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| Muslim world downs Sir Title to Rushdie; but Britain defends Rushdie | | |
LONDON Jun 21
Britain defended its decision to award knighthood to British author Salman Rushdie after Muslims worldwide contended that honoring the author of "The Satanic Verses" was offensive to Islam.
In Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, Wednesday, men and women carried signs in protest of Britain's decision to award knighthood to Salman Rushdie, whose book some Muslims say ridicules the Koran. Muslims say the novel, published in 1988, blasphemed against the Prophet Mohammed and ridiculed the Koran.
Britain's interior minister, John Reid, said the right to free speech was "of overriding political value," while Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett called the award by Queen Elizabeth part of a trend of honoring Muslims in the British community.
Rushdie, born to Muslim parents in India, was awarded the knighthood last week for services to literature, prompting diplomatic protests from Pakistan and Iran and triggering angry demonstrations yester day in Pakistan and Malaysia.
In the central Pakistani city of Multan about 300 people chanted "Death to the British Queen" and "Death to Rushdie." They burned a British flag and effigies of Queen Elizabeth and Rushdie.
In Islamabad, a pro-Taliban cleric said Rushdie should be killed. "Whosoever is in position to kill him, he should do so," Abdul Rashid Ghazi, a cleric at the capital's hard-line Red Mosque, said in a statement. Several hundred people, including members of the provincial parliament, protested in the Pakistani city of Lahore.
About 30 supporters of Malaysia's hard-line Islamic party protested outside the British Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, chanting "Destroy Salman Rushdie" and "Destroy Britain".
"This has tainted the whole knighthood, the whole hall of fame of the British system," the party's treasurer, Hatta Ramli, told reporters.
Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents also condemned the knighthood for the "apostate" British writer. Beckett said during a news conference that the award to Rushdie "is part of the pattern, that people who are members of the Muslim faith are very much part of our whole, wider community ... and they receive honors in this country in just the same way as any other citizen."
Reid, answering a question after a lecture in New York, said, "We have to be sensitive to the views of people of religion, people who have very strong views. But I think that we all appreciate that in the long run, our protection of the right to express your views in literature, argument, politics, is of overriding political value to our societies."
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