Iran Urges Islamic Countries’ Protest at Rushdie’s Presence in Frankfurt Book Fair

Iranian Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Ali Jannati announced that the ministry has sent letters to Islamic countries to ask them to show reaction to the recent appearance of the apostate writer Salman Rushdie in a press conference in Frankfurt Book Fair.

“I have written letters to the culture ministers of all Islamic countries, which exceeds 50 states, and to the secretary-general of Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Jeddah, urging them to protest at the move by Frankfurt Book Fair,” Jannati told the Tasnim News Agency in southern city of Shiraz on Tuesday.
The Islamic countries should react to this “provocative and anti-Islamic” move, and take appropriate stances so that the fair’s organizers would know that the Muslim world does not accept such measures, he added.
Iran had earlier stressed in a letter to the organizers of the exhibition that it will not participate in the event if Rushdie appears at a news conference ahead of the annual fair’s opening.
“When we learned of the presence of Salman Rushdie at the book fair in Frankfurt, we sent a letter of protest and called on other Muslim countries to do the same,” Iran’s Deputy Culture Minister Abbas Salehi had said on October 6.
The British Indian novelist and writer was sentenced to death by Imam Khomeini for insulting Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) in his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, which was written in 1988 and sparked global protests by Muslims around the world.
The 67th Frankfurt Book Fair is underway in the German city from October 14 to 18, 2015.