Islamic Uproar Over Comic-Strip Koran Spurs Author to Sue

The author of the first comic-strip Koran, branded a heretic and a blasphemer by Islamic groups, said Tuesday that he will sue them for defamation.

“This is a declaration of war,” Youssef Seddik said. The soft-spoken, bespectacled scholar has been condemned by Islamic groups, which accuse him of heresy for daring to draw cartoons depicting tales from the Muslim holy book.

Seddik, 47, said his lawyers will begin legal proceedings later this week against the Supreme Islamic Council in his native Tunisia.

The council, a government-appointed body, said last month that a pictorial representation of the Koran was “an error and a heresy because it would distort the word of God.”

Seddik said he is also planning to sue the 45-nation Islamic Conference Organization, which said that the comic book, “Tell Me a Story From the Koran,” is sacrilegious and causes harm to Muslims.

“Let them condemn me. I could never risk my life for a novel as Salman Rushdie has done, but I can for a cause like this,” Seddik said.

Rushdie, the Indian-born author of “Satanic Verses,” has been in hiding ever since Iran’s late leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, accused him of blaspheming Islam and condemned him to death.