The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chairman Imran Khan said on Saturday that his remarks in the British newspaper The Guardian regarding the attack on author Salman Rushdie were “taken out of context”.
In an interview, the former premier had condemned the knife attack on Rushdie, claiming that the anger of Muslims against the author was understandable, but it didn’t justify the attack. “I think it is terrible, sad,” Imran told the publication in a comment on the attack that put Rushdie on a ventilator.
However, the official Twitter account for the PTI, clarified that Imran’s statement was “taken out of context”, and that he had refused to attend a seminar in India because Rushdie was also invited.
“In the interview, I explained the Islamic method of punishing blasphemers,” he said.
The PTI chief maintained that he had given the example of the Sialkot tragedy and had spoken of Rushdie in a similar context. Imran was referring to the brutal lynching of a Sri Lankan man in Sialkot over blasphemy allegations. “Rushdie understood because he came from a Muslim family. He knows the love, respect, and reverence of the Prophet (PBUH) that lives in our hearts. He knew that. So the anger I understood, but you can’t justify what happened,” the PTI chief had stated earlier in his interview with The Guardian.
Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim Kashmiri family, has lived with a bounty on his head and spent nine years in hiding under British police protection.
Last week, the author sustained severe injuries in an attack, including nerve damage in his arm, wounds to his liver, and the likely loss of an eye, his agent said. But his condition has been improving since the weekend, and he had been taken off the ventilator.
