Oct. 15, 1988--Dr Syed Pasha, secretary of the Union of Muslim Organizations, led a campaign to get The Satanic Verses banned in Britain. After unsuccessfully attempting to contact Rushdie's publisher, Pasha contacted the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and asked her to prosecute Rushdie and his publishers under the Public Order Act (1980) and the Race Relations Act (1970). Thatcher's response was to refuse to ban the book, declaring: "It is an essential part of our democracy that people who act within the law should be able to express their opinions freely." She did, however, refer the book to the Attorney-General, Sir Patrick May hew, who judged that the book constituted no criminal offence. The frustration and outrage evident in the following short extract mirrors the feelings of many British Muslims: "If some writer uses my name and the names of some of my friends and also selects some situations and incidents of my life and distorts them and vilifies them, do I not have the right to charge that person for slander and defamation? Should not the Muslim community have the right to condemn this man for blasphemy because he is using a thin veil of fiction in order to vilify the Prophet and all that they hold dear to them? As the author is not interested in presenting his own realization of any truth, as he is preaching an anti-Islamic theory in the guise of 'a novel,’ his liberty as a writer ends and he should be treated as anyone producing blasphemous writing is treated." In British law, however, Rushdie cannot be charged with blasphemy. Much of the subsequent debate surrounding Rushdie and his novel was to focus on this legal point. For while British law affords protection against blasphemy to the Christian faith, it is denied to other religions. In 1976, for example, successful action was taken against the magazine Gay News after it published a poem that depicted Christ in a homosexual context. Muslims protesting against The Satanic Verses were denied similar recourse to the law for the novel's alleged attack upon the prophet Mohammed. Calls were made, but without success, to extend the blasphemy laws so that they encompassed different religions.