The question can be taken a few ways.
How can there be a "moderate" Muslim?
Why was he not immediately killed?
You gotta be tweaking my nose. Why wasn't he killed? Let me guess. Because there's nothing in the koran about talking to the newspaper?
You know as well as I do, if a fatwa is issued, it has to be based upon the life of the divine and sinless mohammad. The cleric is probably still looking...he can't call it apostasy, what's a poor angry cleric to do?