Salman Rushdie in Berlin (CC BY-SA 4.0)

What is a Fatwa? A Scholar of Religion Strips the Word of its Stereotypes

When the late Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued an Islamic edict against Salman Rushdie on February 14, 1989, an Arabic word the cleric used to call on Muslims to execute the author reverberated across the world.…