Naguib Mahfouz Prize. Like many Egyptian writers and intellectuals, Mahfouz was on an Islamic fundamentalist "death list". He defended Salman Rushdie after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned Rushdie to death in 1989, but also criticized his "The Satanic Verses" as "insulting" to Islam. Mahfouz believed in freedom of expression, and, although he did not personally agree with Rushdie's work, he did not believe that there should be a "fatwa" condemning him to death for it. In 1989, after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's "fatwa" calling for Salman Rushdie and his publishers to be killed, Mahfouz called Khomeini a terrorist. Shortly after Mahfouz joined 80 other
Knighthood of Salman Rushdie to be inflamed in any way or be exploited by other unsavory groups so as to bring our community and our noble faith into disrepute." They called for Muslims to "convey their feelings on the matter through letters to their parliamentary representatives and through local and national media...[and to take the] opportunity to correct the maligning of the character of the prophet in the book which earned its author his notoriety." Muhammad Abdul Bari, the Muslim Council's secretary-general, said "Salman Rushdie earned notoriety amongst Muslims for the highly insulting and blasphemous manner in which he portrayed early Islamic figures. The