World News: Rushdie attack ‘unacceptable to Islam’ – Gulf Digital News

World News: Rushdie attack ‘unacceptable to Islam’ – Gulf Digital News

MECCA: Secretary-General of the Muslim World League Muhammad bin Abdul Karim Al Issa said that the attack on author Salman Rushdie in New York was ‘a crime that Islam does not accept’ in an interview with Saudi news outlet Arab News.

“Islam is against violence and can never admit any method of violence. Religious and intellectual issues, including phrases that may read in full or partly as offensive, cannot never be dealt with in these violent ways,” Al Issa was quoted as saying on the sidelines of a conference on inter-religious dialogue in Rimini, Italy.

Rushdie, 75, was set to deliver a lecture on artistic freedom at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York on August 12 when he was attacked and stabbed by a man who has been identified as Hadi Matar, a US-raised 24-year-old with Lebanese roots.

Rushdie has lived with a bounty on his head since his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, which prompted Iran’s then-leader Ali Khamenei to urge Muslims to kill him.

Al Issa, who is also the president of the International Islamic Halal Organisation and Saudi Arabia’s former Minister of Justice, said that Islam is “opposed to violence.”

An avid activist against religious extremism, Al Issa has been commended