SIR SALMAN RUSHDIE has confessed that he pretended to “embrace Islam” in the hope that it would reduce the threat of Muslims acting on the fatwa to kill him.

The author issued a statement in 1990 in order to defuse the row about his novel The Satanic Verses, which had provoked Muslims across the world. He claimed he had renewed his Muslim faith, had repudiated the attacks on Islam in his novel and was committed to working for better understanding of the religion across the world.

However, in an interview to be broadcast next month, Rushdie now claims his reversion to the religion of his birth was all a “pretence”.

Speaking to the psychothera-pist Pamela Connolly in a forthcoming TV programme, Shrink Rap on More4, he says: “It was deranged thinking. I was more off-balance than I ever had been, but you can’t imagine the pressure I was under. I simply thought I was making a statement of fellowship. As soon as I said it I felt as if I had ripped my own tongue out. It became the moment I hit rock bottom. I realised that my only survival mechanism was my own integrity. People, my friends, were angry with me, and that was the reaction I cared about.”

Expert View

For nine years Salman Rushdie lived as a virtual prisoner, changing addresses constantly, and protected around the clock by British security at an estimated cost of £10 million

Michael Binyon

• More

• Post a comment

Related Links

• Britain responds in Rushdie row

• Suicide bomb threat over Rushdie knighthood

• The Rushdie knighthood: 10 questions

Rushdie was born a Shi’ite Muslim in Bombay but never considered himself religious. The Satanic Verses, published in 1988 and considered blasphemous by many Muslims, was banned in India and burnt in demonstrations in Britain. In 1989 Ayatollah Ruhollah Kho-meini, then the Iranian leader, put a bounty on Rushdie’s head and the author was forced to go into hiding.

Rushdie, 60, claims the criticism of the book caused him more upset than the fatwa. He says in the interview: “I had spent five years writing this book. It was my best effort. To have it hated and dismissed, and for me to be considered a person of no worth and value, was terrible. I thought that if this is what you get, then why write? I might as well become a bus conductor.”

Rushdie also shows an unexpected soft side when he virtually breaks down in tears recalling the reaction to his first public reading of Midnight’s Children organised by the magazine Granta in Cambridge.

“The room was full of Indians from the university and the town. After I finished reading, one woman got up and said: ‘Thank you so much Mr Rushdie, you have told my story.’ ” Rushdie can be seen on the programme nearly in tears.

The author, whose latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence, has just been published, tells Connolly that he has twice previously been to therapists.

“The first time I felt total contempt for the man. With the second person I came away more miserable.”