Osama Bin Laden Vs. Salman Rushdie

Bin Laden honoured in Salman Rushdie tit for tat
Toronto Star: June 21, 2007
Zeeshan Haider, Reuters

ISLAMABAD – A group of hardline Pakistani Muslim clerics has bestowed a religious title on Osama bin Laden in response to a British knighthood for the author Salman Rushdie.

Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses outraged many Muslims around the world, was awarded a knighthood last week for services to literature in Queen Elizabeth's birthday honours list.

Muslims say the novel, published in 1988, blasphemed against the Prophet Mohammad and ridiculed the Qu'ran and events in early Muslim history.

Pakistan and Iran have protested against the honour and small demonstrations have been held in various parts of Pakistan and in Malaysia.

A group of clerics, the Pakistan Ulema Council, has given bin Laden the title "Saifullah", or sword of Allah, in response to the honour for Rushdie, the council's chairman said on Thursday.

"If a blasphemer can be given the title 'Sir' by the West despite the fact he's hurt the feelings of Muslims, then a mujahid who has been fighting for Islam against the Russians, Americans and British must be given the lofty title of Islam, Saifullah," the chairman, Tahir Ashrafi, told Reuters.

A Mujahid is a Muslim holy warrior. Bin Laden was one of many Arabs who helped Afghan guerrillas battle Soviet invaders in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

DISMISSAL CALL

In a related development, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto said Pakistan's minister of religious affairs should be dismissed for suggesting suicide bombs were a justified response to Rushdie's knighthood.

On Monday, Pakistan's parliament adopted a resolution condemning the knighthood and said Britain should withdraw it.

Religious Affairs Minister Mohammad Ejaz-ul-Haq told the assembly insults to Islam were at the root of terrorism, and added that if someone committed a suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Mohammad, his act was justified.

He later said he did not mean such attacks would be justified but was merely saying militants could use the knighthood as a justification.

But Bhutto said Haq had justified suicide attacks on a British citizen.

"The minister... son of a previous military dictator who had patronised extremist groups, had done a great disservice both to the image of Islam and the standing of Pakistan by calling for the murder of foreign citizens," Bhutto said in a statement.

Haq is the son of military president Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, whose policies of Islamisation in the 1980s are often blamed for sowing the seeds of militancy.

Zia overthrew Bhutto's father, then prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, in 1977. Bhutto was executed two years later.

Benazir, who has lived in self-imposed exile for nearly a decade and faces corruption accusations at home and abroad, called on the government to dismiss Haq, although adding that the sentiments of most Muslims had been outraged by the knighthood.

Britain said it was deeply concerned about Haq's comments and nothing could justify suicide bombings. Britain has also defended the knighthood for Rushdie.

The speaker of the National Assembly expunged Haq's comments from the record, citing the national interest.

Haq told reporters he had been invited to visit Britain to help develop clerics' communication skills but he would only go if Britain apologised for Rushdie's knighthood.

Also on Thursday, the speaker of the Punjab provincial assembly said blasphemers should be killed while Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of Pakistan's ruling party, said British Prime Minister Tony Blair was "personally and mentally against Islam".