Religious leaders from all the major faiths, who disagree on some of the most fundamental questions, managed to put aside their differences to agree that Rushdie had it coming. ~Michael Kinsley

Right.  I believe the Catholics began collecting a tithe to pay for hitmen to take him out.  This is insane.  It is one thing to say that many other religious leaders may have said (I have no idea whether they had anything to say about the matter one way or the other, but I am extremely skeptical that they said anything) that Rushdie was incredibly stupid to engage in militantly public apostasy from his inherited religion, given what he knew about that religion’s prescriptions for apostasy,  but to say that leaders “from all the major faiths” agreed that Rushdie “had it coming” is just ridiculous. 

Did the Dalai Lama say, “Rushdie really had that fatwa coming!”?  Did Pope John Paul II send a note to Khomeini saying, “Nice fatwa–I agree!”?  Presumably the United Methodists burned his image in effigy out of solidarity with their Muslim brethren, yes?  Give me a break! 

Incidentally, in the wild and wacky world of liberal religious tolerance, it would normally be considered a move of ecumenical generosity to side with Islamic religious authorities against those who denigrate their teachings, except when they supposedly side with those authorities against someone who has discovered the evils of religion.  Ayaan Hirsi Ali, si, Western critics of Islam, no.  One is an enlightened visionary breaking out of the oppressive coils of patriarchal oppression, and the others are “Islamophobic” nuts, even though they often say more or less the same things.