The Satanic Verses achieved success when published in 1988, winning the Whitbread Award for Novel of the Year. In Islamic communities, the novel immediately became controversial. Rushdie was accused of abusing free speech. In October 1988, letters and phone calls came to Viking Penguin from Muslims, who were furious with the book and wanted it withdrawn. Thus, within a month, the book was banned from being imported into India, although possession of the book is not a criminal offence. In November 1988 it was also banned in Bangladesh, Sudan and South Africa. In December 1988 it was also banned in Sri Lanka. In March 1989 it was banned in Kenya, Thailand, Tanzania, Indonesia, Singapore and Venezuela. In early March 1989, the United States FBI was notified of 78 threats to bookstores selling the book. In New York, the headquarters of the community newspaper, The Riverdale Press, was destroyed by a bombing, in retaliation for an editorial defending the right to read the novel. Violence against bookshops has continued longest in the UK. Two large bookshops in Charring Cross Road in London were blown up, explosions occurred in the town of High Wycombe and again in London, in Kings Road, among other attacks. But the most extreme response was the fatwā issued by the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, February 14, 1989. The fatwā called for the death of Rushdie and his publishers. Although Khomeini did not provide the legal rationale for this judgment, it is said to be based on the ninth chapter of the Quran, At-Tawba, verse 61: "Some of them wound the prophet, saying, 'He is all ears.'" !' Tell him, 'You better listen to yourself. Does he believe in God and trust the beautiful... middle of paper......r from history could be obtained?[Rushdie 1988b:A27 ]Reading such a powerful text only in terms of religious blasphemy is an injustice to of literature. Rushdie made clear how fiction, while it may draw ideas and roots from canons such as religion, spirals with the novelists' imaginations and what is produced. it is not to be condemned, but seen in terms of the novelist's creativity. In an age of free speech and in a modern, liberalized society, the novelist should not be bound by the limits of religion, as literature and science fill the pools of religion leaves pitifully, Rushdie's verses will be remembered more for the controversy and the outcry it caused, than for the pure genius of magical realism that is this work. Yet this very reaction exemplifies the magnamity of the novel and the sheer genius of the notoriously evasive Salman Rushdie.