"Rushdie did not stand trial, and he survived the death threats. But the Japanese and Turkish translators of his book, and the publisher of the Norwegian one, were all assassinated for their association with Rushdie. Others with no connection to Rushdie would soon be felled or have their lives wrecked by accusations of blasphemy, from Egypt to Pakistan. Death by blasphemy had now been introduced to the Muslim world by a strange twist in the competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia to position themselves as the standard-bearer of global Islam. But Saudi Arabia’s role in this dynamic would be forgotten, and the fatwa against Rushdie would become solely an Iranian story."