Satanic Over-Reaction

Sir Salman Rushdie celebrates his 60th birthday today in familiar circumstances: he is once again the subject of death threats across the Islamic world.

Eighteen years after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill him, a government minister in Pakistan said yesterday that Rushdie’s recent knighthood justified suicide bombing.

The question of blasphemy in The Satanic Verses, Rushdie’s 1988 tale of a prophet misled by the devil, remains a deeply sensitive issue in much of the Muslim world and the author’s inclusion in the Queen’s Birthday Honours last week has inflamed anti-British sentiment.

Let's all take a moment and bask in the thoughtful and staid pronouncements flowing from the Religion of Peace. In the tradition of rioting over comic strips, the Muslim World now says that the knighting of The Satanic Verses' author - justifies suicide bombing.

In my humble opinion, the utterly Satanic threat of suicide bombing - justifies carpet bombing.