Gaza’s top Islamic scholar issues fatwa against October attack

It is an embarrassing critique for Hamas, which has used religious arguments to justify its actions.

bbc.com

The most prominent Islamic scholar in Gaza has issued a rare, powerful fatwa condemning Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the devastating war in the Palestinian territory.

Professor Dr Salman al-Dayah, a former dean of the Faculty of Sharia and Law at the Hamas-affiliated Islamic University of Gaza, is one of the region’s most respected religious authorities, so his legal opinion carries significant weight among Gaza’s two million population, which is predominantly Sunni Muslim.

A fatwa is a non-binding Islamic legal ruling from a respected religious scholar usually based on the Quran or the Sunnah - the sayings and practices of the Prophet Muhammad.

Dr Dayah’s fatwa, which was published in a detailed six-page document, criticises Hamas for what he calls “violating Islamic principles governing jihad”.

Jihad means “struggle” in Arabic and in Islam it can be a personal struggle for spiritual improvement or a military struggle against unbelievers.

Dr Dayah adds: “If the pillars, causes, or conditions of jihad are not met, it must be avoided in order to avoid destroying people’s lives. This is something that is easy to guess for our country’s politicians, so the attack must have been avoided.”

For Hamas, the fatwa represents an embarrassing and potentially damaging critique, particularly as the group often justifies its attacks on Israel through religious arguments to garner support from Arab and Muslim communities.

The 7 October attack saw hundreds of Hamas gunmen from Gaza invade southern Israel. About 1,200 people were killed and 251 others taken hostage.

Israel responded by launching a military campaign to destroy Hamas, during which more than 43,400 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Dr Dayah argues that the significant civilian casualties in Gaza, together with the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure and humanitarian disaster that have followed the 7 October attack, means that it was in direct contradiction to the teachings of Islam.

Hamas, he says, has failed in its obligations of “keeping fighters away from the homes of defenceless [Palestinian] civilians and their shelters, and providing security and safety as much as possible in the various aspects of life... security, economic, health, and education, and saving enough supplies for them.”

Dr Dayah points to Quranic verses and the Sunnah that set strict conditions for the conduct of jihad, including the necessity of avoiding actions that provoke an excessive and disproportionate response by an opponent.

His fatwa highlights that, according to Islamic law, a military raid should not trigger a response that exceeds the intended benefits of the action.

He also stresses that Muslim leaders are obligated to ensure the safety and well-being of non-combatants, including by providing food, medicine, and refuge to those not involved in the fighting.

“Human life is more precious to God than Mecca,” Dr Dayah states.

His opposition to the 7 October attack is especially significant given his deep influence in Gaza, where he is seen as a key religious figure and a vocal critic of Islamist movements, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

His moderate Salafist beliefs place him in direct opposition to Hamas’s approach to armed resistance and its ties to Shia-ruled Iran.

Salafists are fundamentalists who seek to adhere the example of the Prophet Muhammad and the first generations who followed him.

Dr Dayah has consistently argued for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate that adheres strictly to Islamic law, rather than the political party-based systems that Hamas and other groups advocate.

“Our role model is the Prophet Muhammad, who founded a nation and did not establish political parties that divide the nation. Therefore, parties in Islam are forbidden,” he said in a sermon he gave at a mosque several years ago.

He has also condemned extremism, opposing jihadist groups like Islamic State and al-Qaeda, and has used all of his platforms to issue fatwas on various social and political issues, ranging from commercial transactions, social disputes over marriage and divorce, to the conduct of political violence.

The fatwa adds to the growing internal debate within Gaza and the broader Arab world over the moral and legal implications of Hamas’s actions, and it is likely to fuel further divisions within Palestinian society regarding the use of armed resistance in the ongoing conflict with Israel.

Sheikh Ashraf Ahmed, one of Dr Dayah’s students who was forced to leave his house in Gaza City last year and flee to the south of Gaza with his wife and nine children, told the BBC: “Our scholar [Dr Dayah] refused to leave his home in northern Gaza despite the fears of Israeli air strikes. He chose to fulfil his religious duty by issuing his legal opinion on the attack”.

