London, England - A group of British Muslims angrily denounced on Friday the decision to honor author Salman Rushdie with a knighthood, noisily renewing calls for his death and setting fire to a poster depicting an English flag.
A hard-line Iranian cleric, also speaking Friday, said the 1989 religious edict calling for Rushdie's killing remains in place and cannot be revoked, and warned that Britain was defying the Islamic world by granting the honor.
Speakers, some masking their faces with headscarves, addressed worshippers leaving prayers outside the capital's Regent's Park mosque. Sheltering under a canopy of trees, a crowd of about 100 people listened to speeches demanding that the edict, or fatwa, be expedited.
Several chanted "Death to Rushdie, death to the Queen." They wielded placards, one reading: "Salman Rushdie should be punished, not praised." A St. George's Cross, painted on the back of a placard, was set alight.
"This knighthood is just another example of (Prime Minister) Tony Blair and his government's attempts to secularize Muslims and reward apostates," said Anjem Choudray, protest organizer and an ex-head of the British wing of the banned radical group al-Muhajiroun.
"Rushdie is a hate figure across the Muslim world," Choudray said. "This honor will have ramifications here and across the world."
The Muslim Council of Britain wrote to mosques and organizations urging them to "face provocation with dignity and wisdom."
"We should not allow the situation to be inflamed in any way or be exploited by other unsavory groups so as to bring our community and our noble faith into disrepute," the letter said.
The awards were presented among Queen Elizabeth II's Birthday Honors list last week and are decided on by independent committees, who vet nominations from the public and government. Blair and the Queen have only a ceremonial role in approving them.
Choudray said protests across Pakistan, Iran and Malaysia proved the row would likely match anger that erupted over the recent publication in Denmark of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammed, when an estimated 10,000 demonstrators marched on London.
Iran's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued the fatwa against Rushdie in 1989, ordering Muslims to kill him because his novel "The Satanic Verses" was deemed to insult Islam. The author, who was raised Muslim, denied the accusation, but was forced to live in hiding for almost a decade.
Some analysts have expressed surprise Rushdie's knighthood award was approved, wondering whether members of the committee considered those events or likely new repercussions.
"There is an impression they really didn't consider the potential reaction," said Rosemary Hollis, director of research at London's Chatham House think tank. "The Foreign Office has some input and surely pointed out that this would be received badly in some quarters."
The committee may have fallen victim to "a sense that showing too much sensitivity is to kowtow to radicals, and that there is a national interest to stand up to Islamic critics of the U.K.," she said.
Committee member Andreas Whittam Smith, ex-editor of Britain's Independent newspaper, said the panel decided only if Rushdie's work merited an honor.
Rushdie may have stirred further dissent in some communities by backing Blair last year when he claimed face-covering veils worn by some Muslim women are a "mark of separation."
Abu Saanihah, among the speakers at the London rally, ridiculed reports that Blair would be offered a Middle East peace role. "If he goes to the Middle East as an envoy," Saanihah said, "he'll come back in a box."
Business student Abdullah Azzam, watching the protest, said most British Muslims opposed Rushdie's honor. "The majority think it's wrong and believe that his book offends Islam," said Azzam, 23. "But a lot of people don't want to say that in public."
Iran and Pakistan have made formal protests to Britain, and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari called the awarding of the honor "untimely." A Pakistani minister said it could be used to justify suicide bombings.
Abdul Ghafoor Hayderi, a leader of Pakistan's Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, told a 1,000-strong crowd in Karachi on Friday that the honor was as insulting as the Danish cartoons.
Rallies in several Pakistani cities called for Rushdie to be killed and for a boycott of trade with Britain.
In India's Muslim-majority Kashmir region, a protest strike closed most shops, offices and schools in the summer capital, Srinagar.
Mufti Mohammad Bashir-ud-din, head of Kashmir's Islamic court, said Rushdie was "liable to be killed for rendering the gravest injury to the sentiments of the Muslims across the world."
But outgoing Home Secretary John Reid defended the award, saying the honor demonstrated British freedoms. Britain offers people "honors for their contribution to literature even when they don't agree with our point of view," he said.