Britain Stands Firm On Rushdie Knighthood
Britain insisted Wednesday it was right to knight Salman Rushdie for his literary career, adding it was "sorry" if it had caused distress, after protests spread in the Muslim world and a prominent cleric called for the novelist to be killed.Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, standing alongside her Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari, said that Britain was "sorry if there are people who have taken very much to heart this honour, which is after all for a lifelong body of literary work."
She stressed that the 60-year-old Rushdie was just one of many Muslims who had been recognised by the British honours system, something she said "may not be realised by many of those who have been vocal in their opposition."
Earlier, Home Secretary John Reid said the government stood by the award, which was announced last weekend. "I think we have a set of values that accrues people honours for their contribution to literature even when they don't agree with our point of view ... That's our way and that's what we stand by," Reid said.
Beckett's and Reid's comments came amid a rising fury in the Muslim world at the honour for Rushdie, with 20 members of Malaysia's main Islamic opposition, the Pan-Malaysia Islamic party, shouting "Go to hell Britain! Go to hell Rushdie!" outside the British High Commission in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday.
The protests came a day after both Pakistan and Iran -- whose late supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sentenced the "Satanic Verses" author to death in 1989 -- summoned Britain's ambassadors to protest.
Read the entire report HERE.
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UPDATE: New Rushdie protests after Britain defends award
posted by The Malaysian. at 6/21/2007 04:02:00 PM
2 Comments:
In Kurt Vonnegut's 'Cat's Cradle' he repeatedly quotes from 'The Book of Bokonon' - basis of a fictitious belief system called Bokononism. One of the best features of Bokononist thought is that it identifies the two major types of groups that humans generally come under: the karass and the granfalloon. Individuals with shared affinities and who are energetically attracted to one another form modular karasses (sort of a soul family of kindred spirits). Granfalloons unite people with no emotional or intellectual affinities into mindless mobs, e.g., football clubs, political parties, nationalistic movements, and political or religious goons (like Umno Youth or PAS).
Most of the problems facing humanity issue from the hostility, hate, and political tensions generated by granfalloons, manipulated by a tiny handful of spin doctors and mad mullahs who use the anti-intellectual weapon of mob force to achieve their own selfish agendas.
Dictionary of Terms from The Books of Bokonon:
* A granfalloon is "a false karass, [...] a seeming team that [is] meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done." Examples of granfalloons are "the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows - and any nation, anytime, anywhere. [And one could easily add: "any religion, anytime, anywhere."]
* A karass is a "team [of people] that do[es] God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing". Humanity is organized into many such teams. One can try to discover "the limits of [one's] karass and the nature of the work God Almighty has had it do ... but such investigations are bound to be incomplete."
* Pool-pah is translated both as "shit storm" and "wrath of God".
Good one, of course the very peaceful 'Muslims' are justified for destroying the whole world over this. What? The Queen can't Knight someone she likes? She can't knight someone that other people don't like?
But I'm sure Sir Rushdie has mixed emotions on this; the Queen has put him in much greater danger. Maybe he'll wish he had turned it down.
At least this incident will lose the terrorists at least a few more of their dhimmidiot appeasers.
Islam in it's extreme is more political ideology than religion. In that way, it is only a 'Religion of Peace' in that when Islam rules the planet, there will be no one to be at war with. Where they are given an inch, they demand a mile. Islamic countries are becoming more extreme, extremists rule, they just keep quoting the Koran to justify their Jihad.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
appease religious killers
continue to spoil them
violent tantrums pay off
.
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