Salman Rushdie says Muslim veils 'suck'

Rushdie, whose book The Satanic Verses triggered death threats from Islamic clerics, gave his full backing to Leader of the Commons Jack Straw for raising the issue.

Rushdie was forced into hiding for 10 years after Iranian cleric Ayatollah Khomeini served a "fatwah" on him over his book's alleged slight on the prophet Mohammed.

He had round-the-clock police protection costing nearly £1 million a year, although that has been downgraded in recent years after Iran indicated the death sentence no longer applied.

But Rushdie has always insisted he was right to publish The Satanic Verses and today he risked fresh Muslim anger with a savage attack on the wearing of veils.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, held to mark the opening of a new joint exhibition with sculptor Amish Kapoor, he backed Mr Straw to the hilt.

"Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there's not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted wearing the veil.

"I think the battle against the veil has been a long and continuing battle against the limitation of women, so in that sense I'm completely on [Straw's] side.

"He was expressing an important opinion, which is that veils suck, which they do. I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women."

Mr Straw triggered anger last week when he revealed he asked Muslim women visiting his constituency surgery to remove their veils.

He said that seeing someone's face made it easier to communicate and felt the garment was a barrier to integration and good community relations.

The publication of the Satanic Verses in 1989 triggered not just the fatwah from Iran but also riots in Pakistan, India and Turkey among Muslims who felt he had insulted the prophet.

In the following decade, the book's Japanese translator was murdered and its Norwegian publisher and Italian translator seriously injured in separate attacks.

Publisher Penguin received 5,000 abusive or threatening letters and 25 bomb threats.

Rushdie is to open a joint exhibition with Kapoor at a London gallery, with a sculpture based on the story of Sheherazade, the Arabian woman who told stories to avoid a brutal death at the hands of a tyrant.

Kapoor said today that he disagreed with Rushdie over the veils issue.

He agreed, he said, with John Prescott, who said that he would find it rude to tell someone wearing sunglasses to remove them.