The main things about the ferocious response to The Satanic Verses are 1) we do not have capital punishment in this country and, so far as I know, those who normally advocate it do not have in mind book writing and publication as potential capital offences. 2) Rushdie and Penguin have broken no British law by writing and publishing the book and 3), in those circumstances the death threats, not wholly disclaimed by British subjects but reiterated by some of them in Britain, are simply vendetta and intimidation of a kind that our home-raised British culture, we thought, precludes. Piety is no excuse for vendetta even though it may sometimes promote it.
I like to assume that other cultures - which are in some ways likely to be superior to ours (and that maybe is not saying much) - are likewise inhibited. If they are not then I, for one, am prepared to stand up and characterise them as, to that extent, morally inferior cultures.