Iran cleric: Rushdie fatwa still stands

Source: Seattle Times

TEHRAN, Iran -- An high-level Iranian cleric said Friday that the religious edict calling for the killing of Salman Rushdie cannot be revoked, and he warned Britain was defying the Islamic world by granting the author knighthood.

Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami reminded worshippers of the 1989 fatwa during a sermon at Tehran University, aired live on state radio. Thousands of worshippers chanted "Death to the English."

Khatami does not hold a government position but has the influential post of delivering the sermon during Friday prayers once a month in the Iranian capital. He did not directly call for the fatwa to be carried out.

"Awarding him means confronting 1.5 billion Muslims around the world," Khatami said. "In Islamic Iran, the revolutionary fatwa ... is still alive and cannot be changed."

Read more: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Rushdie_Protests.html

She's a good host for Top Chef. Much better than the spokesbot from the first season.

Any idiot would have realized the firestorm this would create in the Islamic world. It's almost as if Britain wanted to stir up a hornet's nest.

If large numbers of people elsewhere will throw a violent fit as a result?

There are other ways that a nation can honor its citizens.

They have nothing to be sensitive about.

Fundies get offended. That's one of the things they do. The sane world can't be intimidated by that.

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At least with the Beatles, their music resulted in the successful "invasion" of the United States.

However, I think it's a complete crock of bullshit to walk around on eggshells so that these people won't fucking kill us.

Who the fuck are they anyway to tell us who we can and cannot honor, eh? How many people has Salman Rushdie killed? No one to my knowledge. It's not like he's some Nazi.

If we listened to your sorry ass excuse for these assholes, then gay people would have to not be themselves just to please those homophobic bastards who go around killing gays all the time!

These fucking assholes don't have the right to take their disagreement, or even "offense" and use it to justify acts of violence. At that point it crosses a fucking uncrossable line!

IMO, this act cannot be considered separately from Britain's complicity in the Iraq war.

any spell they have on another is reversed. Just like when a vampire is killed any of its victims that have not partaken on blood revert back to their previous form.

The fatwa should had been canceled when the Ayatollah died.

And Rushdie isn't exactly hiding anymore.

(I saw him speak a few years ago)

These idiots are just the Middle East's answer to Falwell or Robertson. Those morons are always praying for harm to come to those who might be a little more open minded than they are.

Ugh, oh well, all I can be thankful for is that the fact that their invisible friends don't seem to offer them much help in realizing their perverse dreams.

The fatwa wasn't just against Rushdie--it was against anybody who helped The Satanic Verses see print, knowing what was in it.

So, yeah, they haven't got Rushdie yet. But he'll go back into hiding, no doubt, now that the festival of hate and intolerance--all with the Muhammed Seal of Approval, trademarked by a group consisting of the Iranian, Saudi governments, and thousands of preachers around the word--has started up again.