Robertson: You don't think that this man deserves to die?
Y. Islam: Who, Salman Rushdie?
Robertson: Yes.
Y. Islam: Yes, yes.
Robertson: And do you have a duty to be his executioner?
Y. Islam: Uh, no, not necessarily, unless we were in an Islamic state and I was ordered by a judge or by the authority to carry out such an act – perhaps, yes.
[Some minutes later, Robertson on the subject of a protest where an effigy of the author is to be burned]
Robertson: Would you be part of that protest, Yusuf Islam, would you go to a demonstration where you knew that an effigy was going to be burned?
Y. Islam: I would have hoped that it'd be the real thing

The New York Times also reports this statement from the program: [If Rushdie turned up at my doorstep looking for help] I might ring somebody who might do more damage to him than he would like. I'd try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is.[7]

He is embarrassed as he should be. Trying to explain it away as just explaining what the Quran says.



On his personal spiritual website he wrote:

I never called for the death of Salman Rushdie; nor backed the Fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini—and still don’t. The book itself destroyed the harmony between peoples and created an unnecessary international crisis.

When asked about my opinion regarding blasphemy, I could not tell a lie and confirmed that – like both the Torah and the Gospel – the Qur'an considers it, without repentance, as a capital offense. The Bible is full of similar harsh laws if you're looking for them. [8] However, the application of such Biblical and Qur'anic injunctions is not to be outside of due process of law, in a place or land where such law is accepted and applied by the society as a whole... [9]

IOW he doesn't want to personally kill Rushdie, but he'd like Iran to do it.


............

Rushdie himself, in a 2007 letter to the editor of The Daily Telegraph, complained of what he believed was Yusuf's attempts to "rewrite his past," and called his claims of innocence "rubbish." [13] In November 2010, in an interview on George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight on CBC Television Rushdie was asked about Yusuf's appearance at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, DC the previous month. He said, "I thought it was a mistake to have invited him and I actually called up Jon Stewart and we had a couple of conversations and I think, you know, by the end of it I think he's pretty clear that it was probably a misstep. Because he's not a good guy. It may be that he once sang 'Peace Train'... but he hasn't been Cat Stevens for a long time, you know. He's a different guy now." [14]

At a 2012 fundraiser, Stewart recalled that phone conversation with Rushdie, who expressed disappointment that a performer was used "who wanted to kill me." Stewart said he was unaware of Yusuf's 1989 comments at the time. "So I'm like, I'm sure he doesn't believe that people should be put to death for apostasy," Stewart recalled. "I said, 'look, I'm sorry you're upset, but I'm sure the guy isn't really like that. Let me talk to him." Yusuf said the whole thing was a misunderstanding, but added, "although why do you have to insult the Prophet?" Stewart continued, "We get into a whole conversation, and it becomes very clear to me that he is straddling two worlds in a very difficult way. And that he actually still – and it broke my heart a little bit. I wish I had known that. I wouldn't have done [the bit], I don't think. If I had known that, I wouldn't have done it. Because that to me is a deal breaker. Death for free speech is a deal breaker." [15] [16]

en.wikipedia.org