Pakistani minister says Muslims would be right to launch suicide attacks

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1271043,00.html


I honestly don't know what to say, but rather than coming from the usual nutters, this is quoted from a Pakistani Minister.

It would almost be funny, if it wasn't so dangerous.

 

Nutters on both sides, TBH. Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to give Rushdie a knighthood when the Middle East is a pressure cooker of extremism and the West barely manages to maintain diplomatic relations with their Middle Eastern allies? FFS. Sometimes I think the UK government has a suicide pact going or something.

 

I can't be bothered with the whole honours system tbh, but why should the decision to honour someone be based on the views religious extremists?

Regardless of your views on the knighthood, the reaction from Pakistan is beyond ludicrous. And only reinforces the stereotype of Muslims held, unfairly for the most part, by many.

 

True, but this reaction has not exactly come as a surprise now, has it? To govern is to anticipate... the price of being the wiser one, and all that.

 

1.5 billion Muslims exploding at the same time would be quite loud, extraordinary and dangerous.....

 

Well, statements like this don't exactly help to keep the reputation of muslim people any more sincere, and Mushy made a mistake to suggest such a thing.

On the other hand, giving a knighthood to a man who became famous for bad-mouthing the muslim faith is just suggestive and stupid. I am sure there are plenty of good British people who are worthy of knighthood.

Why is it that this foreigner who parades around voicing his opinion that 'islam is stupid' should earn a knighthood, whereas another foreigner, for example, Mohammed Al-Fayed (owner of Harrods), who has lived in England for a good while, and pays more taxes every week than I have in my life savings, is refused a British passport?

 

Why is he even being given a knighthood? I've never even heard of the guy exept as "the author of The Satanic Verses". Maybe it's "not getting killed" that gets you a knighthood? I haven't been killed yet - maybe I deserve a knighthood too.

 

FFS! This kind of ignorance really gets under my skin. Have you ever read the Satanic Verses? It's not about 'bad-mouthing the muslim faith'! It's a story. One that was inspired by the oldest surviving writings concerning Mohammed, but a work of fiction nonetheless. It's regarded as a quality novel (Booker Prize finalist) even though I don't have much time for it myself...

More importantly, it isn't really that offensive to Islam since the texts that inspire it, are real and genuine - and are accepted as such by many Muslim scholars.

Do the Atheist organisations complain when Muslims (and other religious groups) each lay claim to their gods... when these atheists clearly 'know' [i.e. believe] that there is no god? Should they issue some death threats too?

Do Christians issue death threats every time there is a book, film or television programme that portrays the Christian Church and it's clergy in a bad light?

I'm a Liverpool fan. Should they have awarded a knighthood to Sir Alex Ferguson, when clearly they knew it would inflame Liverpool, Arsenal and Man City fans...? In fact, has there been *any* knighthood where the recipient was universally lauded? Of course not.

As for your choice of Mohammed Al-Fayed... it's laughable. As we speak, he's getting up the noses of many Royalists (an ethnic minority of the modern kind), so by your populist logic, that should discount him. That aside, should we knight a crook who conned the House of Fraser from Tiny Rowland/Lonhro with the Sultan of Brunei's money (albeit with the blessing of Thatcher)? The same guy who was bribing MPs in the cash-for-questions era.

Now, if you complained about Botham's knighthood, I might take you seriously. Forgetting the £££s he's raised for charity, should we be giving a gong to a ball-tampering druggie?

 

No Christians threated to kill anyone when Dan Brown wrote The Da Vinci Code, but as soon as Salman Rushdie writes a (fictitious, remember) story a bunch of uppity Muslims call for his execution. "Jihad this, kill so and so, blow up the infidels!"

Jesus, it's no surprise Muslims are seen as extremists and terrorists!

 

The thing is that a Fatwa (sp?) was placed on his head originally, it was only removed after one hell of a lot of political pressure!

 

The fatwa was not removed. It can only be removed by the guy who issued it, but Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is dead.

In 1998, Iran issued a statement saying that the death sentence will never be carried out, but in 2005 Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated the threat. On February 14th 2006 (17th anniversary of issuing of the fatwa) the Iranian new agency declares that the fatwa will remain forever, and an Iranian religious organisation offers a $2.8m bounty.

Interestingly, on Feb 14th every year Rushdie gets a card from Iran reminding him of the vow to kill him. Kind of a funny day for him I guess. 'What's in todays post? Hmmm.. a Valentines card and a death threat'.

 

He said that he always gets an interesting valentines card.

 

Although I doubt that Ayatollah Khomeini actually ever read the book (can't blame him for once), and his fatwa can hardly be called an informed decision, the novel does have what could be construed as a few controversial passages in it:

- The novel refers to the Prophet Mohammed by an insulting name used by Christians in the Middle Ages.

- A scribe called "Salman" writes down God's commands that are coming from the lips of Mohammed. The scribe, however, decides to play a trick by changing some of the divine words. Since Muslims hold the Koran as the revealed word of God, they sort of took offence to that.

- The title of the book indeed refers to an old legend retold by Rushdie. According to the legend, some of the Koran's original verses originated with Satan, and Mohammed later deleted them. By repeating this legend, Rushdie offended Muslims by associating the holy Koran with the work of Satan.

- One part of the novel probably outraged Muslims the most. It describes people mocking and imitating Mohammed's twelve wives. Muslims revere Muhammad's wives as the "mothers of all believers."