Ahmed described the fatwa as the most powerful legal judgment of a historical moment. “It’s a deeply well researched document, reflecting Dayah’s commitment to Islamic jurisprudence,” he said.

"At this time, as a person living in the prison that is Gaza, my prime, immediate enemy is Hamas. It is a barrier I need to remove from my life. If the Jews come and remove it, I will support them." -- "Ashraf," 28, recent evacuee from Gaza City

"Regarding humanitarian aid that arrives and is administered by Hamas, unfortunately, this aid isn't distributed fairly. It is distributed in a partisan way: only Hamas members get the aid." -- Anonymous Gaza resident

"Hamas bears responsibility for all the wars, but we're the ones who pay the price. You launched an attack and took all these hostages, but did you think about how Israel would respond? Did you think they'd simply say, 'Hey, whatever. Okay, just give us back the hostages and we'll do a prisoner exchange right away?'… Hamas doesn't bear this: we all do." -- Anonymous Gaza resident

The Islamic Fatwa Council has issued a fatwa explicitly banning Hamas and supporting the rights of Palestinians that are being violated in Gaza.

The first of its kind, the fatwa condemns Hamas and blames it directly for the violations and oppression in Gaza.

The fatwa forbids joining or praying for Hamas, as well as funding or fighting for it. It judges Hamas unequivocally responsible for its own corrupt rule and affirms that the Muslim Brotherhood in all its branches is a terror organization violating the tenets of the Islamic faith.

The fatwa, released recently, was issued by three renowned Muslim jurists from Iraq and Pakistan, led by Grand Ayatollah Fadhel al-Budairi; Sheikh Abdallah al-Dheeban, the Sunni Grand Mufti of Wasit Governorate; and Pakistan's Peer Syed Mudassir Nazar Shah, from the International Sufi Council.

We have seen what Gaza is subjected to under Hamas's rule, and the atrocities, in our view, which it has perpetrated against Palestinians faithful, unarmed [civilians] who have neither strength nor recourse. And so we believed it was our Islamic obligation to aid the oppressed. Our faith, in its wisdom, enjoins us to be "an enemy to the oppressor and an aid to the oppressed." That is why the fatwa was issued against Hamas. -- Sheikh Muhammad Ali al-Maqdisi, Spokesman for the Islamic Fatwa Council

The Islamic authority Grand Ayatollah al-Budairi stressed that no one is beyond blame for the harm done to the Palestinian people - even those who think of themselves as "leaders" claiming to represent the Palestinians.

We, as an Islamic authority, stand with the oppressed Palestinian people, and we do not accept that any harm be done to them, whether by Israel or Palestinian governing elements, be they from Hamas or others. These officials are supposed to bear responsibility to protect the Palestinian people. -- Grand Ayatollah Fadhil al-Budairi, Chairman, Islamic Fatwa Council

Fatwa Council spokesman Muhammad Ali al-Maqdisi, a scholar and lecturer at the Islamic seminary in Najaf, explained in an interview with the French magazine L'Obs that one of the motivations for issuing this fatwa was the suffering of the people of Gaza as exposed in the video series "Whispered in Gaza."

When these videos appeared, nearly everyone who follows Palestinian affairs saw them. I'm referring to the series "Whispered in Gaza." In these videos, numerous inhabitants of Gaza - men, women and children - describe what they've been subjected to because of Hamas's corruption. They testified before the world to the many forms of extortion and intimidation they've suffered. Every human being should heed this testimony. As complaints about Hamas's behavior toward the unarmed and poor Palestinian people increased, this gave us the impetus and clarity to issue a fatwa against Hamas. -- Sheikh Muhammad Ali al-Maqdisi, Spokesman for the Islamic Fatwa Council

Beyond reflecting a religious view or position, the fatwa heralds a new, courageous approach calling on other fatwa councils, institutions and leaders in the Islamic world to reinforce the fatwa - and build on its accompanying juridical findings as well as Shari'ah and Islamic law overall.

