Knighthood of Salman Rushdie All other aspects were for the main committee to examine. The British Foreign Office, which has a permanent secretary on the main committee, announced that there had been no requests to gauge possible Muslim reaction to the knighthood. It was noted that Rushdie's 13 books have won numerous awards, including the Booker Prize for "Midnight's Children" in 1981, the Booker of Bookers prize, the Whitbread novel award (twice), and the James Tait Black memorial prize. PEN International had been a constant supporter of Rushdie being honoured, believing that awarding the author (born in India) would be "seen as a positive
Knighthood of Salman Rushdie faces) gathered outside Regent's Park mosque denouncing Rushdie's knighthood, "noisily renewing calls for his death", and burning a poster of the British flag. They addressed worshippers leaving Friday services and soon had attracted a crowd of over 100 people. The demonstrators chanted "Death to Rushdie! Death to the queen!" and had signs with slogans such as "Salman Rushdie should be punished, not praised." Protest organiser Anjem Choudray (an ex-head of the British wing of the banned radical group al-Muhajiroun and helped co-ordinate the protests over the Jyllands-Posten cartoons) said "This knighthood is just another example of Tony Blair and his