More Rushdie

The latest development in the furor over Salman Rushdie’s knighting is that the Pakistani clerics awarded Osama Bin Laden a title as well:

A group of hardline Pakistani Muslim clerics said on Thursday they had bestowed a religious title on Osama bin Laden in response to a British knighthood for author Salman Rushdie. The Pakistan Ulema Council gave bin Laden the title “Saifullah”, or sword of Allah, in response to the knighthood awarded to Rushdie last week for services to literature.

Of course, there’s no equivalence, moral or otherwise, between an author who pens unsavory tidbits about a religion and someone who masterminds the slaughter of thousands of civilians, but the award is meant not to honor Bin Laden as much as it is meant to anger Westerners. I just hope in the face of the rising protests (British Muslims have joined the clamor as well) that Britain does not rescind the knighthood and that Rushdie still accepts it.