Tehran - A grand ayatollah in Qom, stronghold of Iran's Shia Muslim clergy, said it was the duty of all Muslims to carry out the death decree against Salman Rushdie.
The hardline conservative daily newspaper Jomhuri Eslami said yesterday that Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Fazal Lankarani had sent a message to world Muslims from the Shia holy city south of Tehran. "This fatwa is by no means revokable or changeable and it is the duty of all Muslims of the world to carry it out," he said.