We expect that society writ large will support the oppressed in Gaza. We believe that all Muslim clerics who adhere to their true responsibilities must take the same position. This is what we believe. -- Sheikh Muhammad Ali al-Maqdisi, Spokesman for the Islamic Fatwa Council

The fatwa is in accord with Islamic organizations in the Arab Gulf - including the UAE Fatwa Council and the Council of Senior Scholars in Saudi Arabia - which have designated the Muslim Brotherhood in all its branches a terror organization.

Of note, Sheikh al-Budairi met with Sheikh Dr. Mohammad al-Issa, Secretary General of the Muslim World League, in Mecca at the beginning of this year - an indication that the views of the two organizations and their leaders are aligning.

Whispered in Gaza - English

Whispered in Gaza is an animated series by the Center for Peace Communications featuring actual voices of Palestinians residing in the Gaza

YouTube

FATWA | Palestinian Human Rights in Gaza March 9, 2023 The Islamic Fatwa Council (IFC) deems the recently publicized audio and video material containing testimonies of Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip to be both alarming and concerning. It is the responsibility of the Islamic Seminaries to take a clear and firm stance in light of the inhumane actions of Hamas. Based on the requests of countless believers, The Islamic Fatwa Council has reviewed extensive documentation of Hamas behavior towards Palestinians in Gaza, including their recently publicized testimonies. Our findings - which are also displayed in our jurisprudential reasoning - result in our ruling that: A) Hamas bears responsibility for its own reign of corruption and terror against Palestinian civilians within Gaza; B) It is prohibited to pray for, join, support, finance, or fight on behalf of Hamas - an entity that adheres to the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Furthermore, The Islamic Fatwa Council joins The UAE Fatwa Council and the Council of Senior Scholars of Saudi Arabia in declaring the Muslim Brotherhood movement and all of its branches as terrorist organizations that defame Islam and operate in opposition to mainstream Islamic unity, theology and jurisprudence.

Islamic group issues fatwa against Hamas for oppressing Gazans - JNS.org

The Iraq-based Islamic Fatwa Council slammed the terrorist organization for its treatment of Palestinians.

JNS.org

A major Islamic organization has issued a legal ruling against the Gaza-based terrorist group Hamas, saying that its treatment of the millions of Palestinians under its rule goes against the religion.

The Iraqi-based Islamic Fatwa Council issued the fatwa, or legal opinion, last Thursday. The non-governmental body of Sunni, Shi’ite and Sufi clerics said that the fatwa was issued in response to testimonies from Gaza residents published last month in a series of video clips by the U.S.-based Center for Peace Communications.

In the video series, titled “Whispered in Gaza,” Palestinians (whose identities are protected) are shown blaming not neighboring Israel for their plight, but their autocratic rulers Hamas, who have been in power in the Strip since 2007 following a violent takeover.

The Center for Peace Communications says that it “works through media, schools, and centers of spiritual and moral leadership in the Middle East and North Africa to roll back divisive ideologies and foster a mindset of inclusion and engagement.”

Hamas is charged by the Islamic Fatwa Council with violating the laws of the Koran and the prophet Mohammad for its “reign of corruption and terror against Palestinian citizens within Gaza,” more than 2 million of whom are crammed into an area of some 141 square miles surrounded by Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.

“It is prohibited to pray for, join, support, finance, or fight on behalf of Hamas—an entity that adheres to the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood movement,” the fatwa continues. The Islamic Fatwa Council also said that it joins the UAE Fatwa Council and the Council of Senior Scholars of Saudi Arabia in “declaring the Muslim Brotherhood and all of its branches as terrorist organizations that defame Islam and operate in opposition to mainstream Islamic unity, theology and jurisprudence.”

While the ruling is non-binding, the Islamic Fatwa Council is considered to be highly influential in the Muslim world as this is the first fatwa against Hamas from an Islamic legislative body.

