Shortly after, a fatwa was placed on the author by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini promising his execution. Rushdie was condemned not for insulting Islam per se, but rather for committing apostasy, or attempting to leave the faith, as Rushdie communicates in the novel that he now believes Islam is a sham. Committing apostasy is usually recognised as being a crime that carries the death sentence under Islamic law.

The book, like many others of Rushdie's, concerns Indians living in England, and Indians imbued with English culture returning to India. It opens with a terrorist attack by supporters of a Sikh homeland on an aeroplane above the English Channel (based upon real events). The two protagonists miraculously survive the fall about the explosion; indeed, feel they are reborn: Gibreel Farishta grows angelic wings and Saladin Chamcha later, to his dismay finds himself growing horns on his head.

The controversy arose over Rushdie's portrayal of Prophet Muhammad as a fallible human character and more so, the interpretation of the Satanic Verses as evidence that the Qur'an was not infallibly divine. ISBN 0312270828

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