Iran Renews Death Edict for Author Rushdie

Iran’s spiritual leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Sunday renewed a death edict announced four years ago against British author Salman Rushdie for affronting Muslim sensitivities.

Rushdie, appearing in England, described the sentence as a “straightforward terrorist threat.”

A Muslim foundation that offered more than $3 million for Rushdie’s head said Sunday that the time is ripe for carrying out the death sentence originally pronounced by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In a hard-line revival of the edict first issued by the founder of the Islamic republic shortly before he died four years ago, Khamenei adamantly ruled out any reversal of Khomeini’s order.

“Imam Khomeini has thrown an arrow at this impudent apostate. The arrow is moving toward its target and will sooner or later hit it,” he said.

“The verdict must undoubtedly be carried out and will be carried out. . . . Therefore, it is incumbent upon every Muslim who has access to this mercenary author to drive this harmful being out of the way of Muslims and punish him,” the Iranian news agency IRNA quoted Khamenei as saying.

IRNA said Khamenei was addressing a meeting of Islamic clergy and students on the fourth anniversary of Khomeini’s fatwa.

Rushdie has been in hiding since the fatwa (Islamic death warrant) was imposed on him by Khomeini for alleged blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed in the Indian-born author’s book “The Satanic Verses.”

Rushdie appeared Sunday at a service in King’s College chapel in the university city of Cambridge. He told the congregation:

“Just as (this chapel) may be taken as a symbol of what is best about religion, so the fatwa has become a symbol of what is worst. It is, in fact, a straightforward terrorist threat.”

He said writers in Iran who had defended him were being threatened with death squads. The 45-year-old author also said religious fanaticism has taught him that good and evil come before religion.

“That is where our freedom lies, and it is that freedom, among other things, which the fatwa threatens, and which it cannot be allowed to destroy,” he said in an emotional 20-minute address.

Rushdie vowed last week to step up his public appearances and to travel abroad more frequently.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati appealed to Western countries to keep the Rushdie issue separate from bilateral relations with Iran.

“Some Western governments have linked or connected the destiny of bilateral relations between Iran and themselves to the destiny of this person,” Velayati told a Tehran news conference Sunday.

“What they have done is wrong. They should separate the issues,” he added.

However, Britain said Sunday that Iran’s reiteration of the death edict against Rushdie prevents the resumption of full diplomatic relations with Tehran.