The Queen of England recently bestowed a knighthood on Salman Rushdie. This has stirred a lot of controversy in the Middle East: Arabs, Pakistanis and Iranians are pissed about it, to put it mildly. No word from the mellow Turks yet, the Afghans don't count in this case, and the wily Nigerians are trying to figure out a way to use the issue in their national specialty: the infamous oil and banking charity scams. Soon there will be emails and letters flying from Lagos, Abuja and London offering a part of the Rushdie fortune, a knighthood by the Queen, or perhaps a new lofty title by some Pakistani shaikh.

But the furor is not as would have been expected in the past, say a few years ago. Normally this would be a good sign, except for the factors behind it. Too many issues, or regional disasters, compete with the old Queen and the irreverent author for the headlines these days: Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, nuclear weapons, sectarian issues, etc. Perhaps if the Queen had waited until Christmas Eve......

A Pakistani organizaton of 'ulema, Islamic religious leaders, has countered the queen's action with one of its own. The Council of Pakistani 'Ulema, with 2,000 clerical members, has awarded Usama (Osama) Bin Laden a new title: Sword of Allah. Now, old Usama can't go around being called Sir Usama, not yet, but he can be called Saif al-Islam, or just plain 'Saif'. Come to think of it, this is the very same title bestowed on Saddam Hussein in the 1980s by some of the elite 'thinkers' (that is what they were called), and elite poets (and very elite poetesses) among his future Arab victims on the Gulf. Except they called him Sword of the Arabs in verse and prose, instead of Sword of Allah. They weren't as ambitious for him as the Pakistanis are for Usama- perhaps they had an inkling of something wicked their way coming....

As for old Usama (Osama), you infidel kaffirs in the West can call him plain 'Sword' if you wish.
Cheers
Mohammed