Words and Deeds
Controversy surrounding the ‘Satanic Verses’ is centuries old.
In 1988 the publication of The Satanic Verses, a novel by the Indian-born British writer Salman Rushdie, propelled an obscure and contentious historical incident into the centre of a global debate about free speech and blasphemy. It was not the first time that the so-called ‘Satanic Verses’ had caused controversy; their veracity and meaning were fiercely debated within medieval Islamic scholarship, centuries earlier.
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