"The story goes that Khomeini was watching the news that evening and was moved enough by the deaths of the Pakistani youths that he issued his fatwa. The book had been translated into Persian and had been on sale in Tehran—no one seemed exercised about it until Khomeini spoke out. The Saudis couldn’t let this pass. They went the legal way. Sheikh Bin Baz declared that Rushdie should be tried in absentia to determine whether his book was blasphemous. Sheikh Gad al-Haq, the head of Egypt’s highest religious authority, Al-Azhar, came out against Khomeini’s fatwa. But they were not standing up for freedom of speech and writing, no—Al-Azhar’s view was simply that no one could be put to death before there was a fair trial to determine whether blasphemy had indeed been committed. Any verdict in such a case would have to be handed out by a head of government"