Breaking: Muslims Angry

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The seething and burning continues to get worse, building up to the day of prayer tomorrow when we can expect a rather large explosion of rage from the Religion of Peace and Tolerance: New Rushdie protests after Britain defends award.

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Muslim anger flared Thursday after Britain defended Salman Rushdie’s knighthood, with fresh protests against the novelist and Pakistani clerics bestowing a title on Osama bin Laden in response.

Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in Indian Kashmir and Pakistan, while Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, criticised the timing of the honour. …

The Pakistani Ulema Council, a private body that claims to be the biggest of its kind in the country with 2,000 scholars, said it had given Al-Qaeda chief Bin Laden its “highest title for a Muslim warrior.”

“We are pleased to award the title of Saifullah (sword of Allah) to Osama bin Laden after the British government’s decision to bestow the title of ‘Sir’ on blasphemer Rushdie,” council chairman Maulana Tahir Ashrafi told AFP.

Bin Laden has been blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people. He is widely believed to be hiding on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Later Afzal Sahi — the speaker of the Punjab province assembly and a member of the Pakistan Muslim League party that backs President Pervez Musharraf — said during a debate that he would obey his duty as a Muslim to murder Rushdie. “If this man comes in front of me I will definitely kill him,” he said.

During a protest by thousands of people in Lahore against Musharraf’s suspension of the Pakistani chief justice, a large part of the crowd briefly chanted “Death to Britain! Death to Rushdie!,” witnesses said. …

In Indian Kashmir, a Muslim cleric Thursday called for books by Rushdie to be burned. Grand Mufti Bashir-u-Din argued in a statement that Rushdie was still “liable to be killed for rendering gravest injury.” …

In the first comment on the issue by Indonesia, foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda said that the “timing of the British award to Rushdie has not created a conducive situation” for understanding between religions.

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Last updated: 2023-04-04 11:11 am PDT
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