If you're younger than, say, 40, you might not remember the name Salman Rushdie - and you've probably never heard of a book he wrote called The Satanic Verses. In the late 1980s, the mad mullahs who run Iran declared that the book was blasphemous against Islam and declared that the British author Rushdie would need to be subjected to a friendly little talking-to.
Just kidding! The demanded his death, prompting Rushdie to go into hiding and basically spend decades as a recluse, even as he did continue to do some writing and eventually appear in public a little more often on the notion that there's no point living if you have to live in fear all the time.