Salman Rushdie to return to India after death threats

Salman Rushdie the controversial author

Salman Rushdie will return to India this week to speak at a conference, under two months after death threats forced the Booker Prize-winning author to pull out of Asia's biggest literary festival. Rushdie's attempt to visit India in January brought protests from some Indian Muslim groups, which consider his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses blasphemous because of the way it portrayed the Prophet Mohammad. Rushdie, who won the Booker Prize for his novel Midnight's Children in 1981, will speak on Friday in New Delhi alongside writer Aatish Taseer at a conference hosted by the India Today media group, in a discussion called 'The Liberty Verses'. The publication of The Satanic Verses sparked protests around the world and death threats against Rushdie after Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini claimed that the novel's portrayal of the Prophet Mohammad insulted Islam.