Rushdie Visit With Clinton Irks Muslims

President Clinton’s meeting with controversial British novelist Salman Rushdie, intended to voice support for human rights and free expression, has instead drawn widespread criticism in the Muslim world even among U.S. supporters, who fear that it could radicalize anti-American sentiment and jeopardize support for the Middle East peace process.

There has been quiet but pervasive unease among Muslim nations over Clinton’s publicized meeting last week with Rushdie, whose book “The Satanic Verses” earned him a death warrant from the late Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and widespread condemnation throughout the Islamic world for a book deemed heretical to Islam.

“Clinton should never have met him, it was not appropriate,” Abdullah Naseef, executive director of the Saudi Arabian-based Muslim World League, said in an interview Sunday. “The majority of people feel insulted by this. Salman Rushdie should have been forgotten, and now all this does is add to the problem.”

Saif Islam Banna, a senior official with the powerful Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, said the meeting “has done great harm” to relations between the world of Islam and the United States, which he said is overestimating the importance of the Indian-born author who has been in hiding for nearly five years since the book’s publication.

“Is Salman Rushdie worth all of that, to meet the president of the biggest state in the whole world?” Banna asked. “Who is Salman Rushdie? What has he done? Has he invented a cure for a disease like cancer? Did he travel to outer space? What Salman Rushdie has done is to attack the beliefs of millions of Muslims. If we review the statistics, the Prophet Mohammed is the most popular human being on Earth, and of course it is a harm that Clinton has met him.”

Arab political analysts said Clinton risks further radicalizing political discourse in the Mideast, where political Islam has challenged America’s role in the peace process with Israel and chafed under U.S. policy toward Muslims in Iraq, Libya and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Predictably, Iran came out harshly against Rushdie’s meeting with Clinton and Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

“Mr. Clinton: You have met an author who is hated across the Islamic world,” Ayatollah Mohammed Yazdi, the head of Iran’s judiciary, said in a public address Friday.

“By accepting such an author, you have brought such notoriety upon yourself in the Islamic world that I dare say you are the most hated person before all Muslims of the world,” he said.

But even secular Muslims in Middle Eastern nations normally supportive of U.S. policy in the region have been discomfited by the meeting, both because of its potential impact on public opinion and because the vast majority of Muslims seem to share the view that the book is offensive to Islam.

The highly secular Wafd Party in Egypt, for example, was condemnatory of the meeting.

“It is an insult to Islam,” Fouad Badrawi, secretary general of the party, said in an interview. “Especially when this meeting has occurred between the president of the leading country of the world and a man who has attacked Islam. You cannot justify it. Islam is a way of life and a respected religion, and you cannot say you are supporting human rights while you are attacking a religion.”

Saif Abbas Abdullah, chief of the political science department at Kuwait University, said Clinton demonstrated both bad judgment and bad timing in deciding to meet Rushdie last week, particularly with the Middle East peace process at a crucial juncture.

“I don’t believe the human rights of Mr. Rushdie have been violated,” Abdullah said. “It is rather that the dignity and the pride of the Muslims have been violated. Rushdie has been making money, giving expensive lectures, and for a work which actually isn’t a very good work.”

Most Muslim governments, other than Iran, have been notably silent about the meeting, reflecting a widely shared wish among governments here that the Rushdie issue would simply go away.

Even in Iran, the relatively more moderate government of President Hashemi Rafsanjani has privately told diplomats that the more that Western nations try to raise the Rushdie issue, the longer it will take to resolve.

Rafsanjani has said that after Khomeini’s death, it is impossible for any other cleric to reverse the fatwa , or religious decree, he issued in 1989 declaring that Rushdie should be killed “and sent to hell” for writing the book.

Privately, Iranian officials say that the matter should simply be left there to be forgotten, and that no new fatwas will be issued.

Meanwhile, Islamic radicals in Iran, playing largely to a domestic audience, have upped the bounty for Rushdie’s death to $3 million.

But the British government has repeatedly raised the Rushdie issue as a condition for improved relations with Iran, and the meeting last week sends a clear signal that the Clinton Administration also regards it as a vital policy issue.

In the Arab world, these approaches seem to many to show a lack of understanding of Muslim sensibilities.

Attacks on Islam are simply not tolerated, even in the most progressive nations.

“The point is that when Salman Rushdie wrote this book, he attacked the prophet, the angels, the prophet’s family: He attacks many things which we in the Muslim world respect, and I think no one in the Muslim world, either religious or secular, would accept such a thing,” explained Fahmy Huweidy, a writer on Islamic issues.

“This does not mean that they agree with Imam Khomeini’s fatwa , but at the same time, they don’t welcome such a person who attacks religious things in the Muslim world. At the same time, we are seeing how Muslims are being massacred in Bosnia, for example, and from the human rights point of view, we are not seeing any support from the United States or the Europeans to intervene. Why do we have sympathy and support for Salman Rushdie and reluctance in the Bosnia case, where hundreds of thousands of people are involved?”