It remains difficult to reconcile the fact that groups of purportedly religious individuals, who claim to be acting from a higher moral authority, can still call for the death of an individual for a book written more than a decade ago.
Where is the morality in taking the stance "What you say appears insulting, so I demand your death?"
The recent knighting of Salman Rushdie has reignited the furore surrounding his book "The Satanic Verses". When it was first released, Ayatollah Khomeini, having not read the book himself, issued a fatwah against Rushdie, claiming that it would be morally acceptable, indeed necessary, for anyone claiming to be of muslim faith to kill Rushdie.
It would appear that since 1988, Rushdie has still not been forgiven for this work of fiction.
While some of the controversy had died down in the last few years, the recent knighting of Rushdie has given hard-liners with an obsession for killing people who disagree with them justification for reigniting the demand for the man's death.
The fatwah called for the death of Rushdie and anyone associated with the production of the book; this resulted in deaths and attacks; unable to reach Rushdie themselves, extremists killed the Japanese translator of the work, and seriously injured the Italian translator, as well as attempting to assassinate the publisher from Norway.
There's a lot of writing that we disagree with. If one were to insist on only writing something that everyone would agree with, one would publish at best a book of blank pages with no title.
It is sad to think that anyone can claim moral superiority while calling for someone's death.
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