![blasphemous in a sentence blasphemous in a sentence](https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/styles/pattern_action_urgent/s3/2020-09/UA13720.jpg)
However, a fatwa cannot be revoked in Shia Islamic tradition. The Iranian government has changed its support for the fatwa several times, including in 1998 when Mohammad Khatami said the regime no longer supported it. The affair had a notable impact on geopolitics, when, in 1989, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie. It included numerous killings, attempted killings (including against Rushdie himself), and bombings by perpetrators claiming to support Islam. It centered on the novel's references to the Satanic Verses of the Quran, and came to include a larger debate about censorship and religious violence. The Satanic Verses controversy, also known as the Rushdie Affair, was a controversy sparked by the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. Ayatollah Khomeini (pictured in 1981), then Supreme Leader of Iran who issued the fatwa