Allah Demands Divine Execution
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Imagine suddenly discovering the bright red circle of a laser sight centered on your chest, and you will get some idea of how British author Salman Rushdie has felt for the past nine years.

"It's an extraordinary thing to see people walking down the streets of foreign cities, carrying your picture with the eyes poked out and calling for your death," he said.

Since 1989 Rushdie has married, fathered a child, and published two novels. But he cannot receive mail at his house, shop in his local supermarket, or simply stroll down the street because of a fatwa (religious decree) issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Rushdie, born in India, published his novel "The Satanic Verses" in 1988. Because the cultural epic satirizes the prophet Mohammed and Islam's holy book, the Koran, a conflagration of Muslim riots and book burnings followed its release--and Ayatollah Khomeini soon condemned Rushdie to death for blasphemy against Islam.

Rushdie's life spiraled into perpetual chaos as he changed addresses every few days. Trapped within a "security net" of British police protection, the author longed for beloved spontaneity--the ability "to make one's own decisions without reference to anyone else."

"It's as if somebody were to break your picture of the world," said Rushdie, "and everything you think about somehow ceases to be true. That's one definition of insanity."

Is the fatwa really that perilous? Yes. Despite His elusive nature, Allah is a powerful gangster boss with plenty of willing henchmen. In 1991, Hitoshi Igarshi, the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, was stabbed to death in Tokyo. Italian translator Ettore Capriolo was beaten and stabbed by a man demanding Rushdie's address. And in 1993, Rushdie's Norwegian publisher William Nygaard was shot and seriously wounded outside his home in Oslo.

Rushdie breathed a small sigh of relief on Sept. 25, 1998, after Prime Minister Kamal Khazari announced that the Iranian government would not attempt to carry out the death order. However, the fatwa still stands, and the Khordad Foundation offers $2.5 million to the first idiot who murders Rushdie.

In addition, more than 150 members of Iran's 270-seat parliament signed a petition defining the death decree as a "divine order." Iran's Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, "The execution of the divine death sentence remains a duty for every Muslim until the day of resurrection."

Notwithstanding the $2.5 million bounty on his head, Rushdie handles his predicament with intelligence, eloquence, and humor. He said during a press conference, "Many of my friends are in the literary and artistic world, and not all of them have a lot of money, and yet I'm happy to say that nobody's tried to cash in."

He has been in hiding for the past nine years, restricted from the everyday social interactions that most of us take for granted, but does Rushdie regret publishing "The Sanatic Verses"? Hell no! "We have not fought a battle for freedom of speech to give in at the last moment," he said.

"Some incredibly important things were being fought for here. One thing that is important to me--the art of the novel. Beyond that, the freedom of the imagination, and the great, overwhelming, overarching issue of freedom of speech."

Fellow authors Don DeLillo and Paul Auster joined the Rushdie Defense Committee 
USA to campaign for freedom of expression and the rescinding of the Iranian decree, but Iran ignored their efforts. Only financial difficulties finally prompted Iran to give up its hunt for Rushdie.

Prime Minister Khazari's statement of Iran's "dissociation" from the fatwa stemmed not from compassion or virtue, but from Iran's desire for more Western cash via improved foreign relations with Britain. The Iranian government is playing a disgusting game of politics with a man's life. Indeed, a state-run Tehran radio claimed as recently as February 1998 that "the destruction of this man's worthless life could breathe new life into Islam."

The malevolent coupling of religion and politics has spawned a dystopia where people view the miracle of life as "worthless," where an individual's existence serves as a political bargaining device, where the imagination is held at gunpoint, and where theists, acting as sheep, blindly accept ridiculous orders from demented shepherds. Once again we see that Faith is a deadly concept, and once again I present my deicidal solution: Kill the gods; save the humans!