Iranian bounty on Salman Rushdie - exhibit #1 in 3rd century thinking

Because of the recent protests on the film clip denigrating Mohamed, Salman Rusdie has resurfaced in the news. His novel Satanic Verses earned him a bounty placed by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A fatwa was issued calling for his death. This is how the ignorant and feeble minded deal with something they don't like.

Now the bounty has been raised "to $3.3 million from $2.8 million." And how about this for logical and rational thinking.

"In 1998, the Iranian government declared it would not support the fatwa, but at the same time the government said it could not rescind the edict, since under Islamic law, that could be done only by the person who issued it. Khomeini died in June 1989."

The rationale for the increased bounty is that if it had been carried out the film clip and other 'blasphemous' events would not have occurred. One wonders why a bounty hasn't been placed on the film clip producer? Most likely it is recognized that he, or them, has not been accorded any credibility as has Mr. Rushdie.

It brings back too the 'death to Israel and "down with the US' chants. These have become so rote that all meaning has been lost. But what we have is the all too expected attempt to shift the fault of the country's ills to Israel and the US.

Salman Rushdie, in a NPR story,  has the correct assessment on recent events as quoted from an interview on Morning Edition.

"It is the "mindset of the fanatic, mindset of the tyrant" to respond to an insult to one's religion with violence." "To murder people who had nothing to do with it," he added, is a "deeply uncivilized attitude."

"Something has gone wrong inside the Muslim world," Rushdie continued. Just a few decades ago, he said, major cities in the Arab and Muslim world were outward-looking. But "in the last half century, these cultures seem to have slid backwards into medievalism and represssion. ... It is one of the great self-inflicted wounds."

Amen!