Senior Muslim Clerics Issue Fatwa Against Hamas

The Islamic Fatwa Council — a non-governmental clerical body headquartered in Najaf, Iraq — issued a fatwa, or religious edict, last week co

FDD

The Islamic Fatwa Council — a non-governmental clerical body headquartered in Najaf, Iraq — issued a fatwa, or religious edict, last week condemning Hamas’ repression of Palestinians in Gaza and calling on the terrorist group to make peace with Israel. The council stated that Hamas was responsible for racketeering, extortion, the use of child soldiers, and falsely accusing Palestinians of treason. The fatwa dictates that Muslims should not “pray for, support, finance or fight on behalf of Hamas.” An animated series of videos released in January detailing harsh living conditions in Gaza under Hamas rule — produced by the U.S.-based Center for Peace Communications and titled “Whispered in Gaza” — spurred the religious ruling.

The Islamic Fatwa Council is a judicial body that specializes in Islamic law, represents both Sunnis and Shiites, and is chaired by Grand Ayatollah Shaikh Fadhil al-Budairi. Among several key mission objectives, the council says it strives to “reclaim the Islamic legal system from extremists, Islamists, and supporters of terrorism.” The fatwa is the first against Hamas by an accredited Islamic legal body.

Expert Analysis

“Since its brutal takeover of the Gaza Strip, Hamas has trained child soldiers, jailed activists who dare expose its corrupt authority, and stolen aid money to fund its military activities. The fatwa is welcome news, as it demonstrates increasing recognition among some Muslims in the region that Hamas’ extremism and repression are key drivers of Palestinian conflict with Israel.” — Joe Truzman, Research Analyst at FDD’s Long War Journal

A Call to Respond

“Our faith, in its wisdom, enjoins us to be an enemy to the oppressor and an aid to the oppressed,” said Muhammed Ali al-Maqdisi, the council’s spokesperson. “That is why the fatwa was issued against Hamas.”

Noting the public outcry after the release of “Whispered in Gaza,” al-Maqdisi added, “Nearly everyone who follows Palestinian affairs saw these videos in which numerous inhabitants of Gaza — men, women, and children — described what they had been subjected to by Hamas’ corruption. They testified before the world to the many forms of extortion and intimidation they have suffered.”

A History of Human Rights Abuses

Hamas has a long record of repression. In a report on human rights practices in Gaza in 2021, the U.S. State Department notes that Hamas’ human rights abuses include, among others, “credible reports of unlawful or arbitrary killings by Hamas personnel; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by Hamas personnel; unjust detention; political prisoners or detainees; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; [and] arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including violence, threats of violence, unjustified arrests and prosecutions against journalists, censorship, and the existence of criminal libel and slander laws.”

In one prominent case, on November 1, 2021, Hamas arrested peace activist Rami Aman for holding a Zoom call with Israelis. The terrorist group criticized Aman for “holding a normalization activity,” a charge Hamas official Iyad al-Bozom described as a crime.

The Defiance of Salman Rushdie

After a near-fatal stabbing—and decades of threats—the novelist speaks about writing as a death-defying act.

The New Yorker

[..]

In Tehran, Ayatollah Khomeini was ailing and in crisis. After eight years of war with Iraq and hundreds of thousands of casualties, he had been forced to drink from the “poisoned chalice,” as he put it, and accept a ceasefire with Saddam Hussein. The popularity of the revolutionary regime had declined. Khomeini’s son admitted that his father never read “The Satanic Verses,” but the mullahs around him saw an opportunity to reassert the Ayatollah’s authority at home and to expand it abroad, even beyond the reach of his Shia followers. Khomeini issued the fatwa calling for Rushdie’s execution. As Kenan Malik writes in “From Fatwa to Jihad,” the edict “was a sign of weakness rather than of strength,” a matter more of politics than of theology.

A reporter from the BBC called Rushdie at home and said, “How does it feel to know that you have just been sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini?”

Rushdie thought, I’m a dead man. That’s it. One day. Two days. For the rest of his life, he would no longer be merely a storyteller; he would be a story, a controversy, an affair.

