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Muslims Outraged over Sir Salman Rushdie

Diplomatic Row with Iran Escalates

The Muslim world is up in arms over the British announcement that controversial author Salman Rushdie has been honored with knighthood. The Iranian foreign ministry has called the decision a "provocative act."

It was, perhaps, predictable that the Muslim world would not welcome Britain's weekend announcement that author Salman Rushdie is to be knighted. But the severity of the reaction has taken even skeptics by surprise.

On Tuesday evening, the decision even became a matter for international diplomacy. The Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned the British ambassador in Tehran to complain of the decision to bestow knighthood on Rushdie, a controversial author in the Muslim world for his book "The Satanic Verses." Iranian official Ebrahim Rahimpour told Ambassador Geoffrey Adams that honoring Rushdie was a "provocative act."

On Wednesday, Iranian state radio reported, the parliament in Tehran followed up by issuing a statement condemning Rushdie's knighthood. Fully 221 of Iran's 290-member parliament signed the statement.

"Awarding a person who is among the most detested characters in the Islamic society," Mohammed Ali Hosseini, Iran's foreign minister, told the Associated Press, "is obvious proof of anti-Islamism by ranking British officials."

Rushdie's 1988 book, The Satanic Verses, contained remarks and commentary deemed blasphemous by many Muslim leaders. Singapore and India banned the book, and a fatwa was issued by the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayotallah Khomeini, calling for Rushdie's death. The author was forced into hiding for a decade.

Nerves are still raw. Pakistan's parliament on Monday passed a resolution that condemned the British honor for Rushdie. In Islamabad, Muslim radicals joined the outrage by protesting and burning an effigy of Queen Elizabeth II of England. Pakistan's Religious Affairs Minister, Ijaz-ul-Haq said on Monday that the honor bestowed on Rushdie justified new suicide attacks on Britain. He later rescinded the remark, saying that the award could be used by suicide bombers to justify their attacks.

On Wednesday, a number of activists from an Islamic fundamentalist group in Malaysia demonstrated outside the British diplomatic mission in the capital Kuala Lumpur. Protestors shouted "Crush Salman Rushdie" and "Damn Britain" in the peaceful demonstration. An NGO in Iran, the Committee of Glorification of the Martyrs of the Islamic Movement, increased the price on Rushdie's head from $100,000 to $150,000; in all, a number of bounties from various organizations are out on Rushdie and amount to millions of dollars.

"This (award) shows that the movement of insulting Muslims was not accidental but a planned and organized move that enjoyed the support of Western countries," Iran's foreign minister told the AP.

Britain announced on Saturday that Rushdie would be knighted, along with CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour, human rights campaigner Shami Chakrabarti, comedian Barry Humphries, Glastonbury Festival founder Michael Eavis, and Oleg Gordievsky, a former KGB agent and double spy whose life was also for years under threat of assassination.

"I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honor, and am very grateful that my work has been recognized in this way," Rushdie said in a statement.

In 1998 the Iranian government said it could not repeal the fatwa, but that it would not actively pursue its fulfilment. Rushdie receives a card each year from the Iranian government informing him that the fatwa is still outstanding.

rjm/ap/afp/dpa