Rushdie attack awakens old demons for Arab writers

Rushdie's condition remains serious but he has shown signs of improvement. Photo: AFP

Only ever found in incomplete, clandestine translations in Arabic, The Satanic Verses could have gone largely unnoticed in the Arab world, were it not for the Iranian religious edict against its author Salman Rushdie.

Then supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwa calling for Rushdie's death, issued on February 14, 1989, struck a nerve with Arab authors, themselves often in danger of ruffling authoritarian feathers and "offending moral values".