Sir Salman had been due to join leading authors Annie Proulx, Ben Okri, and David Hare at the festival, but a campaign against his appearance built after the leading Islamic seminary, the Daul Uloom in Deoband, issued a fatwa demanding the government to ban him. 'The Satanic Verses' provoked outrage throughout the Islamic world following its publication in 1988 over its narrator's claim that disputed verses on the Koran had been revealed by the Archangel Gabriel.