Salman Rushdie’s knighthood: An insult to Muhammad?

Alas, Muslim fanatics have issued another fatwa against author Salman Rushdie. But this time Rushdie did not even do (or write) anything to incite their religious bloodlust. Instead, these zealous and narcissistic executioners of Islamic hegemony are braying for his head simply because the British government announced last weekend that Queen Elizabeth II will bestow a knighthood upon him; an honor which they have somehow determined is intended as an insult to the Prophet Muhammad:

This insulting, suspicious and improper act by the British government is an obvious example of fighting against Islam. [Iran’s Foreign Ministry Director for Europe, Ebrahim Rahimpour]

The action by the British Queen in knighting Salman Rushdie, the apostate, is an unwise one….If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Muhammad, his act is justified. [Pakistan’s Religious Affairs Minister Ijaz-ul-Haq]

Salman Rushdie has turned into a hated corpse which cannot be resurrected by any action. [Iran’s First Deputy Speaker Mohammad Reza Bahonar]

Of course, Rushdie first incurred this kind of foreboding notoriety in 1989 when Iran’s revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini ordered his execution (on Valentine’s Day no less) for writing The Satanic Verses, which he condemned, ostensibly, because of Rushdie’s “blasphemous” characterization of the Prophet Muhammad. (Although the Ayatollah was probably more pissed off by Rushdie’s unflattering allusions to him.) And it did not matter that this book is a fantastical and farcical depiction of a cosmic battle between good and evil, in which Rushdie proselytizes his Islamic heresies, and ridicules all religions, in mystical and otherworldly prose.

At any rate, the Ayatollah’s fatwa forced Rushdie into hiding – complete with a 24/7 cordon of bodyguards courtesy of Scotland Yard. But he was effectively resurrected in 1998 after a politically-evolved Iranian government granted Britain’s request for his clemency, which prompted Rushdie to proclaim in typically-ethereal flourish that:

I already feel the shreds of the fatwa flying away as if they were dust.

Nevertheless, I doubt this reissued fatwa will again cause him to take flight and cower in fright. Nor do I think the British government will again be so terrorized as to accessorize the glitterati lifestyle to which he has become so accustomed in recent years with another cordon of bodyguards.

After all, even though they may chant suicidal commitment to this fatwa, Muhammad’s willing executioners are too busy killing fellow Muslims in places like Iraq and Palestine to turn their sights on Rushdie.

Indeed, he can take some comfort from the fact that similar fatwas were issued recently against Danish cartoonists (for drawing blasphemous caricatures of Muhammad), former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for exposing the misogynistic tenets of Islam in her film Submission), and even the Pope (for insinuating in a homily that Muhammad’s teachings have wrought little more than jihadist violence). Yet all of these condemned blasphemers are all still alive and, by all accounts, well.

That said, I feel obliged to reiterate my solidarity with Rushdie. In fact, my own published writings make it patently clear that I endorse his irreverent and wholly-justified disdain for the many venal and misanthropic things Muslims do in the name of Allah. Although the irony seems completely lost on them that their diabolical threats make all too real Rushdie’s literary allusions to the devil disguising himself as God….

By the same token, however, I feel constrained to reveal my dismay over the pedestrian reverence Rushdie showed in accepting the fatuous and anachronistic honor of being knighted by the Queen.

I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour, and am very grateful that my work has been recognised in this way. [Salman Rushdie]

After all, it would be intellectually disingenuous, if not hypocritical, for him to deny that the Queen bestowing such honors makes a mockery of democracy almost to the extent that the Ayatollah issuing fatwas makes a mockery of Islam. And it only adds a patina of unseemliness to this royal farce that “commoners” are more likely to make it onto the Queen’s Honors List these days by bribing politicians than by “rendering honourable service to the crown”….

The British monarch lives under this illusion that Britain is still a 19th Century superpower and that bestowing titles is something still deemed important. [Iran’s Mohammad Reza Bahonar, Ibid]

Hear, hear! (Hate the messenger…if you must, not the message)

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Salman Rushdie fatwa, Muslims Islam fatwa