Ask Salman Rushdie what a fatwa does to you.
Rushdie published a book named “The Satanic Verses” in 1989, after which the then-Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa against the Indian-born British author. He was to be hunted down, wherever he went in the world, and killed.
Salman Rushdie lost his personal freedom, had to be under protection for the rest of his life. In 2022, a young Iranian extremist stabbed him at a book presentation. Rushdie lost an eye and a ton of blood and now wears an eyepatch like a pirate. He’s still alive and breathing at 78, but that fatwa by Khomeini dictated the course of his life to a great degree, and will no doubt continue to do so until the day he does die. Religious fanatics are like bulldogs — once they bite into their target, their jaws lock in and they never, ever, let go…
…and all Salman Rushdie did was write a “blasphemous” book. He didn’t actually kill a religious leader with tens of milions of followers. Trump did. If he doesn’t die of natural causes or old age, it is quite possible that some very determined, very fanatical Shia Muslims get together and do whatever is in their power to kill the US President to avenge their supreme leader. He killed a man revered by millions as a prophet of God, you don’t walk away from that.