Salman Rushdie - the controversial author - now has a $500,000 price on his head, reports British paper, The Telegraph. The controversy has been reignited due to the Islamophobic film, Ayatollah Hassan Sanei - head of a powerful state foundation providing relief to the poor - said the film would never have been made if the order to execute Rushdie had been carried out. "The aim [of the fatwa] has been to uproot the anti-Islamic conspiracy and now the necessity for taking this action is even more obvious than any other time," he said. "I'm adding another $500,000 to the reward and anyone who carries out this order will immediately receive the whole amount." The total bounty is now $3.3m (£2.1m). Ayatollah Khomeini first sanctioned the fatwa, sentencing the author to death in 1989, after he declared his novel, The Satanic Verses, "blasphemous". This was 23 years ago, but Rushdie is now subject to a hefty bounty amidst this latest controversy. "The film is clearly a malevolent piece of garbage," Rushdie told the Guardian in an interview. A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We are aware of the reports and take any threat to the life of a British National very seriously. Our diplomatic position has always been clear that threats to Mr Rushdie are completely unacceptable.”