Iran is a Shia state, they follow Shi'ism rather than Islam and it is their leader who made the order.
Now, some other people elsewhere may have sympathized (and all Muslims know Rushdie committed a major crime), but the order was from a shiite who is not qualified to give fatwas at all.
The so called "fatwa" was contradictory to Islam from the get-go because under Islamic law a person can only be punished while he is on Muslim land. When he escapes to a land that is at peace with Islam he cannot be punished by the Islamic law. And even if he were to be rightly punished on Muslim land, the punishment could not be executed by some random civilian.
