Rushdie cries foul, but the refree better take the other stand! For those who thought Rushdie epitomized the fight for the right of speech and expression the writer has given a shock by being the silencing agent. The only difference now being that while those who were antagonised by Rushdie’s Satanic Verses sought solace in religious fatwa, Rushdie is now appealing to the secular law.

Ron Evans, one of the members of the Scotland Yard Special Branch Officers team assigned to provide protection to the then underground writer, has decided to bring to light the unusual experiences of those years. And these include locking the writer in a cupboard for his nastiness, and also living with his “wet-fish” handshakes.

Rushdie have no intention of taking lightly a depiction of him as “mean, nasty, tight-fisted, arrogant and extremely unpleasant”, and has threatened libel action if the book is published.

It is worth recalling the source for fury against Satanic Verses here. There are three of them : one, that the prophet made up verses to accrue support from the idolators and later reverted the verses when they rejected the offer, two, in what can be nothing but provocative in intention, gave the names of Prophet’s wives to the prostitutes in the whorehouse claiming that they increase the pleasure of the clients, and three, Rushdie wrote that the Prophet couldnt remember the Quranic verses and that they were subjected to change by his scribe.

If a low intensity attack on Rushdie can provoke him to threaten libel, one just wonders how else he expected his diatribe to be received in the Islamic world.