Rushdie knighted

Britain bestows honor on controversial writer

By ALI JAAFAR

The Brits have finally found a way to get back at Islamic fundamentalists in their typically polite manner.

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.