After speaking with a few more reporters, Rushdie went to a memorial service for his close friend Bruce Chatwin. Many of his friends were there. Some expressed concern, others tried consolation via wisecrack. “Next week we’ll be back here for you!” Paul Theroux said. In those early days, Theroux recalled in a letter to Rushdie, he thought the fatwa was “a very bad joke, a bit like Papa Doc Duvalier putting a voodoo curse on Graham Greene for writing ‘The Comedians.’ ” After the service, Martin Amis picked up a newspaper that carried the headline “execute rushdie orders the ayatollah.” Rushdie, Amis thought, had now “vanished into the front page.”

For the next decade, Rushdie lived underground, guarded by officers of the Special Branch, a unit of London’s Metropolitan Police. The headlines and the threats were unceasing. People behaved well. People behaved disgracefully. There were friends of great constancy—Buford, Amis, James Fenton, Ian McEwan, Nigella Lawson, Christopher Hitchens, many more—and yet some regarded the fatwa as a problem Rushdie had brought on himself. Prince Charles made his antipathy clear at a dinner party that Amis attended: What should you expect if you insult people’s deepest convictions? John le Carré instructed Rushdie to withdraw his book “until a calmer time has come.” Roald Dahl branded him a “dangerous opportunist” who “knew exactly what he was doing and cannot plead otherwise.” The singer-songwriter Cat Stevens, who had a hit with “Peace Train” and converted to Islam, said, “The Quran makes it clear—if someone defames the Prophet, then he must die.” Germaine Greer, George Steiner, and Auberon Waugh all expressed their disapproval. So did Jimmy Carter, the British Foreign Secretary, and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Among his detractors, an image hardened of a Rushdie who was dismissive of Muslim sensitivities and, above all, ungrateful for the expensive protection the government was providing him. The historian Hugh Trevor-Roper remarked, “I would not shed a tear if some British Muslims, deploring his manners, should waylay him in a dark street and seek to improve them. If that should cause him thereafter to control his pen, society would benefit, and literature would not suffer.”

The horror was that, thanks to Khomeini’s cruel edict, so many people did suffer. In separate incidents, Hitoshi Igarashi, the novel’s Japanese translator, and Ettore Capriolo, its Italian translator, were stabbed, Igarashi fatally; the book’s Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, was fortunate to survive being shot multiple times. Bookshops from London to Berkeley were firebombed. Meanwhile, the Swedish Academy, the organization in Stockholm that awards the annual Nobel Prize in Literature, declined to issue a statement in support of Rushdie. This was a silence that went unbroken for decades.

[..]

Since 1989, Rushdie has had to shut out not only the threats to his person but the constant dissections of his character, in the press and beyond. “There was a moment when there was a ‘me’ floating around that had been invented to show what a bad person I was,” he said. “ ‘Evil.’ ‘Arrogant.’ ‘Terrible writer.’ ‘Nobody would’ve read him if there hadn’t been an attack against his book.’ Et cetera. I’ve had to fight back against that false self. My mother used to say that her way of dealing with unhappiness was to forget it. She said, ‘Some people have a memory. I have a forget-ory.’ ”

Rushdie went on, “I just thought, There are various ways in which this event can destroy me as an artist.” He could refrain from writing altogether. He could write “revenge books” that would make him a creature of circumstances. Or he could write “scared books,” novels that “shy away from things, because you worry about how people will react to them.” But he didn’t want the fatwa to become a determining event in his literary trajectory: “If somebody arrives from another planet who has never heard of anything that happened to me, and just has the books on the shelf and reads them chronologically, I don’t think that alien would think, Something terrible happened to this writer in 1989. The books go on their own journey. And that was really an act of will.”

Some people in Rushdie’s circle and beyond are convinced that, in the intervening decades, self-censorship, a fear of giving offense, has too often become the order of the day. His friend Hanif Kureishi has said, “Nobody would have the balls today to write ‘The Satanic Verses,’ let alone publish it.”

[..]

Rushdie was hospitalized for six weeks. In the months since his release, he has mostly stayed home save for trips to doctors, sometimes two or three a day. He’d lived without security for more than two decades. Now he’s had to rethink that.

