Quoted in Koenraad Elst: Afterword: The Rushdie Affair's Legacy, in Pipes, D., & Elst, K. (2004). The Rushdie affair: The novel, the Ayatollah, and the West. New Brunswick [u.a.: Transaction Publ.
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Non-governmental Islamist forces are also becoming more circumspect. In Great Britain, after thousands of Muslims openly shouted "We will kill Satan Rushdie," the next death edict, against Pakistani-born Anwar Sheikh in 1995, was much more restrained. Unlike the novelist Rushdie with his oblique and ironical challenge to Islam, Sheikh very formally renounced and criticized Islam in a bilingual English/Urdu quarterly, Liberty, and in a series of erudite books. When news of his critique reached his homeland Pakistan, at least fourteen clerics there issued death sentences against him. A Pakistani daily reported: All Pakistani clergy demand extradition of the accursed renegade Anwar Shaikh from Britain to hang him publicly. A renegade must be murdered—this is a fundamental rule of the Islamic Law. — Anwar Shaikh must be called back, some lover of the Prophet is bound to kill him. If he is not eliminated, more Rushdies will appear. He is an apostate for denying heaven, hell, revelation, Koran, Prophet and angels. The Muslims of the world are ready to behead the accursed renegade to defend the magnificence of their Prophet.

— Quoted

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Non-governmental Islamist forces are also becoming more circumspect. In Great Britain, after thousands of Muslims openly shouted "We will kill Satan Rushdie," the next death edict, against Pakistani-born Anwar Sheikh in 1995, was much more restrained. Unlike the novelist Rushdie with his oblique and ironical challenge to Islam, Sheikh very formally renounced and criticized Islam in a bilingual English/Urdu quarterly, Liberty, and in a series of erudite books. When news of his critique reached his homeland Pakistan, at least fourteen clerics there issued death sentences against him. A Pakistani daily reported: All Pakistani clergy demand extradition of the accursed renegade Anwar Shaikh from Britain to hang him publicly. A renegade must be murdered—this is a fundamental rule of the Islamic Law. — Anwar Shaikh must be called back, some lover of the Prophet is bound to kill him. If he is not eliminated, more Rushdies will appear. He is an apostate for denying heaven, hell, revelation, Koran, Prophet and angels. The Muslims of the world are ready to behead the accursed renegade to defend the magnificence of their Prophet." in the context of "Quoted in Koenraad Elst: Afterword: The Rushdie Affair's Legacy, in Pipes, D., & Elst, K. (2004). The Rushdie affair: The novel, the Ayatollah, and the West. New Brunswick [u.a.: Transaction Publ." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Anwar Shaikh" (About Anwar Shaikh) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

About Anwar Shaikh

Anirudh Gyan Shikha (1 June 1928 – 25 November 2006; popularly known as Anwar Shaikh) was a Pakistani-born British author residing in Cardiff, Wales.