Arise, Sir Salman Rushdie! It was presumably expected by the British government that the knighthood conferred on him by Elizabeth II last weekend would evoke hostility in Iran.

The government of Iran summoned the ambassador of Britain to accuse his country of “Islamophobia,” while the Iranian ambassador in London snarled that the British were “intensifying the clash of civilizations.”

In Tehran, meanwhile, a group calling itself the Organization to Commemorate the Martyrs of the Muslim World has now offered $150,000 to anyone “who was able to execute the apostate Salman Rushdie.” The Anglo-Indian writer, who now divides his time between New York and London, still needs round-the-clock security.

So far, the British have not attempted to appease Iran. Tony Blair, who as prime minister draws up honors lists for the Queen, evidently felt that it would be wrong for Salman Rushdie’s achievements to go unrecognized for fear of the Iranian bogeyman, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

And why shouldn’t this particular literary celebrity be knighted? Tom Stoppard, V.S. Naipaul, and many others have been dubbed. Americans with a particular British connection are sometimes given honorary knighthoods, too.

The Rushdie knighthood was almost routine compared to a far more unconventional award in the same honors list. The former Soviet double agent, Oleg Gordievsky, was made a Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, the same honor as James Bond — a joke unlikely to amuse Mr. Gordievsky’s fellow ex-KGB colonel, Vladimir Putin.

What was not foreseen, apparently, was that the Muslim country that reacted most violently to Mr. Blair’s gesture would be one of our most important allies in the war on terror: Pakistan.

The British could live with demonstrations. Now, however, the senate of this supposedly friendly country has denounced the honor as an “insult” to every Muslim. The minister of religious affairs, Mohammad Ejaz-ul-Haq, declared that a suicide bombing to kill Mr. Rushdie would be “justified.” He later toned down the language, but not the message. Just in case that message had not got through, the British high commissioner, or ambassador, was summoned to Pakistan’s foreign ministry for a formal protest.

So Pakistan is having a diplomatic row over a British honor awarded by the British monarch to a British citizen, one of whose works of fiction, published nearly two decades ago, is said to insult Muslims.

The British government has not made this kind of protest to Pakistan over any of the persecutions of Christians that are taking place there, nor when Al Qaeda terrorists were trained in Pakistan to carry out suicide bombings in London. Britain, by the way, gives Pakistan about $1 billion a year in aid.

The world in which we now live obliges Western countries to walk on eggshells. Absolutely any word or deed deemed by Islamist demagogues to “offend the honor of the Prophet” now has the potential to “insult” many Muslims. When our allies may turn into enemies on such flimsy pretexts, we have to wonder what kind of allies these are.

Of course the Rushdie affair is a special case. It has a special resonance for many British Muslims, because the extreme reaction it provoked began the process of radicalization that has now produced a generation of radical Islamists.

One of those who first came to prominence in the Rushdie riots of 1989 has also been knighted by the Queen. Sir Iqbal Sacranie is the public face of British Muslims. But his background in the campaign against Rushdie explains why he and his Muslim Council of Britain have turned out to be Islamists posing as moderates.

Another highly honored “moderate,” Lord Ahmed, told us that he was “appalled” by the damage to “social cohesion” that would be provoked by the granting of a knighthood to “a man who has not only been abusive to Muslims, but also to Christians.” How kind of the noble lord to consider the sensitivities of Christians, too. Perhaps he thinks it would help social cohesion if the tolerant customs of Karachi and Islamabad spread to Bradford and Birmingham?

It is worth recalling what the Rushdie affair was about. “The Satanic Verses,” a novel that British bookstores are still nervous about stocking, includes a fictionalized depiction of the founder of Islam. It is mildly satirical. The fact that the author had been born a Muslim compounded his offense: he was accused not only of blasphemy but also of apostasy.

Ever since Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1988, the threat of assassination has hung over the writer. For nine years he lived in hiding, until the Iranian government of President Khatami said it would no longer execute the death sentence.

But the fatwa has never been revoked. Indeed, it was reiterated only two years ago by Khomeinei’s successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Many forget that it was carried out in part: three translators were shot or stabbed in Japan, Italy, and Norway, while many others were killed in riots across the Muslim world.

The Rushdie affair was the pretext for the Iranian revolution to spread its poison from Islam into the West. It pointed a dagger at the heart of liberal democracy. And it exposed the moral cowardice which has sapped the resistance of the free world ever since.

Rushdie’s knighthood is a relic of chivalry, an old-fashioned virtue that once played a crucial part in taming the barbarism of the Dark Ages. Chivalry is the tribute of the strong to the weak. The Islamofascists don’t believe in chivalry. Rather, they challenge the West to defend its civilization. This week they are marching through the cities of Pakistan, burning effigies of the Queen and Mr. Rushdie, chanting: “Kill him!” At least a million Britons are of Pakistani origin. Whose side will they be on?