Some Muslims felt that they had been betrayed by one of their own. Rushdie had been born a Muslim (although he was not practicing). Muslims accused Rushdie of turning his back on his roots to embrace Western culture. In the minds of many, The Satanic Verses symbolized the hostility of the West against the Islamic world.

Slight overreaction, I know. But given the original fall-out of his book (and there was some serious, heavy-duty stuff well beyond just a bunch of hysterical fundamentalists shouting and burning effigees in the streets of Iran), the Middle-East vs. West political situation as it is, and knowing how, well, touchy everyone is at the moment, was it really such a good idea to give this almost forgotten literary has-been an OBE just to stir things up again? This is igorance bordering on arrogance that I strongly object to. Unless it was intentional. I have some ideas about that, too.

No, although The Life of Brian and The Last Tempation of Jesus Christ got some pretty bad (and equally undeserved) overreactions (no death threats, admittedly; at least not from prominent leaders). As for Rushdie's death threat, Christian church representatives, when asked, always stated that it was his "blasphemy" that was regrettable, not the reaction it provoked. In a recent review in The New York Times, Michael Kinsley states:

 

That's ****ing sick tbh.

 

I wonder if Hallmark has a special card for that occasion?

 

I think you've pretty much endorsed my argument...

Rushdie was an apostate - which is worse that being a vanilla kafir: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam

An apostate that they don't know about, they won't bother, but when they have the gall to publish books critical of Islam, then they *have* to send the boys round.

I'm afraid you've also misquoted Michael Kinsley - well, you are being disingenuous at least. That quote comes from his review of Christopher Hitchens' book 'God is Not Great' which is anti-religious across the boards (as if you couldn't guess from the title).

Elsewhere you'll find the odd comment from other religious leaders saying things like Rushdie was unwise to so crudely blaspheme against Islam, but I don't think you'll find anyone saying that he deserved a fatwa.

That's not to say that people of other religions don't get hot under the collar when their own beliefs are challenged or mocked; it just that these reactions rarely call for someone's murder and are rarely endorsed by said religion's hierarchy.

As for the Knighthood, you are free to argue that he does not deserve one for his works , and you can argue that it is right that our government should be sensitive to/aware of the feelings and views of other nations, but it's sheer folly to suggest that the Honours list must be approved by the Revolutionary Council in Tehran.

If we assume for the sake of argument that Rushdie's life and works as a whole are otherwise worthy of a gong, then the hateful and bigoted sentiments from the Islamic world should not be considered. In return, I wouldn't expect Sir Salman to complain if the hate-mail he receives next February doesn't use the correct title.

In short, refusing someone a title because someone somewhere else has committed (what would be considered) a crime is sheer lunacy.

 

"roses are red, violets are blue, allah be praised, death to you"

never read his book, but this is a bit over the top...
if he politely declines the honour, would that mitigate the impending suicide attacks?

 

Well, I was not trying to challenge it --just add to the perspective.

I could not find the exact link, seeing as this was a quick post during a brief lunchtime... not so much disingenuity as sloppiness.

Didn't condemn it either --instead sort of reinforced the viewpoint that his book was blasphemous.

Many wars have started over the fact that neither opponent wanted to blink first.

Sure, we can tell Tehran to piss off, and the camel it rode in on. But the fact is that things are very sensitive in the Middle East, and giving this guy an OBE is going to inflame things (again), far beyond simply pissing of some fundamentalists. In the context of the current political climate, it is seen as a clear political statement, and to ignore that is stupid and foolhardy.

We should have learned from US foreign policy by now that standing on the moral high ground does not mean a whole lot when innocent civilians are dying at your feet. Politicians are only too quick to talk about the pragmatics of realpolitik when it suits their own little power schemes. Well, here's some reality: honouring Rushdie = piss off the Middle East. So what is more important: trying to bridge the ever deepening divide between the Christian/secular West and the Muslim Middle East that threatens to destabilise the world, or making some pointless and trivial gesture that is sure to widen this gap even more? Make your choice and pay your price.

 

The thought crossed my mind. With the devious motivation of poking the wasp's nest, the Christian side have missed the target; it's Pakistan making the OTT noises, with a more measured response from Iran.

Perhaps Islam should honour Dan Brown.

 

Well, let's take that Christopher Hitchens guy, author of "God Is Not Great" (no association with the Islam prayer that starts "Allahuh akbar" I'm sure). Although his book makes many very good points, his personal track record definitely shouts "issues" at me... a legendary boozer (he drinks, he says, "because it makes other people less boring. I have a great terror of being bored. But I can work with or without it. It takes quite a lot to get me to slur") the positions he takes seem directed less by a coherent ideology and more by being controversial for the sake of being controversial. This is the man who criticised Mother Theresa and the Dalai Lama, to name a few.

He is good friends with Salman Rushdie (another man of personal contradictions --remember that in the early 1980s and throughout the Margaret Thatcher era, Rushdie was known mainly as a critic of the British establishment, not a member-- and who I sometimes feel enjoys his role as literary martyr a bit too much), and more recently, interestingly also Paul Wolfowitz, since Hitchens is a staunch defender of the Bush policy and the invasion of Iraq.

Perhaps I am making connections where there aren't any. But often the most weird conspiracies start at a very ordinary, personal level.

Seconded.