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Salman Rushdie is probably having a good giggle right about now. A master of word play and linguistic acrobatics, he’s probably getting a kick out of the grandiose alliteration that his controversial knighthood lends to his name. Sir Salman has an appropriately sibilant, sinister ring to it, more befitting a cartoon villain in a Disney animation – or a character in a novel – than a political and literary figure.

Moreover, as a world-class troublemaker, Rushdie is probably tickled pink at the international furor and diplomatic rows his accolade has sparked. The fact that his recognition has primarily irked Iran and Pakistan – the two nations he loves to hate – is simply icing on his cake. If Pakistanis were clever, they would know that the best way to punish the attention-hungry Rushdie for his literary and spiritual transgressions would be to ignore him and his achievements. By allowing the speakers of our provincial assemblies, ministers and trade associations to call for his assassination, we’ve made Rushdie’s knighthood all the more exciting for him.

But now that we’ve played into Rushdie’s hands, we may as well use his knighthood as an excuse to spark productive debate. Enough has been said about the decision to knight Rushdie being insensitive and unnecessarily provocative with regards to the Islamic world. Many have usefully pointed out that the knighthood is a throwback to the Danish cartoon controversy, an inappropriate social experiment aimed at proving that the Muslim world really is populated by right-wing fanatics who think that suicide bombings are the best antidote to cultural clashes. (Of course, why more is not written about how you can count on local authorities and clerics to willingly oblige and prove the worst western stereotypes about Muslims to be true is beyond me.)

Rushdie’s recognition has also fostered interesting debates about the undemocratic nature of the knighthood system. Meanwhile, many commentators have pointed out that Pakistanis have betrayed their ongoing vulnerability to the colonial mentality by giving a British knighthood as much importance as they have. After all, if we were really out of the British empire’s clutches, our reactions to Rushdie’s knighthood would have been a resounding ‘So what?’. Finally, one does have to wonder whether this was Tony Blair’s parting shot at a Muslim world that he believes the West should engage, but on a secular, rational platform.

One interesting aside that should be added to the hue and cry surrounding Rushdie’s knighthood is that the author recently reconfigured himself as a humanist, thus evolving beyond his identity as an atheist with critical views of Islam. In April this year, he was awarded the first annual Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism by the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University. At a three-day event to promote humanism – the ‘belief’ system that aims to unite the global community of over one billion non-religious people who still aim to live ethically and rationally according to the dictates of universal morality – Rushdie appeared alongside esteemed thinkers such as economist Amartya Sen and psychologist Steven Pinker. But while Rushdie seems to be over Islam, the Muslim world has yet to get over him.

In the flurry of recent critiques of the author, the question that has not been mulled over enough is why Rushdie has been knighted. Indeed, if the British government made one mistake by knighting the contentious author without considering the political repercussions, it is making another, more severe mistake by not clarifying the logic behind the decision. Officially, Rushdie has been knighted for rendering ‘services to literature’. Of course, anyone who slogged through his recent novels such as viagra dosage information and viagra dosage information know that Rushdie is more of a literary has-been who seems hell-bent on nullifying his earlier literary achievements with a profusion of bad prose.

The fact that is not being highlighted enough is that knighthoods are meant to reward individuals’ personal bravery and achievement. The unconfirmed word on the street is that Rushdie was nominated to receive the award by the international writer’s group Pen, which is known for supporting authors who are persecuted by governments and extremist groups for the critical and controversial content of their publications. In other words, Rushdie’s knighthood seems to be an attempt to remind the Muslim world that freedom of speech is a human right that the western world intends to champion at all costs.

The international community frequently recognizes the literary achievements of authors from countries and regions where governments begin to clamp down on free speech. The celebration of writers who dare to speak out when silence is mandated by those in power is a way to slap the wrists of those who dare to jeopardize the freedom of expression. One recent case in point is Orhan Pamuk, who walked away with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006 soon after being charged by the Turkish authorities under Article 301/1 of the Turkish Penal Code for ‘insulting Turkishness’ and speaking out against religious extremism. Although the international community’s reaction to the persecution of the Turkish author led to charges against him being dropped, he was quickly recast as a champion of free speech and subsequently courted and applauded by international literary circles.

In this context, Rushdie’s knighthood has served as a convenient way to determine where in the Muslim world free speech is in peril. By crying foul against Sir Salman much louder than even the Iranian authorities, the Pakistani government has revealed its increasing intolerance for free expression to the international community. In fact, Pakistanis should be grateful that the recent trend toward censorship that has been gaining local momentum has laid bare the extent of its irrationality through the matter of Rushdie’s knighthood.

Arguments justifying suicide bombings as a way to deal with those who supposedly blaspheme through literature are simply the most recent incarnation of the government’s attempt to restrict free speech. Closer to home, Pakistanis should be more concerned about the implications of the government banning viagra dosage information magazine after it was deemed obscene and blasphemous by Maulana Abdul Aziz, the head cleric of the infamous Lal Masjid. This audacious move was the latest in a string of transgressions against free speech that the government has been executing with little shame: the PEMRA Amendment Ordinance 2007 that tried to empower authorities to confiscate the equipment and suspend the licenses of media broadcasters without lodging official complaints; demanding that certain news analysis programmes be taken off air; blocking the news broadcasts of private cable channels; allowing media organizations to come under attack; preventing FM radio channels from broadcasting news content; periodically blocking blogspot.com, a website that hosts many opinionated and anti-establishment blogs; allowing clerics and religious groups across the Frontier province and FATA to shut down shops selling music and film on VCDs and DVDs.

The fact is, in its brutish attempts to curtail free speech and open expression, the government is beginning to resemble the hordes from Lal Masjid who kidnapped several Chinese students with little justification in an attempt to stem immorality. Once the authorities lose their regard for free speech, they are clarifying just how insincere their pretensions of democracy are. However flawed a writer and individual he may be, Rushdie has long been established as an icon of free speech. By calling for his assassination and condemning his knighthood, our government is brandishing its thoughtlessness and disregard for open expression. This reality, more than Sir Salman’s divisive laurels, should be a cause of concern for thinking Pakistanis.