Iran blasts Britian / Raises reward for Sir Rushdie's death

Salman Rushdie, author of the 1989 book "Satanic Verses", which put Iran & the muslim world in a tizzy, was recently awarded knighthood by the British government for his services to literature. The Ayatollah of Iran issued a death sentence on Rushdie for his supposed blasphemous writings.

As you might have guessed, the Iranians and other muslims have their panties in a bunch over this....

"This move will certainly place the British officials and statesmen against the Islamic societies," Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters during his weekly press conference here in Tehran today.

"This action displays that insults to Islamic sanctities is not a haphazard move and that it is a pre-planned movement guided and supported by certain western countries," he continued.

Never one to miss taking a shot at the United States, the country that throws people off a cliff in burlap sacks as a death sentence, claims they will be releasing a report on human rights violations of the United States and other western countries....

....the foreign ministry spokesman said that his ministry has established a human rights center to register the cases of the violation of human rights in western countries and present well-documented reports on such cases.

"As a first step, this center has embarked on releasing two books on violation of human rights in the US and it has also compiled a report about the human rights condition in Canada, which will be released in the near future," he added.

Apparently in Iran, the renewal of death sentences is not considered a human rights violation....

Secretary General of the Headquarters for Honoring the Martyrs of Islam World Movement Forouz Raja'ee-Far told FNA here on Sunday that his headquarters had announced in 2004 that it would pay $100,000 to anyone who could put into effect Imam Khomeini's verdict and that after 3 years it has now raised the prize to $150,000.

The NGO secretary general also added, "According to Imam Khomeini's verdict, it is an obligation for all Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie even if he repents from the bottom of his heart and becomes the pious man of the time."