Meet Sir Quackbal Sacranie...

Oooops, I meant Iqbal Sacranie, the former General Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain. Sacranie is one of these people that lead non-Europeans to believe we are being "dhimmified" in our own European countries. In principle I have no problem with people receiving knighthoods, no matter what their ethnic or religious background actually is but to knight Sacranie was a step too far: Sacranie's disgraceful part in the Rushdie affair regarding the publication of the latter's book "The Satanic Verses" de facto disqualified this person from receiving any state-sanctioned awards. Sacranie was seen marching with protesters supporting the potentially deadly fatwa against Salman Rushdie, which forced the latter into hiding for nearly ten years. Later Quackbal was noted saying that regards Rushdie "death is perhaps too easy".

He also openly condemns homosexuality and same sex marriage.

And now both Rushdie and Sacranie are back in the news. The former for receiving a knighthood, the latter for opposing just that. Whether Rushdie deserves to be knighted for his services to Literature or not I cannot judge: I haven't even read his alleged masterpiece "Midnight's Children" and have it on good authority that "The Satanic Verses" are about as thrilling as watching paint dry. But that's not the point. Once again we have a leading Muslim basically opposing free speech because knighting the author of a book might upset Muslims. In Pakistan this whole affair has created ructions that are beyond belief.

I learnt of Sacranie's perhaps predictable stance on the Rushdie knighting while watching Al Jazeera English (I would recommend this station to anyone, very informative indeed) and it was a near "foot-through-the-telly" moment. Sacranie, you're a hypocrite and a slimeball... I couldn't care less whether you were Muslim, Zoroastrian or atheist...