Hitoshi Igarashi

was the Japanese translator of Salman Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses". After Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of "the author of the Satanic Verses book, which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Qur'an, and all those involved in its publication who are aware of its content...", he was stabbed to death by an unknown person on July 11, 1991 at his workplace, the University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, [WEISMAN, Steven R. [http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/04/18/specials/rushdie-translator.html www.nytimes.com] "Japanese Translator of Rushdie Book Found Slain" July 13 1991.] where he was an associate professor specialized in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies. He completed his doctoral program in Islamic art at the University of Tokyo in 1976, and was research fellow at the Royal Academy of Iran until the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

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