Introduction

World famous author was stabbed multiple times and remains in hospital. The exact motivation behind the attack still isn't clear, but it comes more than 30 years after salman rushti published a book called the satanic verses that some in the lamic world criticised for blasphemy. Iran's spiritual and revolutionary leader took the outrage further and declared a fat or legal ruling. How and why did we get here, freedom of expression in the imagined world of a novel verses the word of god and the sanctity of a holy book? We are joined by two panalists who followed this story closely over the years.