New Delhi: Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has reportedly cancelled a visit to India after it emerged that author Salman Rushdie would be speaking at the same conference. The Express Tribune reported that Imran Khan refused to attend the India Today conclave in New Delhi if Salman Rushdie was also going to be present.
A leader from Imran's party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), Shireen Mazari, issued a statement that Khan cancelled his participation as a key-note speaker at the conclave stating that he could not even think of participating in a program that included Rushdie, who has caused 'immeasurable hurt to Muslims across the globe'.
The organisers announced on Tuesday that Rushdie would speak at the conference, two months after death threats forced him to withdraw from India's premier literature festival. In January, Rushdie was forced to pull out of the Jaipur literary festival, one of the biggest such events in south Asia, after protests by Indian Muslim groups, which consider his 1988 novel 'The Satanic Verses' blasphemous.
The writer, who has Indian origins, is due to speak on Friday in Delhi at a conference, hosted by the India Today media group, in a talk called 'The Liberty Verses'.
Rushdie's 1988 novel 'The Satanic Verses' is still banned in India and Pakistan for allegedly blaspheming against Islam and the holy Quran.
The 64-year-old writer, who was born in Mumbai, spent a decade in hiding after Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for his death over the book.
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