Muslims Mad at Sir Salman

(Note & Confession: I wrote this, picked photo and put this up before crusing the site and seeing Birdgit Johnson's excellent piece--with virtually sdame photo--on same subject. Read hers!)

Salmon Rushdie is in trouble again, and the Muslim World is outraged. Leading Muslim scholars in Pakistan and Iran are calling for a renewal of the fatwa and death sentence given him 18 years ago. His crime then was his book, The Satanic Verses, which, they believed, portrayed Islam and the Prophet Mohammad in a bad light.

To our western sensibilities, ordering the execution of an author for religious reasons might seem to put Islam in a worse light than Rushdie’s novel. However, both Rushdie and Islam survived that crisis.

Now, however, the Queen of England has insulted Islam by recognizing Rushdie’s talent and accomplishments in the secular world. She has chosen to Knight the author. Religious authorities assure the devout that suicide bombing is justified to kill Sir Salmon.

This kind of attention is very bad for freedom of the press and a writer's peace of mind. It is however wonderful for book sales. Having bough The Satanic Verses 18 years ago and tried to wade through prose I found frankly turgid, I felt a bit cheated. Not so mad, however, as to have put out a contract on Sir Salmon.

Books beget death threats. Cartoons beget death threats. Going around unveiled, for a woman, beget, yes, death threats. Going around without a beard, for a man, beget, you guessed it, death threats.

There are habitually angry people who riot, issue death threats and burn flags (where do they get all the Israeli, American and English flags?). Everything makes them crabby. As a general rule if everything in the world is someone else’s fault and everything makes you go into a rage, you may have problems that are not about what you think they are about.

Having lived in the Muslim World very nicely, happily and been received with great generosity, I know that those radicals, those chronically offended, who speak in the name of Islam, do not represent Islam. They shame the generous hearts’ of the peaceful and compassionate.