Clerics knight Osama, slam Rushdie

'SIR' OSAMA: Clerics say the title recognises Laden's fight against the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

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Islamabad: A group of hardline Pakistani Muslim clerics has bestowed a religious title on Osama bin Laden in response to a British knighthood for the author Salman Rushdie.

Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses outraged many Muslims around the world, was awarded a knighthood last week for services to literature in Queen Elizabeth's birthday honours list.

Muslims say the novel, published in 1988, blasphemed against the Prophet Mohammad and ridiculed the Koran and events in early Muslim history.

Pakistan and Iran have protested the honour and small demonstrations against it have been held in various parts of Pakistan and in Malaysia.

A group of clerics, the Pakistan Ulema Council, has given bin Laden the title ‘Saifullah’, or sword of Allah, in response to the honour for Rushdie, the council's chairman said on Thursday. “If a blasphemer can be given the title ‘Sir’ by the West despite the fact he's hurt the feelings of Muslims, then a mujaheed who has been fighting for Islam against the Russians, Americans and British must be given the lofty title of Islam, Saifullah,” the chairman, Tahir Ashrafi, told Reuters.

Bin Laden was one of many Arabs who helped Afghan guerrillas battle Soviet invaders in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In a related development, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto said Pakistan's minister of religious affairs should be dismissed for suggesting suicide bombs were a justified response to Rushdie's knighthood.

On Monday, Pakistan's parliament adopted a resolution condemning the knighthood and said Britain should withdraw it. Religious Affairs Minister Mohammad Ejaz-ul-Haq told the assembly insults to Islam were at the root of terrorism, and added that if someone committed a suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Mohammad, his act was justified.

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