Salman Rushdie wages war against Facebook through Twitter

Washington, Nov 15: Looks like the famous British author is controversy's favourite child. After his popular book, the Satanic Verses raised a furore, his latest tiff with popular social networking site has now grabbed media headlines. The tussle occurred when Rushdie insisted on using his middle name, Salman in his profile page instead of his first name Ahmed.

The matter was brought to light through a series of tweets by Rushdie on Monday through his Twitter account @salmanrushdie. He has close to 113,000 followers on Twitter.

The tiff occurred when Facebook insisted on the blanket rule for all its 800 million members that they use their real names on the site instead of any pseudonyms. With Salman Rushdie popularly known as Salman in the world, Facebook would hear nothing of it and stood by their rule.

Rushdie went to the extent of sending a photograph of his passport to Facebook after it was deactivated over the weekend after they refused to believe it was the real Salman Rusdhie. Salman said, "They said yes, I was me, but insisted I use the name Ahmed which appears before Salman on my passport and which I have never used. They have reactivated my FB page as 'Ahmed Rushdie,' in spite of the world knowing me as Salman. Morons."

In spite of sending repeated requests to activate his original page with his profile name, he sent a message to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Twitter that said, "Where are you hiding, Mark? Come out here and give me back my name!"

Even after the message elicited no response from Facebook's end, Salman Rushdie launched a scathing attack through Twitter aimed at Facbook and called it 'ridicule by the Twitterverse'. Some of the tweets read -

"Dear #Facebook, forcing me to change my FB name from Salman to Ahmed Rushdie is like forcing J. Edgar to become John Hoover. Or, if F. Scott Fitzgerald was on #Facebook, would they force him to be Francis Fitzgerald? What about F. Murray Abraham?"

After a couple of tweets, Facebook finally heard the noise with Rushdie reponding aptly, "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!"

He added, "Just received an apology from The #Facebook Team. All is sweetness and light."

OneIndia News