Poor Salman Rushdie

I was surprised today to see the Jerusalem Post report that student leaders at a martyrdom-recruitment meeting in Tehran gave volunteers the option of signing up for a suicide mission to assassinate Salman Rushdie. I had been under the impression that the fatwa calling for his murder had been rescinded, or at least allowed to fade away into the realm of "What ever happened with that thing ..." The other two options were to blow yourself up defending Iran (which probably means trudging across the Iraqi border to an American or British military base) or to blow yourself up along with Israeli civilians.

Not only was the fatwa never rescinded, but the Iranian Martyrs Foundation (or Martrydom Seekers, depending on the news source) reiterated last week that it (and the bounty) remain in full effect.

"Imam Khomeini's fatwa on the apostate Salman Rushdie will remain in force for eternity,' said the Martyrs Foundation, which has offered a $2.8 millon (BD1m) bounty for Rushdie's head."

I'm not sure they have the authority to do this, since their connection to the clerics running Iran's theocracy is vague, but that hardly matters when some disaffected nutcase walks into your book reading with a hand grenade. In 1998, then-president Khatami said that the affair was "completely finished," but other Iranian officials said that only the Ayatollah Khomeini could lift the fatwa, and he was already dead.

Rushdie is a brave and brilliant man, one worth a hundred ayatollahs. I'm saddened to learn that his life is once again disrupted by the bloodlust of the ignorant and primitive.