The new Islamist attempt to assassinate Salman Rushdie reminded me that years ago, the Egyptian-German scholar Hamed Abdel-Samad told Rushdie, at a 30th-anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa ordering Rushdie’s assassination, “30 years ago, there was a Salman Rushdie in the world, today there is at least one Salman Rushdie in every Islamic country, not to mention those in Western countries.”
In 2012, Al-Qaeda published a list of critics of Islam as “most wanted” targets for assassination. Networks of Islamist websites today call for the assassination of extensive lists of infidels and “apostates” around the world. Some have already been killed, others silenced, and almost all live under police protection.
That’s a very long list.
