He came from a Muslim faith and an Indian background so he knew how people would react to his book. He knew he would get a reaction which unfortunately was not the one he may have liked. There is nothing wrong with challenging it intellectually and bringing evidence etc. The problem concerns the language used. The Rushdie affair simply illustrates the difficulty of having conflicting good values.
Religious conservatism has good values but so does secular artistic freedom.
To sentence the writer to death though does seem to me to be ethically deficient. He cannot be sentenced to death unless there is evidence brought in an Islamic court in an Islamic country. Freedom of speech is okay unless you begin to offend people. I affirm such a culture rather than a stifling Orthodox religious culture.