Just before Christmas, on a cold and rainy morning, I arrived at the midtown office of Andrew Wylie, Rushdie’s literary agent, where we’d arranged to meet. After a while, I heard the door to the agency open. Rushdie, in an accent that bears traces of all his cities—Bombay, London, New York—was greeting agents and assistants, people he had not seen in many months. The sight of him making his way down the hall was startling: He has lost more than forty pounds since the stabbing. The right lens of his eyeglasses is blacked over. The attack left him blind in that eye, and he now usually reads with an iPad so that he can adjust the light and the size of the type. There is scar tissue on the right side of his face. He speaks as fluently as ever, but his lower lip droops on one side. The ulnar nerve in his left hand was badly damaged.

Rushdie took off his coat and settled into a chair across from his agent’s desk. I asked how his spirits were.

“Well, you know, I’ve been better,” he said dryly. “But, considering what happened, I’m not so bad. As you can see, the big injuries are healed, essentially. I have feeling in my thumb and index finger and in the bottom half of the palm. I’m doing a lot of hand therapy, and I’m told that I’m doing very well.”

“Can you type?”

“Not very well, because of the lack of feeling in the fingertips of these fingers.”

What about writing?

“I just write more slowly. But I’m getting there.”

Sleeping has not always been easy. “There have been nightmares—not exactly the incident, but just frightening. Those seem to be diminishing. I’m fine. I’m able to get up and walk around. When I say I’m fine, I mean, there’s bits of my body that need constant checkups. It was a colossal attack.”

More than once, Rushdie looked around the office and smiled. “It’s great to be back,” he said. “It’s someplace which is not a hospital, which is mostly where I’ve been to. And to be in this agency is—I’ve been coming here for decades, and it’s a very familiar space to me. And to be able to come here to talk about literature, talk about books, to talk about this novel, ‘Victory City,’ to be able to talk about the thing that most matters to me . . .”

At this meeting and in subsequent conversations, I sensed conflicting instincts in Rushdie when he replied to questions about his health: there was the instinct to move on—to talk about literary matters, his book, anything but the decades-long fatwa and now the attack—and the instinct to be absolutely frank. “There is such a thing as P.T.S.D., you know,” he said after a while. “I’ve found it very, very difficult to write. I sit down to write, and nothing happens. I write, but it’s a combination of blankness and junk, stuff that I write and that I delete the next day. I’m not out of that forest yet, really.”

He added, “I’ve simply never allowed myself to use the phrase ‘writer’s block.’ Everybody has a moment when there’s nothing in your head. And you think, Oh, well, there’s never going to be anything. One of the things about being seventy-five and having written twenty-one books is that you know that, if you keep at it, something will come.”

Had that happened in the past months?

Rushdie frowned. “Not really. I mean, I’ve tried, but not really.” He was only lately “just beginning to feel the return of the juices.”

How to go on living after thinking you had emerged from years of threat, denunciation, and mortal danger? And now how to recover from an attack that came within millimetres of killing you, and try to live, somehow, as if it could never recur?

He seemed grateful for a therapist he had seen since before the attack, a therapist “who has a lot of work to do. He knows me and he’s very helpful, and I just talk things through.”

The talk was plainly in the service of a long-standing resolution. “I’ve always tried very hard not to adopt the role of a victim,” he said. “Then you’re just sitting there saying, Somebody stuck a knife in me! Poor me. . . . Which I do sometimes think.” He laughed. “It hurts. But what I don’t think is: That’s what I want people reading the book to think. I want them to be captured by the tale, to be carried away.”

Many years ago, he recalled, there were people who seemed to grow tired of his persistent existence. “People didn’t like it. Because I should have died. Now that I’ve almost died, everybody loves me. . . . That was my mistake, back then. Not only did I live but I tried to live well. Bad mistake. Get fifteen stab wounds, much better.”

As he lay in the hospital, Rushdie received countless texts and e-mails sending love, wishing for his recovery. “I was in utter shock,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian novelist, told me. “I just didn’t believe he was still in any real danger. For two days, I kept vigil, sending texts to friends all over the world, searching the Internet to make sure he was still alive.” There was a reading in his honor on the steps of the New York Public Library.

