KARACHI, June 18: The Sindh Assembly and the City Council, Karachi, on Monday adopted separate resolutions to condemn the knighting of Salman Rushdie by Britain, and said that honouring an alleged blasphemer by awarding him the prestigious title of ‘Sir’ was tantamount to offending more than one billion Muslims of the world. Both the unanimously adopted resolutions demanded an immediate withdrawal of the title.

In the Sindh Assembly, the resolution was moved jointly by Minister for Law Iftikhar Chaudhry on behalf of the treasury side, and Hameedullah and Makhdoom Jameeluz Zaman on behalf of the opposition.

In a rare show of complete solidarity with each other, the treasury and opposition benches in the City Council on Monday strongly condemned Britain for awarding the title to Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses” considered by Muslims around the world of having contained blasphemous material.

The resolution urged the federal government to use its good offices to force Britain to withdraw the knighthood.

Condemning the British government for granting Rushdie political asylum with all benefits, the council appealed to London to expel him immediately from the United Kingdom.

Earlier, when the house resumed its session under the chairmanship of senior presiding officer Masood Mehmood, the treasury and opposition sides tabled their separate resolutions on the issue. The chair put the two resolutions to debate and invited members from both sides of the divide to express their views.

More than a dozen treasury and opposition members took part in the debate and condemned Britain for awarding the prestigious title to an alleged blasphemer who, after authoring his book, had become the ‘most hated person’ in the civilised world for hurting feelings of Muslims.

Members from the minorities, Younis Khan advocate and Ashraf Masih, also added their voice to other members’ outrage and urged Britain to withdraw the knighthood.

Those who spoke on the resolutions included Leader of the House Asif Siddiqui, Leader of the Opposition Saeed Ghani, Rafiq Ahmed, Ramzan Awan, Maulana Bashir, Shahjehan Baloch, Ahsan Siddiqui, Salman Baloch, Ismail Brohi, Javed Jadoon, Akram Siddiqui, Abdul Razak Sagani, Sajid Ali and Sheikh Mehbubur Rehman. Many of them advised the federal government to sever diplomatic ties with the United Kingdom.

Later, the council members staged a protest rally outside the council building and raised slogans against Rushdie.

During the day’s proceedings, the house condoled the death of three city government employees who had lost their lives on Saturday night while performance their duties at Pakistan Chowk. They called for an inquiry into the circumstances leading to their death.

The house will meet gain at 11am on Tuesday.