The Satanic Verses controversy in 2000. Meanwhile, in America, the director of the Near East Studies Center at UCLA, George Sabbagh, told an interviewer that Khomeini was "completely within his rights" to call for Rushdie's death. In May 1989 in Beirut, Lebanon, British citizen Jackie Mann was abducted "in response to Iran's fatwa against Salman Rushdie for the publication of book the Satanic Verses and more specifically, for his refuge and protection in the United Kingdom". He joined several Westerners held hostage there. Two months earlier a photograph of three teachers held hostage was released by Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine with
Knighthood of Salman Rushdie the West despite the fact he's hurt the feelings of Muslims, then a mujahid who has been fighting for Islam against the Russians, Americans and British must be given the lofty title of Islam, Saifullah." On Thursday, 21 June 2007 thirty members of the hard-line Islamic PAS opposition party led a protest to the British High Commission calling for the honour to be revoked. The protestors chanted "Destroy Salman Rushdie, Destroy Britain!" and "Go to hell, Britain!; Go to hell, Rushdie!" The PAS' treasurer, Hatta Ramli, said making Rushdie a knight "has tainted the whole knighthood, the whole hall of