For some writers, the shock brought certain issues into hard focus. “The attack on Salman clarified a lot of things for me,” Ayad Akhtar told me. “I know I have a much brighter line that I draw for myself between the potential harms of speech and the freedom of the imagination. They are incommensurate and shouldn’t be placed in the same paragraph.”

Rushdie was stirred by the tributes that his near-death inspired. “It’s very nice that everybody was so moved by this, you know?” he said. “I had never thought about how people would react if I was assassinated, or almost assassinated.”

And yet, he said, “I’m lucky. What I really want to say is that my main overwhelming feeling is gratitude.” He was grateful to those who showed their support. He was grateful to the doctors, the E.M.T. workers, and the fireman in Chautauqua who stanched his wounds, and he was grateful to the surgeons in Erie. “At some point, I’d like to go back up there and say thank you.” He was also grateful to his two grown sons, Zafar and Milan, who live in London, and to Griffiths. “She kind of took over at a point when I was helpless.” She dealt with the doctors, the police, and the investigators, and with transport from Pennsylvania to New York. “She just took over everything, as well as having the emotional burden of my almost being killed.”

Did he think it had been a mistake to let his guard down since moving to New York? “Well, I’m asking myself that question, and I don’t know the answer to it,” he said. “I did have more than twenty years of life. So, is that a mistake? Also, I wrote a lot of books. ‘The Satanic Verses’ was my fifth published book—my fourth published novel—and this is my twenty-first. So, three-quarters of my life as a writer has happened since the fatwa. In a way, you can’t regret your life.”

Whom does he blame for the attack?

“I blame him,” he said.

[..]

The "cancel culture", these new "fatwas" from the left

The good old censorship, we know it: it came from the right and truncated words or works. Here is now the supercensorship: that coming from the left, in the name of "good". But above all, it is no longer just a question of erasing words, but the person himself, symbolically, when his word is deemed "offensive". This is called the "cancel culture". Everything is done so that this individual loses his job or can no longer edit or produce anything. A sort of secular and modern "excommunication", which is wreaking havoc in the United States and is showing its nose in France.

Rushdie’s Moral Heroism

The attempt on the great writer’s life illustrates the dedication with which fanatics pursue the objects of their hatred.

quillette.com

We are from Allah and to Allah we shall return. I am informing all brave Muslims of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses, a text written, edited, and published against Islam, the Prophet of Islam, and the Qur'an, along with all the editors and publishers aware of its contents, are condemned to death. I call on all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill them without delay, so that no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth. And whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr, Allah willing. Meanwhile, if someone has access to the author of the book but is incapable of carrying out the execution, he should inform the people so that [Rushdie] is punished for his actions.

Roya Hakakian and Masih Alinejad happen to be friends, as Hakakian noted in the New York Review, and the combined threats against them suggest a broader policy of violence and intimidation on the part of the Islamic Republic and its operatives in the United States. This is a policy aimed not just at a couple of inconveniently articulate emigrés, but at the larger circles of the Iranian emigration in America and everywhere else, whose members are bound to pause an additional thoughtful moment before piping up in public about life and oppression back home in far-away Iran. The policy is a display of power. It terrorizes. It succeeds at doing this even if any given plot is foiled, or is suspended, or is merely intimated.

Having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism. We writers, journalists, and intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity, and secular values for all. Recent events, prompted by the publication of drawings of Muhammad in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological arena. It is not a clash of civilizations or an antagonism between West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle between democrats and theocrats. Like all totalitarian ideologies, Islamism is nurtured by fear and frustration. Preachers of hatred play on these feelings to build the forces with which they can impose a world where liberty is crushed and inequality reigns. But we say this, loud and clear: nothing, not even despair, justifies choosing obscurantism, totalitarianism, and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology that kills equality, freedom, and secularism wherever it is present. Its victory can only lead to a world of injustice and domination: men over women, fundamentalists over others. To counter this, we must ensure access to universal rights for the oppressed or those discriminated against. We reject the “cultural relativism” which implies an acceptance that men and women of Muslim culture are deprived of the right to equality, freedom, and secularism in the name of respect for certain cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia,” a wretched concept that confuses criticism of Islam as a religion and stigmatization of those who believe in it. We defend the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit can be exercised in every continent, with regard to each and every abuse and dogma. We appeal to democrats and independent spirits in every country that our century may be one of enlightenment and not obscurantism. Signed by: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Chahla Chafiq, Caroline Fourest, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Irshad Manji, Mehdi Mozaffari, Maryam Namazie, Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie, Antoine Sfeir, Philippe Val, Ibn Warraq.

