At the time of the Satanic Verses controversy, there was the irony that he wrote things that were anti-colonial and anti-Western... and his life was threatened

At the time of the Satanic Verses controversy, there was the irony that he wrote things that were anti-colonial and anti-Western... and his life was threatened by third-worlders with a religious philosophy that directly contradicts Western ideas about freedom of speech and religion, while the West had to protect him from those third-worlders.