Rushdie knighted
Britain bestows honor on controversial writer
Last week Salman Rushdie was knighted as part of the Queen’s birthday honors.
While some may criticize the India-born author as arrogant or dismiss his books, Muslims have a more visceral reaction. His 1988 “The Satanic Verses” describes a cosmic battle between good and evil and contained a highly contentious passage about the Prophet Mohammed and his family, for which many Islamists feel he should be hanged.
But so far Blighty is standing firm. “We have a right to express opinions and a tolerance of other people’s point of view, and we don’t apologize for that,” British Home Secretary John Reid told a group of U.S. business leaders in New York.
