“We are from Allah and to Allah we shall return. I am informing all brave Muslims of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses, a text written, edited, and published against Islam, the Prophet of Islam, and the Qur’an, along with all the editors and publishers aware of its contents, are condemned to death. I call on all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill them without delay, so that no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth. And whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr, Allah Willing. Meanwhile if someone has access to the author of the book but is incapable of carrying out the execution, he should inform the people so that [Rushdie] is punished for his actions. Rouhollah al-Mousavi al-Khomeini.”
The BBC continues to promote the musical career of a Muslim man who said he would kill Salman Rushdie for blaspheming about Islam.
5 Live interviewed Yusuf Islam [14:15 ish], aka Cat Steven, and rigorously challenged him on his previous statements about Salman Rushdie. LOL…don’t be silly…never going to happen. Nihal expressed delight about him…‘Oh what a guy!’ never mind that Nihal usually has the biggest chip on his shoulder about alleged racism or anything that he thinks is a generalisation which he will challenge with an abrupt put-down more often than not. But a guy who wants to kill people who blaspheme about his ideology? He apparently gets the thumbs up from Nihal. Oh what a guy Nihal is.
Nihal raised the subject of Islam’s statements but did so in a way that managed not to mention ‘killing’, saying only that Islam had not exactly been ‘on the frontfoot on condemning the fatwah‘….we weren’t told what the fatwah commanded….see above….mass murder of anyone involved in production and sale of Rushdie’s book.
Islam denied he agreed with the fatwah and said he had been ‘entrapped’ in the situation and that the media had invented stories about him…he told us that he never said ‘kill Rushdie’….a lie he has used consistently…
I never called for the death of Salman Rushdie; nor backed the Fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini—and still don’t.
This was accepted by Nihal and co who then went on their merry way laughing and joking with Islam. Trouble is Islam was lying through his teeth as even the slightest research by Nihal and Co would have shown had they bothered to do it. One can only imagine they just didn’t want to do it…or worse they knew and decided to allow Islam to cover up his Islamic extremist views.
On 21 February 1989, Yusuf Islam addressed students at Kingston University in London about his conversion to Islam and was asked about the controversy in the Muslim world and the fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie’s execution. He replied, “He must be killed. The Qur’an makes it clear – if someone defames the prophet, then he must die.”
Two months later, Yusuf Islam appeared on a British television programme, BBC’s Hypotheticals, an occasional broadcast featuring a panel of notable guests to explore a hypothetical situation with moral, ethical and/or political dilemmas. In the episode (“A Satanic Scenario”), Islam had an exchange about the issue with the moderator and Queens Counsel Geoffrey Robertson.[5][6] Islam would later clarify the exchanges as “stupid and offensive jokes” made “in bad taste”, but “part of a well-known British national trait … dry humour on my part.”[1]
Robertson: You don’t think that this man deserves to die?
Y. Islam: Who, Salman Rushdie?
Robertson: Yes.
Y. Islam: Yes, yes.
Robertson: And do you have a duty to be his executioner?
Y. Islam: Uh, no, not necessarily, unless we were in an Islamic state and I was ordered by a judge or by the authority to carry out such an act – perhaps, yes.
[Some minutes later, Robertson on the subject of a protest where an effigy of the author is to be burned]
Robertson: Would you be part of that protest, Yusuf Islam, would you go to a demonstration where you knew that an effigy was going to be burned?
Y. Islam: I would have hoped that it’d be the real thing.
The New York Times also reports this statement from the programme: ‘[If Rushdie turned up at my doorstep looking for help] I might ring somebody who might do more damage to him than he would like. I’d try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is.’