Jonathan Rauch writes, started on February 14, 1989:
. . . On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader and revolutionary dictator of Iran, pronounced a fatwa (an Islamic legal judgment) against the British novelist Salman Rushdie. It said:
“In the name of Him, the Highest. There is only one God, to whom we shall all return. I inform all zealous Muslims of the world that the author of the book entitled The Satanic Verses — which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran — and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content are sentenced to death.
“I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they may be found, so that no one else will dare to insult the Muslim sanctities. God willing, whoever is killed on this path is a martyr.” . . .
In January, the Iranian media reported that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reaffirmed the fatwa, telling Muslim pilgrims that Rushdie’s killing would be authorized by Islam. British officials, reported The Times of London, “anxiously played down” the comments, noting that the Iranian government had not changed its position.
Just so. Khamenei spoke not for a government but for an insurgency, one with millions of followers around the world. The West could not have understood that in 1989, but it cannot fail to understand it today.
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