{"id":142007,"date":"2011-11-16T11:39:27","date_gmt":"2011-11-16T07:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=142007"},"modified":"2011-11-16T11:39:27","modified_gmt":"2011-11-16T07:39:27","slug":"salman-rushdie-claims-victory-in-facebook-name-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/11\/16\/salman-rushdie-claims-victory-in-facebook-name-battle.html","title":{"rendered":"Salman Rushdie Claims Victory in Facebook Name Battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author Salman Rushdie says he has won a battle with Facebook over what to call himself on his profile page<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span> on the social network, the BBC<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/strong> reports.<\/p>\n

Rushdie’s dispute with Facebook began after he asked to be allowed to use his middle name Salman \u2014 the one he is known by across the world.<\/p>\n

But Facebook, which has strict real name policies, had insisted on Ahmed \u2014 the novelist’s first name.<\/p>\n

Rushdie says Facebook has “buckled” after he began tweeting about the row.<\/p>\n

“Victory! #Facebook has buckled! I’m Salman Rushdie again. I feel SO much better. An identity crisis at my age is no fun. Thank you Twitter!” wrote the British Indian author, who is known as SalmanRushdie<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/strong> on Twitter.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“Just received an apology from The #Facebook Team. All is sweetness and light.”<\/p>\n

Rushdie, aged 64, told about his run-in with Facebook in a series of tweets.<\/p>\n

He says the social site even deactivated his account over the weekend “saying they didn’t believe I was me”.<\/p>\n

Rushdie recounts that he had to send a photo of his passport to Facebook, which led to the reactivation of his account \u2014 but only as “Ahmed Rushdie”.<\/p>\n

Angered by this, the writer then decided to turn to what he described as “ridicule by the Twitterverse” about the row.<\/p>\n

“Dear #Facebook, forcing me to change my FB name from Salman to Ahmed Rushdie is like forcing J. Edgar to become John Hoover.<\/p>\n

“Or, if F. Scott Fitzgerald was on #Facebook, would they force him to be Francis Fitzgerald? What about F. Murray Abraham?” he tweeted.<\/p>\n

A number of Rushdie’s followers retweeted his posts and shortly afterwards Facebook changed his account to Salman Rushdie.<\/p>\n

Rushdie lived in hiding under police protection for many years after the fatwa issued in 1989 against him by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini over his novel The Satanic Verses.<\/p>\n

It was regarded as blasphemous by many Muslims, who protested by burning the book in public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author Salman Rushdie says he has won a battle with Facebook over what to call himself on his profile page on the social network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":141945,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142007"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}