Salman Rushdie Died 18 Years Ago
QUEEN Elizabeth II has joined the War on Terror by knighting Salman Rushdie for services to cream puffs. Who knew a knighthood carried such a cache in the Muslim world:
Hardliners in Iran revived calls for his murder yesterday. Mehdi Kuchakzadeh, a Tehran MP, declared: “Rushdie died the moment the late Imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] issued the fatwa.”
The Organisation to Commemorate Martyrs of the Muslim World, a fringe hardline group, offered a reward of $150,000 (£75,000) to any successful assassin.
Forouz Rajaefar, the group’s secretary general, said: “The British and the supporters of the anti-Islam Salman Rushdie could rest assured that the writer’s nightmare will not end until the moment of his death and we will bestow kisses on the hands of whomsoever is able to execute this apostate.”
Effigies of Rushdie and the Queen were burnt in Pakistan, where presidential elections at the end of the year have destablised an already volatile political climate.
And:
Iranian leaders regularly reiterate the fatwa, but British diplomats take this more as political rhetoric than renewed threat. In 2000 the author left Marianne Wiggins, his second wife of 12 years, for an actress and moved to New York. The book remains banned in Muslim countries.
Posted: 19th, June 2007 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
