Finally Free from Fear
Iran rescinds its death threat on Salman Rushdie, a step on the road back to world respectability
By BARRY HILLENBRAND/LONDON

For nine years author Salman Rushdie has regularly played an amazing little trick. As if materializing out of thin air Rushdie would suddenly appear, unannounced, at a cocktail party, an awards dinner, or--as he did two weeks ago--among the fans at a Tottenham Hotspur football match in London. Rushdie was always shadowed discreetly by plainclothes policemen whose job it was to make sure that no one collected the $2.5 million reward offered by Iranian extremists for Rushdie's murder. Ever since 1989, when Iranian spiritual leader Ayatullah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or religious edict, charging that Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses slandered Islam, the author has spent his life in hiding and under constant police protection. Last week, Rushdie played his mysterious appearing trick for what he hopes will be the last time. Without fanfare, Rushdie showed up in front of a gaggle of cameras and microphones to say that he expects "to resume the ordinary life of a writer at very high speed."

News of his chance of freedom came the previous day at the United Nations in New York, where Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi assured British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook that Iran "disassociates itself" from the reward being offered for the taking of Rushdie's life. The British--and Rushdie himself--are now convinced that the threat is over. The announcement was part of a charm campaign by President Mohammed Khatami, who is eager to edge Iran back into respectable diplomatic circles--and to expand access to Western investment and technical cooperation. It seems to be working. In response to Kharrazi's statement, Cook announced that London would upgrade its embassy in Teheran by appointing an ambassador.

But some radical Islamic groups claimed the Iranian government has no power to lift Khomeini's fatwa. "I would advise Rushdie to keep hiding because his life is at risk," said Omar Bakri Muhammad, leader of Al Muhajiroun, a London-based Islamic fundamentalist group. But Rushdie dismisses this sort of talk as the rantings of "tinpot leaders with no serious following." Rushdie will continue to exercise caution in his movements, but he will no longer require the full-time presence of British Special Branch officers.

But Rushdie is the first to admit that the most important issue at stake in the long battle against the fatwa was not the threat to his life. "No doubt having the sanction of the fatwa carried out would have been most unpleasant for me," says Rushdie. "But the effect on the freedom of other writers to express themselves would have been far greater." Rushdie and all those who waged the long battle against the fatwa did not win a victory for a single author or a single book. Rather, they reaffirmed the right of all authors to publish without fear. END