Is Rushdie safe?
Sir: Kalim Siddiqui ('Blasphemers must die,' 22 September) was being economical with the truth in suggesting to John Mor- timer that the fatwa against Salman Rush- die was pronounced on the day of publica- tion of The Satanic Verses, and that his presence in Teheran on that occasion may have influenced Ayatollah Khomeini. The book was published in October 1988; the fatwa was pronounced on 14 February 1989. In the meantime neither Dr Siddiqui nor the Muslim Institute had made any public comment on the matter, and it was only after the Bradford Council of Mos- ques had captured the limelight with their book-burning that Dr Siddiqui began to manipulate the press on his own behalf.
He is also disingenuous in implying the author's safety because 'no Muslim would kill Salman Rushdie in England'. The Muslim Institute has carefully explained in its own newspaper Crescent International that, 'while the two million Muslims living in Britain should not kill Rushdie, the other 998 millon Muslims in the world are free to do so if they can, when they can, where they can'. This must be read in conjunction with pronouncements on BBC Newsnight and Radio 4 by one of Dr Siddiqui's colleagues that he would wel- come a hit-squad coming from abroad to execute the fatwa. One can well under- stand why Dr Siddiqui wriggled every time John Mortimer mentioned Salman Rush- die.
Finally, it was a distortion for Dr Siddi- qui to indicate that the Muslim Institute's headquarters is a 'semi' in Slough. Their main office and publishing address is in
LETTERS
Bloomsbury, and it is the denizens of that area rather than of Slough with whom John Mortimer could more appropriately com- miserate. The address is distinguishable by posters at the door dissociating the owners of the building and other tenants from the Institute's repeated exhortations to mur- der.
William Hetherington
Peace Pledge Union, Dick Sheppard House, 6 Endsleigh Street, London WC1
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