It will come as no surprise that the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and its supporters
are outraged to learn that forty state-run media outlets in Iran have raised $600,000 (£420,000) to add as bounty to Ayatollah Khomeini’s death fatwa on the writer Salman Rushdie, because of his novel The Satanic Verses.
They have started a petition, addressed to Secular Governments, to
condemn the Iranian regime, its fatwa and the added bounty. We stand with Salman Rushdie and the many Iranian freethinkers and writers languishing in prison, or facing the death penalty, for exercising their right to free expression and thought.
The Iranian regime must face global condemnation for its incitement to murder.
Moreover, democratic and secular governments should unequivocally condemn the regime’s fatwa and bounty, demand their immediate cancellation, prioritise human rights and free expression and side with freethinkers rather than appeasing a theocratic regime.
Please add your name to the list of more than 100 people who have signed the petition to “Condemn Fatwa and Bounty against Salman Rushdie.”
Long past time this was done with!
Iran has a large fraction of its population, mostly younger people, who do not support the old men and their diabolical religious affectations. If the West had been actively supporting this segment of their society, over the past half a century, the problem of religious psychopathy would be far less of a problem. V.S. Naipaul wrote extensively about this in the nineteen seventies.
Of course the same can be said about our country.