In September 1988, when Penguin Books published Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Ayatollah Khomeini responded by declaring a fatwa to bring about the murder of Rushdie for blaspheming against Islam. Rushdie went into hiding. Threats against bookstores followed, and B. Dalton, Waldenbooks, and Barnes & Noble pulled Satanic Verses from their shelves. My bookstore, Cody’s Books, in Berkeley, did not, and on February 28, 1989, my bookstore was bombed.
