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 News from Around the Americas | February 2005 
Iran Guards Say Rushdie Still Faces Execution
 AFP News
 Tehran - Iran's hardline Revolutionary Guards said Salman Rushdie still faced eventual execution, 16 years after revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini imposed a death sentence on the British novelist.
"Muslims have never accepted insults against their sacred values," the guards said two days before the anniversary of the fatwa, or religious decree, which disrupted Iran's relations with the European Union (news - web sites) through the 1990s.
"The day will come when they will punish the apostate Rushdie for his scandalous acts and insults against the Koran and the Prophet (Mohammed)," they said in reference to his book "The Satanic Verses" which prompted Khomenei's decree.
"The imam's historic fatwa, issued in the days when the infidel leaders who champion liberal democracy and Zionism devoted all their energies to fighting Islam, is testament to Muslim greatness and the revolutionary dynamism of Koranic and Islamic thought."
The guards' comments came a month after Khomenei's successor as Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said he still believed the British novelist deserved to die.
"They talk of respect for all religions but they support an apostate worthy of death like Rushdie," Khamenei complained in a message to Iranian pilgrims on January 19.
Under reformist President Mohammad Khatami (news - web sites), who was elected in 1997, Iran's leadership distanced itself from the order to kill Rushdie, born in Bombay, India, to a Muslim family.
In 1998, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi promised his then British counterpart Robin Cook that Iran would do nothing to implement the fatwa, despite a 2.8 million dollar bounty placed on Rushdie's head by a Tehran-based foundation.
The pledge eased nearly a decade of torn relations with the European Union but sparked a chorus of protest from hardliners.
On last year's anniversary, the 15th of Khordad Foundation - the charitable trust that offered the original bounty - issued a statement saying the fatwa remained valid. |
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