Iran is threatening to boycott the forthcoming Frankfurt book fair because organisers have invited Salman Rushdie to deliver the keynote address at the opening press conference.



In February 1989, Rushdie was the target of a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic and the country’s former supreme leader, over the publication of The Satanic Verses, which was described as blasphemous against Islam. His fatwa provoked an international outcry and caused the UK to sever diplomatic relations with Iran for years.



News that 26 years on the British-Indian novelist would play a high-profile role in the opening of the world’s largest book fair has thrown the country’s leaders into a quandary.

A decision to boycott Frankfurt would be a blow to Iranian publishers, 282 of which were represented at the book fair last year, displaying more than 1,200 titles.

Seyed Abbas Salehi, deputy minister for culture and Islamic guidance, lodged a strong protest against Rushdie’s speech, scheduled for Tuesday 13 October, and said Tehran was mulling whether to boycott the fair.



“This has been organised by the Frankfurt book fair and crosses one of our political system’s red lines. We consider this move as anti-cultural,” he said, according to local news agencies. “Imam Khomeini’s fatwa on this issue is reflective of our religion and it will never fade away. We urge organisers to cancel his address.”



Prior to the publication of The Satanic Verses, Rushdie had been praised by the Iranian government for his novel, Midnight’s Children, whose translation into Farsi was named the book of the year.

His presence at the fair coincides with the publication of his latest fairytale, Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, which is about “the struggle between the worlds and the tension between faith and reason”.



Organisers of the book fair said: “His biography and literary work give him an influential voice in the worldwide debate about freedom of expression in publishing.” They added: “The publication of polemic literature and its consequences affect not just authors but the entire publishing industry. That’s why freedom of expression and boundaries are key topics at this year’s book fair.”

The hardline Iranian news website, Rajanews, said it was troubled by some reports suggesting that Iran would only boycott the press conference and urged authorities to call off Iran’s presence at the event entirely.

But Amirmasoud Shahramnia, head of Iran section at the book fair, told Tasnim news agency: “Tehran should not boycott the entire event. If we boycott the fair, it will only give him more publicity, it will not be in our interest.”

Amirshahriar Aminian, the head of Andishe-Rouzan publishing house, was quoted by a semi-official news agency as suggesting that the invitation to Rushdie was a deliberate political slight to this year’s guest of honour, Indonesia. “This is how Germany usually behaves,” he said. “What does it mean for the fair to host Indonesia, which is the world’s largest Muslim country, as its special guest and invite Rushdie at the same time?”

Eleven publishers in Iran have also written a letter urging the fair to cancel Rushdie’s address. “Inviting an individual who is an apostate and Mahdūr ad-damm [whose blood must be wasted] in this book fair is repulsive and anti-cultural,” said the Iranian cultural ministry spokesman, Hossein Noushabadi.



These protests cannot conceal the fact that Khomeini’s fatwa is taken more seriously in other parts of the Middle East than in Iran, where ordinary citizens view it as state rhetoric, to the consternation of the authorities.



In June 2012, they announced plans to produce a computer game aimed at spreading the message about Rushdie’s “sin” to the next generation. In the game, titled The Stressful Life of Salman Rushdie and Implementation of his Verdict, players would be asked to implement Khomeini’s call for the killing of Rushdie. In September 2012, an Iranian state-run institute said it was increasing the bounty on his head to about £2m.

Iran holds its own annual book fair, which attracts nearly five million visitors over 10 days, dwarfing international counterparts such as Frankfurt. It is held at Tehran’s Mosallah Grand Mosque, which is transformed into a labryinth of stalls for the occasion.

Books are generously discounted, with some publishers selling more during the fair than in the rest of the year. But all are vetted before publication and some heavily censored, as is routine for every book printed in Iran.

But the digital age is posing a new challenge to Iran’s relentless book censors. Visiting the fair in May, Iran’s current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, received a Farsi translation of Henry Kissinger’s On China as a gift. Also on display was the Farsi translation of Hillary Clinton’s memoir, Hard Choices.



Iran is not a signatory to the Berne convention for the protection of literary and artistic works and publishers usually publish translations of foreign works without consent.