Today the power of the mainstream television news is absolute. They tell people what to think and what to believe, and the great majority never question what they are told. But it doesn’t seem that books have the same power anymore, which is a very recent predicament. Perhaps its because people want to be told what to think and not think for themselves, or, god forbid, disagree with what they are told.

However, it does happen, and can happen with such fervor that you, gentle reader, would be shocked. One incident when such an event, an outcry against literature, happened in the late ‘80s, when Salman Rushdie (who will be the final guest in the Distinguished Speaker series, and will be at the University at Buffalo April 28 at 8:00 p.m. in Alumni Arena) published his novel The Satanic Verses, which made the author of the books Grimus, Midnight’s Children, and Shame famous, or better said, infamous.

Published in September 1988 the novel caused immediate controversy in the Islamic world due to its irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad. The books is about Gibreel Farishta, the biggest star in India, and Saladin Chamcha, an expatriate returning from his first visit to Bombay in fifteen years, washing up on the snow-covered sands of an English beach, after their jetliner explodes above the English Channel, and then proceed through a series of metamorphoses, dreams, and revelations.

India banned the book on October 5, and within weeks was followed by South Africa, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Somalia, Bangladesh, Sudan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Qatar. The book was ceremonially burned in Bradford, England, on January 14, 1989.

A month later, on February 14, 1989, a fatwa promising his execution was placed by Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran, calling the book “blasphemous against Islam.” Khomeini called on all zealous Muslims to execute the writer, as well as those of the publishers of the book who knew about the concepts of the book. On February 24, Khomeini placed $3 million bounty for the death of Rushdie, causing the author to live for a time under British-financed security.

At the University of California at Berkeley, bookstores carrying the book were firebombed. In Bombay, 12 people in a protest at the British Embassy died from police gunfire. Muslim communities throughout the world held public rallies in which copies of the book were burned. In the early ‘90s, Rushdie's Japanese translator was stabbed and killed, his Italian translator was stabbed and beaten and his Norwegian publisher was shot and severely injured in an attack outside his house.

After the death of Khomeini in 1989, the Iranian government publicly committed itself in 1998 not to carry out the death sentence. Rushdie afterward declared that he would stop living in hiding. He also said he regretted having made earlier statements to appease his opponents. Rushdie affirmed that he is not, in fact, religious.

In early 2005, Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie was reaffirmed by Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In response to requests to withdraw the fatwa, Iran has stated that only the person who issued it may withdraw it. Khomeini, however, had died without a withdrawal.

In Rushdie’s most recent book, Step Across This Line: Collected Non-Fiction, 1992-2002, he explores his own reaction to the fatwa, as well as reactions of the media and various governments. He will no doubt make comments about it during his speech at Alumni, affirming that literature, fiction, stories have the power to change the world (something he discussed lightly in his 1990 novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which was recently turned into an opera).

Rushdie remains astute and informed observer of events in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and other hotspots. He argues that America and its allies must do a better job of evaluating the gains being made by the current war on terror, versus its costs.

As a final speaker in the 2004-05 Distinguished Speaker series, Rushdie is a fine choice who will no doubt make students think about the world and literature, and no doubt enlighten them to a life on this world, fictional or factual, that they never had thought to imagine.