France’s chief rabbi, Joseph Sitruk, has strongly condemned the Iranian death threat to British author Salman Rushdie, breaking the Jewish community’s virtual silence on the affair.
Sitruk’s denunciation of the murder call by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini also contained scathing criticism of what he called Islamic “fanaticism.”
“Islam contains the germ of a certain fanaticism which has been observed throughout its history,” the chief rabbi said in an interview published Monday in Le Figaro.
Whatever blasphemy certain books may contain about Judaism, “no Jew has ever called upon a crowd to murder. The Jewish religion is one of tolerance,” Sitruk said.
Khomeini offered millions of dollars for the assassination of the Indian-born Rushdie for his novel “The Satanic Verses,” which Moslems say blasphemes their faith.
Western religious and political leaders generally have been slow to respond to what many see as a dangerous assault on the tradition of free speech.
Sitruk, like France’s chief Catholic prelate, Cardinal Albert Decourtray, declared his solidarity with Moslem believers offended by Rushdie’s book.
“I would like to tell them that by giving into fanatic reactions, they strengthen their detractors,” he said.
He explained that a believer “should not react to blasphemy as if he was in a position of weakness. It is not because non-believers deny the very existence of God that he ceases to exist,” Sitruk said.
French Jewish organizations have refrained until now from taking an official position on the Rushdie affair, although individual Jewish leaders have condemned the Khomeini threat.
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