BookOpinion

Author Salman Rushdie said he was “thrilled and humbled” to be awarded a British knighthood, according to Reuters, but he had no comment on how the honor has once again stoked the fires of Muslim rage. The knighthood is considered an affront to some Muslims who believe his book “Satanic Versus” is blasphemy.

Rushdie responded Monday to an Associated Press query that asked if he had been urged by British authorities not to say anything because of security concerns or whether he had considered not accepting the honor.

“The British authorities have not asked me to do or not do anything,” Rushdie wrote in an e-mail to the AP. “I have simply chosen to remain out of this storm for the moment. And nobody is turning anything down.”

“By knighting Salman Rushdie,” writes Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of the book “Infidel,” “the queen has honored the freedom of conscience and creativity cherished in the West, making her a symbol of the essence of our way of life.” Read her full column:

Imagine if a crowd of Englishmen marched in London carrying effigies of Muhammad, peace be upon him, stacks of the Koran, miniatures of the Kaaba in Mecca and Saudi flags. Imagine if they then built a bonfire and hurled the items one at a time into that fire screaming “Long Live the Queen!” each time the flames shot up.

This would be the equivalent of what hardline Muslim students did in the eastern Pakistani city of Multan, to take just one example, when they burned effigies this week of Queen Elizabeth II and Salman Rushdie, chanting “Kill him! Kill him!” in response to his recently bestowed knighthood.

Such raging crowds, of course, rarely appear in the modern West (unless as soccer hooligans). But they have become a common site across the Muslim world every time a pope, some cartoonist or, now, the British queen, step over some line in the sand drawn by the forces of intolerance.

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