Outside of the United Kingdom, the most notorious of the responses was of the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, to place a fatwa on the head of Salman Rushdie —the revolutionary leader of the 1979 Islamic uprising in Iran placed a price upon the author's head, which still persists (over sixteen years on) to this day.

With regards to the British government's refusal to enforce a publication ban, it refused to consider or impose a ban. The order that the Conservative government imposed seemed to suggest that the freedom of expression is absolute and consequently, the freedom to express oneself on matters relating to the Islamic faith would be absolute.

Mr. John Patten responded to the crisis on the 4^th July 1989 through a letter to British Muslims. On behalf of the government, he asserted that modern British democracy had been built upon the one freedom which enabled both the right to freedom of expression, as exercised by Rushdie, and the Muslim's freedom to protest, and no attempts could be made to change this democratic architecture:

"The same freedom which has enabled Muslims to meet, march and protest against the book also preserves any author's right to freedom of expression for so long as no law is broken. To rule otherwise would be to chip away the fundamental freedom on which our democracy is built. That is why we have no power to intervene with publishers or to have The Satanic Verses removed from bookshop shelves. Nor would we seek or want any such power."

The then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, held that "there are no grounds" for censorship. The British government felt obliged to offer Rushdie protection, following the issuing of the fatwa. It might be said that this government rightly followed its due role in operating within the remit of a secular state, when we understand that the modern secular state defends the uncompromised freedom of expression above a respect for the rights of religious cultures, such as that of a Muslim culture.