KEY POINTS:
Poor old Salman Rushdie. To paraphrase the tagline for Jaws 2, just when he thought it was safe to get back in the swim of things, Muslim firebrands the world over are once again demanding his head on a platter.
He must have thought he'd put enough distance
between himself and The Satanic Verses, the novel that got him into hot water back in 1989. For nine years he was a high-brow version of The Fugitive's Dr Richard Kimble: invisible, hunted, tormented.
After Iran announced in 1998 that it wouldn't annul the fatwa - sentence of death - imposed by Ayatollah Khomeini but would do nothing to enforce it, Rushdie cautiously emerged from the shadows and began reinventing himself.
He changed wives several times - the fourth Mrs Rushdie is a model almost half his age who once hosted a TV reality show wearing a bikini - and moved to New York.
He hung out with U2's Bono and wrote eminently forgettable pop songs. He gave every indication of enjoying the heady combination of notoriety and fame.
He annoyed some of those who'd campaigned on his behalf by disparaging the country that had gone to enormous lengths to protect him. (Leaving aside the impact on Britain's trade, the round-the-clock security provided by the British Government was estimated to have cost $30 million.)
In short, he made himself out to be as superficial as the next person as opposed to a serious writer and man of principle.
Those who've grown up with the honours system are well aware of its random and therefore essentially trivial nature. If a contemporary British writer has to be elevated for services to literature, why Rushdie as opposed to any one of half a dozen others?
And on what basis does an anonymous Government committee make judgments on matters of literary merit and achievement?
To Rushdie, accepting a knighthood must have seemed entirely in keeping with the frivolous banality of everyday life but what neither he nor the British Government took into account is that to peoples and cultures beyond the Commonwealth, designating someone a Sir might be seen as the ultimate seal of approval.
There is, it must be said, something slightly comic in the spectacle of a supposedly ground-breaking artist who in his time has appeared to relish the role of cultural agent provocateur landing himself in strife for joining the establishment.
It's more what you'd expect of cricketer Ian Botham who, despite his bogan mannerisms and brushes with authority, has always been a John Bull figure. He once stalked out of a dinner in Melbourne in a high dudgeon because the entertainment featured a Queen impersonator.
But the temptation to see this affair as in any way amusing must be resisted.
To review the essential facts: Rushdie, the son of a Bombay Muslim, wrote a novel satirising Islam which triggered violent protests throughout the Muslim world. After the imposition of the fatwa (the price on his head peaked at $3.7 million), the book's Italian and Japanese translators were murdered and its Norwegian publisher seriously wounded.
In the wake of Rushdie's knighthood, the old charges have been revived. Pakistan has accused Britain of "an utter lack of sensitivity towards Muslims".
Its Foreign Minister said Britain shouldn't be surprised at the hostile reaction since in "a globalised world we have to be sensitive to each other's concerns".
Denying that he'd advocated suicide bombings as the appropriate response, Pakistan's Religious Affairs Minister observed, with a breathtaking lack of self-consciousness: "These are steps which add fuel to the fire of hatred."
And from Indonesia to Iran there were calls for the fatwa to be reactivated.
Sensitivity to each other's concerns, beliefs, and cultures is, by definition, a two-way street but it doesn't always operate that way.
Elements within Islam seem to have the utmost difficulty in summoning a grain of respect for our belief in tolerance, diversity, and freedom of speech, and its corollary that to incite the murder of a person who has written a work of fiction you find offensive is incompatible with the fundamental principles of a civilised society.
If Palestinians want to behead female TV reporters who choose not to wear headscarves, as has been proposed, I guess that's their business.
But what about the Kurd living in Britain who murdered his daughter because she fled an abusive arranged marriage and entered a relationship with an insufficiently devout man hailing from the wrong village in Iraqi Kurdistan?
When the father emigrated to Britain shouldn't he have left behind his belief in the twisted notion of "honour killings" - a term which precisely locates the moral battleground - in the interests of cultural sensitivity?
The fatwa on Rushdie was a warning shot which went largely unheeded. This sequel is a timely echo.
