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ISLAMABAD : Anger mounted in the Muslim world Wednesday over Britain's knighthood for novelist Salman Rushdie, with protests spreading to Malaysia for the first time and fresh demonstrations in Pakistan.
The rallies came a day after both Iran -- whose late supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sentenced the "Satanic Verses" author to death in 1989 -- and Pakistan summoned Britain's ambassadors to protest.
In Kuala Lumpur about 20 members of Malaysia's main Islamic opposition, the Pan-Malaysia Islamic party, shouted "Go to hell Britain! Go to hell Rushdie!" outside the British High Commission.
They handed a one-page memorandum to the British envoy during the rare half-hour demonstration, which was watched by police with riot shields and helmets. The police contingent was about as large as the protest.
"In the name of peace and mutual respect, we demand that the award be withdrawn, and the British government distance itself from a provocateur like Salman Rushdie," party president Abdul Hadi Awang said in a statement.
In Pakistan hundreds of people protested in the central city of Multan, where an effigy of Rushdie and a British flag were burned for the third day running. Effigies of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II were burned earlier this week.
Traders, religious students and members of a religious party held separate demonstrations.
"Britain has tried to ignite the controversy of the cursed author Rushdie after more than a decade," said Akhtar Butt, the leader of a local traders' body. "It's a deliberate attempt to provoke Muslims."
Britain responded to the summoning of its ambassador on Tuesday by voicing "deep concern" at comments by Pakistan's religious affairs minister Ijaz-ul-Haq that honouring Rushdie justified suicide attacks.
Pakistani newspapers lashed out at the knighthood on Wednesday, with one saying the ideal revenge would be to make a movie about the sex lives of the British royals.
"Britain's decision to bestow a knighthood on Salman Rushdie is one of those inexplicable follies that seem designed to rally the forces of resurgent extremism in today's dangerously unstable world," said the News, a respected English-language daily.
Nawa-i-Waqt, a mass circulation Urdu-language paper, said in a comment piece that "if you want to do something meaningful, then make a film about Lady Diana's affairs" and those of other members of the British royal family.
In Afghanistan, the ultra-Islamic Taliban movement, which is leading a bloody insurgency five years after its ouster by US-led forces, condemned Britain's action.
"This is a clear enmity with Islam and Muslims. We ask Britain to take back what they have done and to apologise to Muslims," said a Taliban statement read to AFP over the telephone by spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi.
Rushdie, who turned 60 on Tuesday, has spent the last 18 years living under the shadow of the Iranian fatwa calling for his death, which has never been formally revoked.
His exact whereabouts now are not known, but he is believed to divide his time between London and New York.
His knighthood for services to literature, which was announced Saturday in the queen's traditional birthday honours list, means he can call himself Sir Salman.
The Guardian newspaper reported on its website Wednesday that the committee that recommended Rushdie for the honour did not discuss possible political ramifications and never imagined it would provoke Muslim anger.
It also said that the writers' organisation that led the lobbying for him to be knighted had originally hoped the honour would lead to better relations between Britain and Asia.
- AFP/ir
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