Salman Rushdie Age, Bio, Net Worth, Parents, Religion, Height,, Career

Salman Rushdie Biography

British-Indian author Salman Rushdie focuses on the ties, clashes, and migrations between Eastern and Western cultures in his novels, which are set in the Indian subcontinent and blend magic realism with historical fiction.

Age of Salman Rushdie

Rushdie will turn 75 in June 2022. Ahmed Salman Rushdie was born on June 19, 1947, in Mumbai, India.

Salman Rushdie Education

Before migrating to England to attend Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire, and subsequently King’s College, Cambridge, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in history, Rushdie obtained his education at the Cathedral and John Connon School in Fort, South Bombay.

Height of Salman Rushdie

Rushdie is 1.7 meters (or 5 feet 7 inches) tall.

Family / Parents of Salman Rushdie

Ahmed Salman Rushdie was born on June 19, 1947, in Mumbai, India. Rushdie is the son of Cambridge-educated lawyer and businessman Anis Ahmed Rushdie and teacher Negin Bhatt. He claimed in his 2012 autobiography that his father adopted the name Rushdie in honor of Averroes (Ibn Rushd).

Salman Rushdie Wife

Rushdie has been married four times, and he had at least a few relationships. He had his first marriage to Clarissa Luard, a literature officer for the Arts Council of England, from 1976 to 1987. The couple’s 1979-born son is now wed to jazz vocalist Natalie Rushdie, who resides in London. He got rid of Clarissa Luard in the middle of the 1980s to marry Australian author Robyn Davidson. He met Robyn through a mutual friend named Bruce Chatwin. When Rushdie and Davidson divorced Clarissa in 1987, they had already split up.

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They never got hitched. American author Marianne Wiggins was Rushdie’s second wife; they wed in 1988 and divorced in 1993. He was married to British author and editor Elizabeth West from 1997 to 2004. Their son was born in 1997. In 2004, not long after his third divorce, Rushdie wed Padma Lakshmi, an actor, model, and host of the American reality television program Top Chef. Rushdie claims that after Lakshmi asked for a divorce in January 2007, the couple actually filed for one in July of that same year.

Salman Rushdie Religion

Rushdie is now an atheist despite hailing from a liberal Muslim background. Salman characterized himself as a “hardline atheist” in a 2006 PBS interview. Rushdie claimed to be a lapsed Muslim in an interview after the fatwa in 1989, despite having been “molded by Muslim culture more than any other” and studying Islam. During a different interview the same year. In 1990, he released a statement in which he reiterated his Muslim faith, rejected the criticisms of Islam made by the fictional characters in his book, and vowed to work for greater religious tolerance worldwide in the “hope that it would reduce the threat of Muslims acting on the fatwa to kill him.”

Salman Rushdie Career

Due to what some perceived as an irreverent portrayal of Muhammad, the publication of The Satanic Verses in September 1988 caused immediate outrage in the Islamic community. The disputed Muslim tradition covered in the book is referenced in the title. Legend has it that Muhammad added verses (Ayah) to the Qur’an supporting the deity of three pagan Arabian goddesses who were originally worshipped in Mecca. Tradition has it that Muhammad subsequently removed the verses and said the devil had persuaded him to say them in order to placate the Meccans (thus the verses’ label as “Satanic”). However, the narrator reveals to the reader that Archangel Gabriel was the author of the divisive lyrics.

Many countries with substantial Muslim populations outlawed the book (13 in total: Iran, India, Bangladesh, Sudan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Thailand, Tanzania, Indonesia, Singapore, Venezuela, and Pakistan). Rushdie penned an editorial for The Observer on January 22, 1989, in response to the protests, referring to Muhammad as “one of the great geniuses of global history” but highlighting the Islamic doctrine’s view that Muhammad was human and hence imperfect. He insisted that it is not “an anti-religious novel,” rather it is an attempt to write about migration, its conflicts, and its transformations.

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Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then-Supreme Leader of Iran and a Shiite scholar, issued a fatwa calling for the execution of Rushdie and his publishers and advising Muslims to report Rushdie to those who can execute him if they are unable to do so themselves after a bloody riot against the book broke out in Pakistan in the middle of February 1989. Despite the fact that many lawmakers on both sides had a negative impression of the author, Rushdie was given round-the-clock police security by the British Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher.

After leading a march through Leicester in 1989 calling for the book’s ban, Norman Tebbit, the former chairman of the Conservative Party, referred to Rushdie as an “outstanding villain” whose “public life has been a record of despicable acts of betrayal of his upbringing, religion, adopted home, and nationality.” Journalist Christopher Hitchens vociferously defended Rushdie, pushing adversaries to place the blame for the savagery of the fatwa rather than the book or the author.

The fatwa, in Hitchens’ opinion, was the opening shot in a cultural war over freedom. A two-hour documentary produced by Mobeen Azhar and Chloe Hadjimatheou and broadcast by the BBC in 2021 concluded that minority (racial and religious) politics in England and other nations fueled campaigns against the book. The documentary featured interviews with many of the book’s leading critics and supporters from 1988 to 1989. According to the Iranian state news agency, because fatwas can only be reversed by the person who issued them and Khomeini had now passed away, the fatwa would remain in force indefinitely.

Salman Rushdie’s Net Worth

Rushdie has an estimated net worth of $15 million.

Salman Rushdie Books

• Grimus
• Midnight’s Children
• Shame
• The Satanic Verses
• The Moor’s Last Sigh
• The Ground Beneath Her Feet
  Fury
  East, West
• Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947–1997
• The Best American Short Stories
• Haroun and the Sea of Stories
• Luka and the Fire of Life
• The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey
  In Good Faith, Granta Books
• Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981–1991
• The Wizard of Oz: BFI Film Classics, British Film Institute
• Mohandas Gandhi, Time
• Imagine There Is No Heaven
• Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992–2002
• The East Is Blue
• “A fine pickle”, The Guardian
• In the South, Booktrack