Tact and diplomacy

Ain’t tolerance great? The leader of Iran has reiterated that Salman Rushdie is an apostate whose killing would be authorised by Islam, during a lengthy tirade against Western and Zionist capitalists. Senior British officials, however, were anxious to play it down:

“Almost every time that the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, gives a sermon he mentions Salman Rushdie in these terms and denounces him as a man who has insulted the name of the Prophet and who can therefore be killed. It’s just the standard rhetoric”.

Oh, well that’s fiiiiiine then. Ee didn’t mean nuffink by it. It’s just part of his culwcha to go on lengthy tirades about the West and exhort his followers to kill those with whom he disagrees.

“Analysts in Iran played down the remark, suspecting that Ayatollah Khamenei was referring to the fatwa against Rushdie in a historical context and was not calling for it to be implemented now”.

Fair enough, but if so, one might legitimately question the wisdom of starting to go on about it again without making that point expressly. “Oh, my child, you’ve rushed off and removed poor Salman’s head. How perfectly tragic. Didn’t you realise I was only referring to the fatwa in a historical context”?

I must say, if a foreign head of state had recommenced public advocacy for my execution, when I had committed no crime under English law and had received no proper trial or due process, I would have hoped that “senior British officials” would have been the sort of people I could rely upon to stand up for me. No such luck, it appears. Then again, at least they’re consistent. Boldly defending British citizens from breaches of natural justice at the hands of foreign regimes just isn’t part of the remit these days, whether it’s our NATO/special relationship allies (the Americans and Guantanamo Bay), our European Union brothers (the Portuguese and Gary Mann) or, now, members of the axis of evil doing the oppressing. Still, I’m sure they’re doing some fantastic work behind the scenes…