book ... Satanic Verses . behind them . and saw in very much in the context of that period .. the 1980s. I bought Rushdie's book/Satanic Verses and found the narrative similar to that of other great writers such as Joyce - allegorically accurate! I was invited soon afterwards to Rushdie and other writers .. Book Event in Ireland ... which was during the Fatwa or death theat on Rushdie' life .. a brave face amidst a sea of gloom and doom!