BAHRAIN: Indian born British author Salman Rushdie began his second year in hiding Wednesday as Iran renewed its call for his death for blaspheming Islam in his book, ‘The Satanic Verses.”
The controversy regarding the book snowballed after Iran’s late spiritual leader Ayatollah Buhollah Khomeni on this day last year issued a “fatwa” ordering Muslims to execute Rushdie and the publishers of the novel “wherever they find them.”
Several Iranian leaders and clerics, while endorsing the Imam’s edict, offered 5.2 million dollars bounty to anyone who did the job.
The late Imam’s decree was repeated by his successor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last Friday and Teheran radio warned the “enemies of Islam” of a similar fate.
“Mercenaries who try by means of cultural and propaganda conspiracies such as writing the blasphemous book are trying to… weaken Islam” Khamenei said while addressing a prayer gathering.
Unmindful of the censure it has attracted from the west, Iran’s insistence on the execution of Rushdie is being viewed as an effort by Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and other pragmatists to mollify the radicals who charged them with deviating from the late Khomeni’s ideology in their attempt to seek better relations with the west.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 23, 1990
