Pakistan’s National Assembly condemned the U.K. for awarding a knighthood to author Salman Rushdie, whose 1988 book “The Satanic Verses” was condemned by the Muslim world as blasphemous.
Lawmakers voted unanimously to protest the U.K.’s decision, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported yesterday. The U.K.’s award is “insensitive,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said in Islamabad yesterday.
The publication of “The Satanic Verses” prompted Iran’s then religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa condemning Rushdie, 59, to death. The Indian-born writer spent nine years in hiding, living with guards in various locations in the U.K. Bloomberg reports.
The Unreadable Heretic
Not only is the book accused of heresy by others, but in my own experience, it is unreadable. I also suspect that the people who most condemn the book haven’t read it either, choosing instead to take someone else’s word for it that it was objectionable.
I wish those people in Pakistan’s parliament would grow up, and deal with real issues, rather than with censorship and planning assasinations of fiction writers.
And finally, the real irony of the situation is that Rushdie started out condeming the Western world, and identifying with the Third world in sneering at Western indulgence. Now, Rushdie’s on the run from Third World fanatics, and has gotten one of the highest awards the colonial West can bestow- English knighthood.