A Satanic Anniversary

On this day in 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini announced a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for defaming the Prophet and Islam in his The Satanic Verses. Through a happy coincidence, one happened to be at a bookstore in Melbourne this morning -- and what a pleasure it was to see copies of the book displayed innocuously in the Fiction section. One lifted both the hardback and paperback editions, leafed through them and replaced them on the shelf. Books may be easy to burn, but they aren't that easy to get rid of.