The Satanic Verses controversy, also known as the Rushdie Affair, was a controversy sparked by the 1988 publication of The Satanic Verses by the Indian author Salman Rushdie. It centred on the novel's references to the Satanic Verses (apocryphal verses of the Quran), and came to include a larger debate about censorship and religious violence. It included numerous killings, attempted killings (including against Rushdie himself), and bombings by perpetrators who supported Islam.

The affair had a notable impact on geopolitics when Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa in 1989 ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie. The Iranian government has changed its support for the fatwa several times, including in 1998 when Mohammad Khatami said the regime no longer supported it. In 2017, a statement was published on the official website of then-supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, stating that "the decree is as Imam Khomeini (ra) issued" and in February 2019, the Khamenei.ir Twitter account stated that Khomeini's verdict was "solid and irrevocable".

The issue was said to have divided "Muslims from Westerners along the fault line of culture", and to have pitted a core Western value of freedom of expression – that no one "should be killed, or face a serious threat of being killed, for what they say or write" – against the general view of the Muslim world that non-Muslims should not be free to disparage the "honour of the Prophet" or indirectly criticise Islam through satire – and that religious violence is appropriate in contemporary history in order to defend Islam and Muhammad. British writer Hanif Kureishi called the fatwa "one of the most significant events in postwar literary history".

Even before the publication of The Satanic Verses, the books of Salman Rushdie had stoked controversy. Rushdie saw his role as a writer "as including the function of antagonist to the state". His second book Midnight's Children angered Indira Gandhi because it seemed to suggest "that Mrs. Gandhi was responsible for the death of her husband through neglect". His 1983 roman à clef Shame "took an aim on Pakistan, its political characters, its culture and its religion... [It covered] a central episode in Pakistan's internal life, which portrays as a family squabble between Iskander Harappa (Zulfikar Ali Bhutto) and his successor and executioner Raza Hyder (Zia ul-Haq)... 'The Virgin Ironpants'... has been identified as Benazir Bhutto, a Prime Minister of Pakistan".

Positions Rushdie took as a committed leftist prior to the publication of his book were the source of some controversy. He defended many of those who would later attack him during the controversy. Rushdie forcefully denounced the Shah's government and supported the Islamic Revolution of Iran, at least in its early stages. He condemned the US bombing raid on Tripoli in 1986 but found himself threatened by Libya's leader Muammar al-Gaddafi three years later. He wrote a book bitterly critical of US foreign policy in general and its war in Nicaragua in particular, for example calling the United States government, "the bandit posing as sheriff". After the Ayatollah's fatwa, however, he was accused by the Iranian government of being "an inferior CIA agent".

The title The Satanic Verses immediately sparked vehement protest against Rushdie's book. The title refers to a legend of Muhammad; a few verses were supposedly spoken by him as part of the Qur'an which praised the pagan goddesses of Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Manat. The verses were then withdrawn on the grounds that the devil had sent them to deceive Muhammad into thinking they came from God. These "Satanic Verses" are said to have been revealed between verses 20 and 21 in Surah An-Najm of the Qur'an, and feature in accounts by Al-Tabari and Ibn Ishaq. The verses also appear in other accounts of the prophet's life. Verse 23 in Surah An-Najm implies that the Satanic Verses were fabricated by the forefathers of idolaters.

The utterance and withdrawal of the so-called Satanic Verses forms an important sub-plot in the novel, which recounts several episodes in the life of Muhammad. The phrase Arab historians and later Muslims used to describe the incident of the withdrawn verses was not "Satanic verses", but the gharaniq verses; the phrase "Satanic verses" was unknown to Muslims, and was coined by Orientalist Western academics specialising in the study of cultures considered eastern. The story itself is not found in the six Sahih of the Sunni or the Shiite sources, so much so that Muraghi, in his commentary, says: "These traditions are undoubtedly a fabrication of the heretics and foreign hands, and have not been found in any of the authentic books". According to Daniel Pipes, when attention was drawn to a book with this title, "Muslims found [it] incredibly sacrilegious", and took it to imply that the book's author claimed that verses of the Qur'an were "the work of the Devil".

According to McRoy (2007), other controversial elements included the use of the name Mahound, said to be a derogatory term for Muhammad used by the English during the Crusades; the use of the term Jahilia, denoting the "time of ignorance" before Islam, for the holy city of Mecca; the use of the name of the Angel Gibreel (Gabriel) for a film star, of the name of Saladin, the well known Muslim military leader during the Crusades, for a devil, and the name of Ayesha, the wife of Muhammad, for a fanatical Indian girl who leads her village on a fatal pilgrimage. Moreover, the brothel of the city of Jahiliyyah was staffed by prostitutes with the same names as Muhammad's wives, who are viewed by Muslims as "the Mothers of all Believers".