Rushdie fatwa 'remains in place'

A high-level Iranian hard-line cleric today said the religious edict calling for the killing of Salman Rushdie remained in place and can not be revoked.

He warned Britain was defying the Islamic world by granting the author a knighthood.

The reminder of the fatwa, issued in 1989 by then-supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, came from Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, who does not hold a government position, but has the influential post of delivering the sermon during Tehran’s Friday prayers once a month.

Thousands of worshippers at Tehran University chanted, “Death to the English,” as he delivered the sermon, aired live on state radio.

“They have awarded him only because he insulted the prophet (Mohammed). In such a situation, awarding him means confronting 1.5 billion Muslims around the world,” Khatami said of Britain’s knighthood to Rushdie.

“In Islamic Iran, the revolutionary fatwa of the Imam (Khomeini) is still alive and cannot be changed,” Khatami told worshippers. “Britons should know that they are the losers in this matter, 100 percent.” He did not elaborate or directly call for the fatwa to be carried out.

The Iranian government complained to Britain this week over its decision to grant a knighthood to Rushdie. On Wednesday, 221 politicians from Iran’s 290-member parliament signed a statement condemning the honour.

Khomeini issued the 1989 fatwa calling on Muslims to kill Rushdie because of his book The Satanic Verses, which the Iranian leader called insulting to Islam. Rushie had to go into hiding and the fatwa deeply damaged Britain’s relations with Iran.

In 1998, the Iranian government sought to patch up ties with London by declaring that it would not support the fatwa, but said it could not rescind Khomeini’s edict.