Iran: ‘Rushdie’s knighthood an attack on Islam!’

Who guessed it:

There is the great Satan (America) and the little Satan (Israel) and there is that ‘perfidious Albion’ (Hitler-speak) that, oh shocks, oh horror,- awards a knighthood to an author who has a fatwa on his head for some 25 years now, for insulting the profit Muhammad, and in spite of the best efforts of the RoP not one soldier of Allah could shoot him, stab him, cut his throat or firebomb him. What’s the world coming to? That calls for another major terrorist attack, at least a hijacking, a kidnapping, some major hostage taking, what say you, Abdullah ? We can’t let these filthy kufars get away with this!

Honoured: Rushdie received a knighthood on Saturday. [File photo] (Salman Rushdie) 

Iran has condemned the awarding of a knighthood to British author Salman Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses prompted the country to issue a fatwa death warrant for him.

Rushdie yesterday received a knighthood for services to literature in Queen Elizabeth’s Birthday Honours List.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini has denounced it as an act directed against Islam by Britain.

“Honouring and commending an apostate and hated figure will definitely put the British officials in [a position] of confrontation with Islamic societies,” he said.

“Giving a badge to one of the most hated figures in Islamic society is basically an obvious example of fighting against Islam by high-ranking British officials.”

The Islamic Republic formally distanced itself in 1998 from the original fatwa against Rushdie, who lived in hiding for nine years after it was issued by the country’s late leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

But shortly after the Iranian Government disavowed the death edict under a deal with Britain, Iranian media said three Iranian clerics called on Islamic followers to kill Rushdie, saying the fatwa was irrevocable and that it was the duty of Muslims to carry it out.

* Well, I guess we should all be shaking in our shoes….

– Reuters