Oh, so now it's Sir Salman Rushdie

We wonder how that'll go down in certain quarters...

UPDATE: We didn't have to wait long, did we?

Iran has stepped up its protest over the knighthood awarded by Britain to Salman Rushdie, whose 1988 novel The Satanic Verses outraged many Muslims.

Iran's foreign ministry summoned the UK ambassador in Tehran and said the knighthood was a "provocative act".

Pakistan voiced similar protests, telling the UK envoy in Islamabad the honour showed the British government's "utter lack of sensitivity".

Britain denied that the award was intended to insult Islam.

Iran summoned UK ambassador Geoffrey Adams to protest against the knighthood.

"This insulting, suspicious and improper act by the British government is an obvious example of fighting against Islam," Iran's Foreign Ministry Director for Europe, Ebrahim Rahimpour, was quoted as saying by the state-run Irna news agency.

"It has seriously wounded the beliefs of 1.5 billion Muslims and followers of other religions."

Mr Rahimpour added that Iran held the British government and Queen Elizabeth II "responsible for the circumstance of this provocation".

Continued...

Also:

Muslim world inflamed by Rushdie knighthood

Sir Salman Rushdie celebrates his 60th birthday today in familiar circumstances: he is once again the subject of death threats across the Islamic world.

Eighteen years after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill him, a government minister in Pakistan said yesterday that Rushdie’s recent knighthood justified suicide bombing.

The question of blasphemy in The Satanic Verses, Rushdie’s 1988 tale of a prophet misled by the devil, remains a deeply sensitive issue in much of the Muslim world and the author’s inclusion in the Queen’s Birthday Honours last week has inflamed anti-British sentiment.

Gerald Butt, editor of the authoritative Middle East Economic Survey, told The Times: “It will be interpreted as an action calculated to goad Muslims at a time when the atmosphere is already very tense and Britain’s standing in the region is very low because of its involvement in Iraq and its lack of action in tackling the Palestine issue.”