A knighthood sparks Muslim protests.

Salman Rushdie

What a “depressingly predictable fuss,” said India Knight in the London Sunday Times. The Indian-born British writer Salman Rushdie has been a whipping boy for Muslims since 1988, when his book The Satanic Verses promptly earned him a fatwa of death. So it was no surprise that last week, when Rushdie became Sir Salman, Pakistanis burned effigies of the queen, and Iran condemned Britain’s “insult to Islamic values.” Less inevitable was the British reaction. The Lord Privy Seal, Jack Straw, said he “sympathized” with the “hurt feelings” of the “Muslim community.” Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett gave a blanket apology for any offense caused. Apparently, for many politicians, “pandering to the tiny proportion of the Muslim vote that is both extremist and fundamentalist” is more important than defending literature.

It should be easy to pacify the outraged Muslims, said Dominic Lawson in the London Independent. Just point out that two years ago, Iqbal Sacranie, former head of the Muslim Council of Britain, was himself knighted. “This is the same Iqbal Sacranie,” by the way, whose only comment on the fatwa against Rushdie was that “death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for him.” Where were the protests against Sir Iqbal? But perhaps it’s unfair to single out Sacranie—he isn’t the worst creature Britain has knighted. The late Romanian dictator Ceausescu was Sir Nicolae, and Zimbabwean dictator Mugabe is Sir Robert. Rushdie is hardly in the best of company.

That’s little consolation, said Anjum Niaz in Islamabad’s The News. It’s not just that Rushdie’s “vomit of profanity” is an insult to Islam, it’s also that Rushdie is a jerk. The “baldy, satyr-faced” fellow dumped the wife who stood by him during the 12 years he was in hiding before Iran lifted the fatwa. As soon as he got back out into the world, he took a new wife, “half his age and twice as attractive.” That he is a great writer is no excuse, said the Karachi Dawn in an editorial. Rushdie “used his pen to create hatred” between Muslims and Westerners. Why must Britain honor him, of all people, especially in these tense, post-9/11 times. “Common sense requires that both sides do nothing that could aggravate the sense of mutual alienation.”

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Nick Cohen

Observer