Click to play videoNew Delhi: Author Salman Rushdie has said that he pretended to embrace Islam 18 years ago in the hope that it would reduce the threat to his life.
In an interview on a TV programme Shrink Rap, Rushdie claimed his reversion to the religion of his birth was all a "pretence".
He said it was deranged thinking because of the pressure he was under.
“I was more off-balance than I ever had been, but can’t imagine the pressure I was under. I simply thought I was making a statement of fellowship,” Rushdie was quoted as having told the programme.
In 1990, Rushdie had issued a statement in order to defuse the controversy over his novel The Satanic Verses.
“It became the moment I hit rock bottom. I realised that my only survival mechanism was my own integrity,” he said.
The author had then claimed that he had renewed his Muslim faith, repudiated the attacks on Islam in his novel and was committed to working for better understanding of the religion across the world.
Iran’s religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa against Rushdie in 1989, forcing the novelist into hiding.
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