Qur'an: The Satanic Verses

Sometimes, after Muhammad had a revelation, he realised that what the voice in his head had just said contradicted some of his earlier revelations. He and his followers concluded that Satan had temporarily supplanted the Angel Gabriel as the voice in Muhammad's head. These contradicting revelations were then removed from the canonical Qur'an.

(While we are on the subject of sanity, it is worth mentioning that Muhammad preached to both humans and invisible fire-spirits.)

The 'Satanic verses' were the inspiration for the eponymous novel by Salman Rushdie. Shortly after the novel was published, Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, publicly offered money to anyone who murdered Rushdie.

Salman Rushdie had to go into hiding, constantly moving from place to place. Several attempts were made on his life. His Norwegian publisher was shot several times in the back with a rifle; his Japanese and Italian translators were attacked.

Religious leaders from around the world - the Vatican, the church of England, America, Israel - all sided with... the Ayotollah. The Archbishop of Canterbury called for Rushdie to be arrested for blasphemy, but the law only covered blasphemy against Christianity (this law was abolished in 2008; yes, blasphemy against Christianity was illegal in Britain until 2008, and people were still being arrested for it in the 1990s). The fatwa against Salman Rushdie is still in place, but the Iranian government has since declared that it will neither support nor hinder anyone's attempt to murder him.

That was in 1989. It is a sign of progress that the response to the recent Charlie Hebdo attack (whose cartoons were far more insulting than Rushdie's novel) has mostly been a chorus of 'Fuck you' to the violent extremists.

"We sent not any messenger or prophet before you but one who, when prophesying, Satan intrudes into his prophecies. God then abrogates Satan's intrusions, and God enshrines His revelations, and God is Omniscient, All-Wise. And this, in order to make what Satan interpolates a seduction to those in whose hearts lies sickness, or whose hearts are hard."