No Place for Rushdie in New World Order? : Terror: The author wants his life back. The United Nations, flushed with victory in the Gulf, seems not to care.

The murder in Tokyo late last week of Hitoshi Igarashi, translator of the Japanese edition of “The Satanic Verses,” which followed the July 3 stabbing in Milan of Ettore Capriolo, the Italian edition’s translator, has elicited no comment, angry or otherwise, from the White House or Downing Street, the Elysee Palace or U.N. headquarters. The words terror and freedom , so often used by Western leaders, are deemed not to pertain in this matter. There would seem to be no place in the new world order for Salmon Rushdie.

Having voted resolutions condemning Iraq for its human-rights violations, the U.N. Security Council maintains without embarrassment its silence on Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s astonishing decree of February, 1989, sentencing Rushdie to death. The aim was to deny not only Rushdie but anyone connected with the publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses” the most fundamental rights put forth in the United Nation’s own Universal Declarations: the rights to life, security and freedom of the imagination.

Having driven Iraqi troops from Kuwait with a battle cry about respect for international law, Western statesmen balk at raising with Iran its internationally unlawful call for Rushdie’s death. Having satisfied conditions for entering the new world order by sitting out the Gulf War, Iran is being scoured once again by diplomats and international businessmen for signs of “moderates.” Rushdie and his security guards, meanwhile, scour London and its environs every few days for a new safehouse.

Rushdie’s life-on-the-run has taken on renewed urgency in recent months. It appears to be perfectly understood inside Iran that Rushdie’s fate is not at issue in the new world order, and this has ushered something of a new era of relations between the author and the Islamic theocracy--a revival, one might say, of the spirit of ’89.

A number of Iranian government officials, feeling a new sense of freedom, have spoken out in favor of Rushdie’s murder. Mehrdad Kobabi, an Iranian national accused of taking part in the firebombing of bookstores in England, was deported to Iran this spring after a British court dismissed charges; he arrived in Tehran, stated he wanted to see Rushdie killed and was promptly named special adviser to the Iranian government’s ministry of science.

A private Islamic foundation with ties to the government not long ago doubled the bounty on Rushdie’s head. Last month there came reports from London that an assassination squad had approached the Iranian government with plans for Rushdie’s killing, coming away with tacit support and perhaps some funding.

The British government has had nothing to say about these recent developments. When Britain and Iran resumed relations last September, the Iranian government pledged that it would respect international law and not interfere in British internal affairs. Busy with the construction of the new world order, Britain’s foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, said the pledge was Iran’s way of saying it would no longer encourage the death decree or participate in its implementation. Actions, of course, do the real talking: Round-the-clock British security officers keep Rushdie hidden and on the move.

While in no way satisfied with his government’s quiet deal with Iran, Rushdie, too, began late last summer to take a less combative stance toward those who would wish him dead. He began talking less of the Iranian death threat and more of the anguish his novel had caused Britain’s Muslims. In December of last year, joined by six Muslim scholars, he publicly affirmed Allah as the only God and Mohammed as his prophet. As “a contribution to (the) new atmosphere of goodwill,” he further agreed not to publish a paperback edition of “The Satanic Verses” in England “while any risk of further offense remains.”

Not only Britain’s Muslims but Iran, of course, was to understand this as an apology and a deal. Khomeini’s successor as Iran’s religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wasted little time formally renewing the death decree, and not long after, two of the scholars who had witnessed Rushdie’s affirmation of Islam withdrew their support for him.

Rushdie wants his life back. He is not going to pull it off on his own. Those who want us to believe that we have begun a new era in relations among nation-states must insist that Rushdie’s fate is an international issue.

The Bush Administration has said that Iran has enough influence over the captors of the hostages still held in Lebanon to force their release, and has linked an improvement of relations with the Iranian government to their release. Similar linkage should hold with regard to the Rushdie decree.

Iranian officials are said to be eager to have the Security Council take up its lingering claims to reparations resulting from its eight-year war with Iraq. President Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pragmatist of sorts, but a cleric and no moderate, plans to use elections next spring and the emergence of Iraq as the new regional pariah to consolidate his power and usher his country back into the community of nations. He must be made to explain his position on Rushdie. Perhaps he will choose to disavow such “moderate” statements as those he has made claiming Western intelligence agencies put Rushdie up to writing his book, which was then brought out by “Zionist publishers.”

Let’s see to it that any reordering of the world has a place for all those who speak out defiantly, who think and write to subvert and transgress the regnant order--even those traditions and institutions we most cherish. And if it is a world where human rights and international law are to matter as never before, let’s make a place in it--a safe place--for Rushdie.