President Obama has repeatedly denied that terrorists have anything to do with the real Islam. But what would Obama say about the fatwa that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s leading political and religious authority from 1979 to 1989, issued condemning author Salman Rushdie to death for writing a book deemed blasphemous to Islam? Khomeini was about as “real Islam” as it gets. 

The parallels to contemporary terrorism are very clear. Terrorists murdered the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists for what the killers considered the cartoonists’ blasphemy in mocking Muhammad, and the same motivation seems to have inspired the attack by terrorist Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein at the free speech event in Copenhagen. Rushdie’s 1988 book The Satanic Verses had sparked protest demonstrations by Muslims, particularly in Pakistan, because it was considered blasphemous, and shortly thereafter Ayatollah Khomeini issued his 1989 fatwa ordering ordinary Muslims to try to murder Rushdie and all those who were knowingly involved in the publication of the book. How can Obama deny that Khomeini’s fatwa was state-sanctioned and Islam-sanctioned terrorism?