Chairman of UK Iranian Influence Organization Praised Salman Rushdie Fatwa Last December

UK media is report­ing that the chair­man of the Islam­ic Human Rights Com­mis­sion (IHRC) praised the fat­wa on Salman Rushdie less than a year ago, say­ing that “ordi­nary Mus­lims from all dif­fer­ent back­grounds […] came with the under­stand­ing that this was wrong and they sup­port­ed the fat­wa against this”. Accord­ing to a report by the Dai­ly Mail:

August 20, 2022 The chair­man of a British-based human rights organ­i­sa­tion which has received over £1.4 mil­lion in char­i­ty cash praised the fat­wa on Sir Salman Rushdie less than a year ago, The Mail on Sun­day can reveal.  Mas­soud Shad­jareh, founder and chair­man of the con­tro­ver­sial Islam­ic Human Rights Com­mis­sion (IHRC), spoke fond­ly of the death sen­tence imposed on the writer in 1989 fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of his nov­el The Satan­ic Vers­es. […] Address­ing an Islam­o­pho­bia con­fer­ence last Decem­ber, Mr Shad­jareh said: ‘I am old enough to remem­ber what was hap­pen­ing at the time of the Rushdie affair. ‘We weren’t organ­ised as a Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty. We did­n’t even have any huge nation­al umbrel­la organ­i­sa­tions.  ‘But ordi­nary Mus­lims from all dif­fer­ent back­grounds, even those who were not ful­ly prac­tic­ing, they came with the under­stand­ing that this was wrong and they sup­port­ed the fat­wa against this.’  Mr Shad­jareh, 70, has pre­vi­ous­ly described Iran’s infa­mous supreme leader Aya­tol­lah Khome­ni, who issued the fat­wa, as a ‘torch of light for the whole of mankind’.

Read the rest here.

Ear­li­er this month, British-Amer­i­can nov­el­ist Salman Rushdie was repeat­ed­ly stabbed dur­ing an event in New York. Min­utes after the attack, law enforce­ment offi­cials arrest­ed the alleged attack­er, who had shared pro-Shi’ite extrem­ist con­tent on his social media accounts. Rushdie has faced death threats for more than 30 years over his nov­el “The Satan­ic Vers­es,” whose depic­tion of the Prophet Muham­mad is seen by some Mus­lims as blas­phe­mous. The book and its author were the sub­jects of a Feb­ru­ary 1989  fat­wa call­ing for the death of Rushdie and his pub­lish­ers issued by Aya­tol­lah Ruhol­lah Khome­i­ni, then Supreme Leader of Iran. The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report recent­ly report­ed that many pro-Iran­ian media and social media accounts “enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly wel­comed” the stabbing.

The Islam­ic Human Rights Com­mis­sion (IHRC) is a UK-based NGO found­ed in 1997 and has had Spe­cial Con­sul­ta­tive Sta­tus with the Eco­nom­ic and Social Coun­cil (ECOSOC)  of the Unit­ed Nations since 2007. The IHRC web­site says it works with dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions from Mus­lim and non-Mus­lim back­grounds “to cam­paign for jus­tice for all peo­ples regard­less of their racial, con­fes­sion­al, or polit­i­cal back­ground.” The IHRC is con­sid­ered sup­port­ive of the Iran­ian regime and has been cen­tral to orga­niz­ing the events of the annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Quds Day, ini­ti­at­ed by the Iran­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ary regime for many years.