Rushdie Faces New Threats On His Life

By PETER FOSTER, The Daily Telegraph
June 19, 2007

NEW DELHI — Sir Salman Rushdie, the author, was facing fresh threats to his life yesterday following his knighthood. A senior minister in the Pakistani government said the decision to knight Mr. Rushdie was a justification for suicide bombing, after the Parliament in Islamabad condemned the honor as "blasphemous and insulting" to the world's Muslims.

Mr. Rushdie, 59, who said he was "thrilled" to be knighted, was forced to live in hiding for nine years after Iran's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill him for allegedly insulting Islam's holy prophet in his book "The Satanic Verses."

As Pakistani MPs issued a demand for the award to be immediately withdrawn, the religious affairs minister, Mohammad Ejazul-Haq, said: "The West always wonders about the root cause of terrorism. Such actions" as giving Mr. Rushdie a knighthood "are the root cause of it. If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honor of the Prophet Muhammad, his act is justified."

The Parliament passed a unanimous resolution deploring the honor as an open insult to the feelings of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims. Sher Afgan Khan Niazi, the minister for parliamentary affairs who tabled the motion, said the knighthood was "a source of hurt for Muslims" and would encourage people to "commit blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad."

Mr. ul-Haq called on Pakistan and all other Muslim states to "break off diplomatic relations with Britain" if the knighthood was not withdrawn. The minister was later forced to clarify his potentially inflammatory statement, saying that he was speaking about the wider causes of terrorism and not of Mr. Rushdie specifically.