London : Britain’s Prince Charles turned his back on author Salman Rushdie during the fatwa over publication of ‘The Satanic Verses’ as he believed the book was offensive to Muslims, a novelist has revealed.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, author Martin Amis has claimed that the Prince’s views caused a row at a dinner party after Rushdie was issued with the death sentence by Islamic clerics in 1989.
Amis claims that Charles told him that he would not offer support “if someone insults someone else’s deepest convictions”, the Independent reported on Tuesday, according to IANS. Though Amis tried to remonstrate with him, the Prince offered little beyond insisting he would “take it on board”.
Rushdie went into hiding for a decade after Iran’s late spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for the author’s assassination. The Iranian government distanced itself from the fatwa a decade later, declaring that it would not support the edict, but could not rescind it either.
