Author Salman Rushdie launched an ugly social media catfight Monday when he slammed six writers, including Canadian Michael Ondaatje, for refusing to attend a gala honouring magazine Charlie Hebdo.

“The award will be given. PEN is holding firm. Just 6 p-----s. Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character,” Rushdie wrote on Twitter.

His tweet was aimed at the six authors, including his old friend Ondaatje, who pulled out of a PEN American Center event on May 5 honouring the French satirical magazine. The authors were upset by what they called Charlie Hebdo’s offensive cartoons of Muslims, PEN said Sunday.

In an email to The Associated Press, Rushdie wrote that PEN is “quite right” to bestow a Free Expression Courage Award on Charlie Hebdo, whose Paris office was attacked in January and 12 people were killed.

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“The Charlie Hebdo artists were executed in cold blood for drawing satirical cartoons, which is an entirely legitimate activity. It is quite right that PEN should honour their sacrifice and condemn their murder,” wrote Rushdie.

“This issue has nothing to do with an oppressed and disadvantaged minority,” Rushdie wrote. “It has everything to do with the battle against fanatical Islam, which is highly organized, well-funded and which seeks to terrify us all, Muslims as well as non-Muslims, into a cowed silence.

“These six writers have made themselves the fellow travellers of that project. Very, very bad move.”

In a statement emailed to the Star on Tuesday, Ondaatje said: "What happened in the offices of Charlie Hebdo was an outrage. And I believe in the principles PEN stands for. But I strongly disagree with this particular decision and can not in good conscience host an event in celebration of it."

Rushdie, a former president of the PEN American Center, a literary and human rights organization, was forced into hiding for years over death threats related to his novel The Satanic Verses, which Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned as anti-Muslim.

On Twitter, Rushdie fought back against critics of his scathing post Monday.

When one Twitter user called his comments “rich” and mentioned that he sought protection when he was threatened, he wrote: “no idea what your point is. It’s ‘rich’ for me to defend free speech bc (because) I received police protection for a time?”

He called out another Twitter user who swore at him, posting responses that reached his nearly 1 million followers.

Rushdie eventually conceded he shouldn’t have used the word “p-----s” in the first contentious tweet, saying the word was used in a post he was responding to. It detracted from the matter at hand, he said.

He ended his messages saying, “OK, everyone, I’ve had my say and listened to yours. Enough. See you all later. Bye for now.”

The six writers boycotting the Manhattan gala — Ondaatje, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, Taiye Selasi, Peter Carey and former PEN president Francine Prose — were among 60 people serving as table hosts at the event, the highlight of PEN’s annual World Voices Festival.

Prose wrote on her Facebook page Monday that she was “disheartened by the usually sensible intelligent Salman Rushdie’s readiness to call us ‘fellow travellers’ who are encouraging Islamist jihadism.”

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“I do hope that the audience at the PEN gala will be shown some of the cruder and more racist cartoons that CH publishes, so they will know what they are applauding and honouring,” Prose added.

In a letter to PEN trustees Sunday, Andrew Solomon, PEN’s current American president, wrote that the group believed strongly in the “appropriateness” of the award.

With files from The Associated Press

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