Eight years after the crisis of 1989-90, passions continue to run high about Salman Rushdie and The Satanic Verses – and not just in Iran.
Iran
In Iran, the official position seemed to be softening: no state agent would carry out the threat. "Our government has repeatedly said it has no intention of sending someone to kill Salman Rushdie or any other person," Velayati told Corrierre della Sera (quoted in the Associated Press, Jan. 9, 1997).
Trouble was, no one else seemed to agree. A representative in parliament castigated (Resalat, Feb. 27, 1997) those "political experts" who "one day say that the Imam's decree regarding Salman Rushdie is a historical and a government decree, and [another day] say it is a religious decree and is not necessary to be carried out. Of course, the grand leader reprimanded them. The decree of the Imam regarding Salman Rushdie is a historical decree and is obligatory."
The hard-line Jomhuri-ye Eslami announced on April 17, 1997, that "The imam's historic fatwa on Salman Rushdie is not a political issue that could be the subject of a bargain between diplomats." It returned to this issue on Oct. 18, 1997:
The death decree on Rushdie is not a personal or state decree that can be changed under the influence of political conditions. This decree does not mean granting one person or one government the mission to kill Rushdie. It is a religious decree against any apostate. And naturally no one has the right to alter a divine decree. This is why the duty to execute this decree does not lie on the shoulders of a specific "individual" or a specific "government."
Morteze Moqtada'i, the chief prosecutor, stated (Associated Press, Feb. 4, 1998) that "the shedding of this man's blood is obligatory. Any Muslim who hears an insult to the prophet must kill the person who commits the insult. It is better that those closest to that person try to kill him first." When Moqtada'i yelled out "Rushdie must die," worshippers replied "God is great." A few days later, the state-run radio said of Rushdie (Press Association, Feb. 14, 1998): "The destruction of this man's worthless life could breathe new life into Islam."
Also, nearly all the leading politicians in Tehran supported the edict, such as the parliamentary speaker (and a leading contender for the presidency in 1997), Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri (Islamic Revolution News Agency, Feb. 15, 1998).
Jomhuri Eslami then announced in an editorial (quoted in the Associated Press, Sept. 27, 1998) that Khomeini's fatwa was still applicable and "any promise in this regard ... is a personal interpretation and has nothing to do with the Islamic Republic." The same day, Resalat expressed the thinking of mouthpiece of Iranian establishment extremists when it wrote (quoted in Iran Press Service, Sep. 27, 1998) that one way or another, one day or another, sooner or later, Rushdie and "all others associated with him" will be put to death.
United Kingdom
Curiously, while Tehran ignores Rushdie's attempted apology, it is eager for one from the British government, which it received in fulsome manner from Foreign Secretary Robin Cook who, echoing his predecessor Geoffrey Howe in 1989, stated that Britain "regretted the offence that the book The Satanic Verses has caused to Muslims in Iran and elsewhere in the world." In addition, Cook confirmed that "neither we nor any of our EU partners condoned the content of Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses" (Iranian embassy in London press release, Sep. 28, 1998).
The Foreign Office Minister in charge of the Middle East, Derek Fatchett, explained the change in policy. He said that Tehran needs to "make clear that it no longer subscribes to the view that there is a price on the head of Salman Rushdie," but said nothing about the edict having to be revoked (quoted by the Islamic Revolution News Agency, June 25, 1998).
The Guardian reported that a majority of EU members supported an agreement under which letters to Iran would refer to the continuing "validity and irrevocability" of the death sentence in exchange for written guarantees from Tehran that it would not carry it out.
It is particularly ironic, given Rushdie's well-deserved reputation as a "man of the left" and also a fervent supporter of the Labour Party, that it was Tony Blair's government that chose to accept the same warmed-over bromides that Conservative governments had repeatedly rejected. Thus was Blair both the first British prime minister to meet with Rushdie, breaking bread with him over dinner, and also the first one to sell him out.
Elsewhere
A Pakistani Christian was convicted in May 1997 of blaspheming Islam because he praised Rushdie's Satanic Verses and was sentenced to death for this impudence. Nor did the matter end there: to protest the gross injustice of this incident, Pakistan's Bishop John Joseph committed a public act of suicide, shooting himself in the head in the very courthouse where the Christian member of his flock had been tried and sentenced to death a few days earlier (Associated Press, May 5, 1997).
When news came of The Satanic Verses being published in Russia, the chairman of the Union of Muslims of Russia and Duma member Nadirshakh Khachilayev (Interfax, Apr. 23, 1998) called the possible publication "an insult and a direct challenge to twenty million Russian Muslims." The threats from Russian Muslims that followed caused publication of the translation to be cancelled.
Apologies
Rushdie seems not to understand his predicament but deludes himself with the illusion that he or the Iranian authorities can bring it to an end. Just days after Khomeini's 1989 edict against him, Rushdie made a half-hearted effort at an apology ("I profoundly regret the distress that the publication had occasioned to sincere followers of Islam"). The ayatollah swatted this aside with a blast that till reverberates years later: "Even if Salman Rushdie repents and becomes the most pious man of [our] time, it is incumbent on every Muslim to employ everything he has, his life and his wealth, to send him to hell" (Islamic Revolution News Agency, Feb. 19, 1989).
Rushdie tried to ignore this unremitting condemnation by signing a declaration in late 1990 that affirmed his Islamic faith but this step proved futile. His opponents (such as the self-styled Shari'ah Court of The United Kingdom, Case No: SR/F31, 5 Jamadi Al-Thani 1419/26 September 1998) make a point of confirming the validity of Khomeini's judgment; should Rushdie sincerely repent, one of them declares, the best he can hope for is to be killed and then buried in a Muslim cemetery.
Jomhuri-ye Eslami added on Oct. 18, 1997: "It seems as though the British are tired of footing the bill for a person no longer worth anything to the British court and are now trying to find a dustbin to throw him into and get rid of him. ... What Rushdie has after the Imam's decree is not a life. It is a gradual death. There is no difference between him and a corpse."
Thus does the story continue. (April 30, 1998)
