Dr Khan was a PhD student while I was at university. He was from Pakistan, and a devoted Muslim, who prayed many times a day, often in the office he shared with 2 other PhD students. He was a very nice person, and we all liked him. Rumours had it that he was a Mujahedin in Afghanistan.
It was the year when Saddam invaded Kuwait. He didn’t like the allies’ action, citing the reason that it was a matter between Islamic brother states, and the Western power had no business there. Which was fair enough.
Dr Khan never expressed any strong opinion on the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. He said he had not read the book and didn’t know much about it. OTOH, Bada our cigarette-smoking pork-eating alcohol-drinking Pakistani Muslim from Bradford who didn’t fast during Ramadan (otherwise an honourable person) was quick to jump at “Death to Salman Rushdie!” although he had not read the book either.
Say you have this neighbour who is easily offended, and when offended goes apeshit, turns violent and threatens to kill whoever gets in his way. He also doesn’t speak your language, and neither do you speak his language, so there is bound to be a lot of misunderstandings. The thing is, people like Dr Khan and Bada were atypical. So were the suicide bomber of the London Bombing. You don’t know who your difficult neighbour really is, and generalization is bad.