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UK slams suicide comments
19/06/2007 18:02 - (SA)
London - Britain voiced "deep concern" on Tuesday at reported comments by a Pakistani minister suggesting that the knighthood given to author Salman Rushdie could justify suicide attacks.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said the British high commissioner, Robert Brinkley, had made London's position clear in talks at the Pakistan's foreign ministry in Islamabad.
"He made clear the British government's deep concern at what the minister for religious affairs was reported to have said," the spokesperson said.
"The British government is very clear that nothing can justify suicide bomb attacks."
Religious Affairs Minister Ijaz-ul-Haq told lawmakers in Islamabad on Monday that the award for the Indian-born writer justified suicide attacks, although he later withdrew the remark.
The award for Rushdie was announced on Saturday in Queen Elizabeth II's Birthday Honour's list, triggering protests notably in Iran and Pakistan, which called for the decision to be reversed.
A 'blasphemous' novel
In a statement late on Monday Brinkley defended the award, hailing Rushdie's "distinguished" career and saying it was "simply untrue that this knighthood is intended as an insult to Islam or the Prophet Mohammed".
Rushdie was forced to go into hiding for a decade after then Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued the 1989 death sentence over his novel The Satanic Verses, which was condemned by Muslims as blasphemous to Islam.
Khomeini's successor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in January 2005 he still believed the British novelist was an apostate whose killing would be authorised by Islam.
Rushdie's publisher Jonathan Cape, a division of Random House, refused to comment. "We don't want to add fuel to the flames," spokesperson Christian Lewis said in London.
Royal officials also declined to comment and said it was unlikely Rushdie would actually receive his award before October at the earliest, if he chose to come to British monarch's Buckingham Palace residence for the honour.
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