In a country that has free speech, Mohammed, Jesus, God even is fair game for criticism.

If you don’t like what is said, you argue against it, or don’t buy the book.

Of course Rushdie shouldn’t have been knighted - but on literary grounds only.

THE KING has called for priest and cup,

The King has taken spur and blade

To dub True Thomas a belted knight,

And all for the sake o’ the songs he made….

…“I ha’ harpit ye up to the throne o’ God,

“I ha’ harpit your midmost soul in three;

“I ha’ harpit ye down to the Hinges o’ Hell,

“And—ye—would—make—a Knight o’ me!”

http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/volumeXI/truethomas.html

“I dread the return of the Caliphate

Who will apply to extradite me

Put me on trial

And then execute me

As a traitor.”

may not be a coded call for Hussein’s murder, but it’s a pretty plain wish that he could be killed for what he said.

One reason for hostility to “The Satanic Verses” among muslims who actually read it was that the offensive passages were the fantasies of a muslim and reflected the psychology and identification of some believers rather too well for their tastes.

Simon T, it isn’t just a “dangerous impetus towards reality-denying violence” among some British muslims, but a dangerous and self-harming denial of reality

Like I said, I didn’t dispute that Ayaan Hirsi was in danger in the Netherlands as we all know what happened to Theo Van Gogh. My point was that facing danger does not make Ayaan Hirsi’s campaign worth anything as it also contains a lot of exaggeration and misrepresentation on, for example, the FGM issue, which she alleges is a religious problem perpetuated by “the imams”, when it is in fact perpetuated by an older generation of women and opposed by many imams. And she used her “life horror story” as an authoritative backdrop against which to vilify the Muslims. That was my point - that “courage” doesn’t add any value to an already worthless endeavour.

Is anyone seriously suggesting that the life of Hirsi Ali is not at risk in the Netherlands? The murder of Theo Van Gogh surely illustrates that to deny this is to deny the realities of what might happen to anyone who questions the most radical Islamists.

I also think that to assert that her leaving for America is wholly to do with her immigration history is a red herring - a crumb of comfort for those who wish to ignore all that she says. Her story was known about for years before it was used against her in a rather nasty bit of politicking in the Netherlands - a country which has no idea which way to turn, being rather racist and yet fearful of upsetting its minorities.

As for Ed Hussain, the only parts of his book that I’ve read were the extracts dealing with Saudi life and which would, from all I hear of the Kingdom from expats, sound damningly accurate of another racist society which has little clear idea of how to face the future.

Mr Hussain’s main points that I’ve seen him make in TV interviews, that there is a dangerous impetus towards reality-denying violence amongst British muslims, are also difficult to deny and so need to be denigrated by attacking his “right to speak” and insinuating that he might be an MI5 plant. Even if he were, his points would still need to be answered without taking refuge in irrelevant detail.

As for Mr Rushdie, a lot of people who actually read books (unlike, one suspects, Pakistani ministers and Iranian artistic arbiters) are a little puzzled - if you were going to knight anyone, Ian McEwan would have been a more obvious choice. Having said that, Midnight’s Children was a landmark in Anglophone fiction - a true classic in which, it’s often forgotten, he skewered the India of Indira Ghandi’s “Emergency” of the 1970s.

Supposing that anyone there had been reading his works, perhaps Pakistan might have been upset by “Shame” the follow-up in which he lampooned the course of Pakistan’s awful history.

Both of those works, however, owe an excessive debt to Gunter Grass and Gabriel Garcia Marquez respectively.

As for The Satanic Verses, people often forget that its major target was Thatcherism and British attitudes to immigration - the main reason why Norman Tebbit and the Daily Mail hated him so much.

On balance then, quite a few good things about him, then.

As a muslim friend said during the original row: “Do we have to kill him - can’t we just cut a bit off?”

That daily mail article starts of on the right track but then leaves a bad taste after praising the ‘heroic’ Ed and Hirsi Ali. But typical really, you can’t expect too much. btw I didn’t know all that about those two islamophobes. Good comments from you. http://www.shadeofrahmah.blogspot.com

That daily mail article starts of on the right track but then leaves a bad taste after praising the ‘heroic’ Ed and Hirsi Ali. But typical really, you can’t expect too much. btw I didn’t know all that about those two islamophobes. Good comments from you.