To mark yesterday's 10th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa condemning the England-based Salman Rushdie to death, a powerful Iranian religious foundation reaffirmed the ruling and a $2.8 million bounty on the head of the author. The Khordad Foundation, headed by Ayatollah Hassan Sanei, originally offered a reward of $2.5 million for the killing of Rushdie, who has been deemed an apostate from Islam. Yesterday Ayatollah Sanei declared there were many Muslims throughout the world who were prepared to carry out the fatwa. He may be correct, but the fact that Iran's intelligence services are no longer engaged in the pursuit of Rushdie gives the author a larger margin of safety than he had before Tehran officially distanced itself from the fatwa. State-financed operatives have tried and failed to kill the author a dozen times over the past decade.
It is ironic that the fatwa, one of Ayatollah Khomeini's few enduring legacies, remains a major issue in the power struggle between President Muhammad Khatami's reformist administration and the conservatives, led by the Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The fatwa was itself a product of this contest.
Ayatollah Khomeini's condemnation of Rushdie was in fact the desperate act of a temporal politician whose "Islamic Revolution" was waning and whose grip on power was being challenged by liberals espousing the separation of "church and state". The fatwa both reinvigorated the Khomeini revolution and strengthened the conservative faction for a time. But it is now clear the revolution has run its course, the conservative clerics are facing their most serious challenge ever and Iran is gradually reaching an accommodation with the West.
Muslim commentators fear the antagonism between the two camps can only deepen until westerners demonstrate some understanding of Islam, cease trying to impose post-Christian secular views on the Muslim world and start treating Muslims as equals. It is significant that disaffected Muslims now revere the Saudi militant, Mr Osama Bin Laden, considered by the US as the world's most wanted terrorist, instead of Ayatollah Khomeini. Muslims believe Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses, ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad and denigrated the faith he founded. According to Islamic law, the mandatory punishment for apostasy is death.
Last September the reformist government, under the liberal Mr Khatami, announced it would not implement the fatwa. Rushdie proclaimed he was "free" and emerged from hiding, while London re-established full diplomatic relations with Tehran.