"Terrorism is the art of fear. The only way you can defeat it is by deciding not to be afraid.”

-- Salman Rushdie

"Hurt Feelings" and Other Lies

thoughts regarding the stabbing of Salman Rushdie

sarahhaider.substack.com|Sarah Haider

I imagine he thought he had put it all behind him. Over thirty years after the fatwa calling for his head, Salman Rushdie could be seen dating glamorous women, attending celebrity parties and HBO premieres—generally enjoying the life of a celebrated writer.

Clearly, he felt safe. And maybe he was—many millions of Muslims mean him no harm. But that still left countless others who felt he had committed an unforgivable crime, one that meant he no longer retained the right to life.

It was that illusion of safety that allowed him to go on stage in front of thousands of people without asking anything of attendees other than a ticket and an ID check.  

His attacker was 24, born a decade after the Satanic Verses was published. He never lived through the drama that unfolded in the years following the publication, never heard the call of the fatwa as it was proclaimed. But fanaticism has a long memory, one that can stay alive in the community even as it is forgotten by broader society, passed down from believer to believer.

It was a mistake to presume that something had changed just because the religion of peace no longer makes regular headlines, or because Rushdie appeared to be “getting away with it” and living an open life. The ayatollah who passed the death sentence on Rushdie himself died only months after the declaration. But over 30 years later, his fatwa lives on.  

We are making a mistake too. We are presuming that “hurt feelings” have anything to do with it.

On July 12, 2005, a young man named Mohammed Bouyeri was standing trial in the Netherlands. He was charged with the murder of one man, the attempted murder of several others, and of terrorizing the Dutch population. The man he killed was named Theo van Gogh, great grandnephew of the master artist, who was now working as a filmmaker.  He worked with his friend, ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to create a film provocatively titled “Submission”. Muslims declared it blasphemy.  

For this crime, Mohammed Bouyeri shot and stabbed Theo as he cycled into work, then used knives to pin notes onto Theo’s corpse. One of the notes was a threat against Hirsi Ali, who then went into hiding.

It is hard to imagine a level of religious anguish so deep that it moves one to slice the throat of another. Were the islamists who decapitated “infidels” in Syria just deeply hurt—sensitive souls tormented by devastating words? In his trial, Bouyeri made his motivations clear.

“So the story that I felt insulted as a Moroccan, or because he called me a goat fucker, that is all nonsense. I acted out of faith. And I made it clear that if it had been my own father, or my little brother, I would have done the same thing”.

He said he felt obligated to “cut off the heads of all those who insult Allah and his prophet”. It was not an act borne from offense—or at least, nothing like offense as we know it. It was not a crime of passion. He killed matter-of-factly, performing his duty as a follower of god.

When the faithful speak about “hurt feelings”, they are borrowing the terminology they believe would sound most sympathetic to Western ears, not unlike when the Chinese Communist Party charges the United States of “marginalization” or insufficient “inclusivity”. The hurt feelings are professed almost exclusively to Westerners, less so amongst themselves—where the focus is far more on matters of material importance.

The maneuver is easiest to spot on the international stage.

Savvy politicians like Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan have used Western conceptions of “hate speech” to appeal for a global blasphemy law. Khan—who spent his formative years in upper-class circles in England, even marrying a friend of the late Princess Diana—understands intimately what the Western ear wants to hear.

"We Muslim leaders have not explained to the Western societies how painful it is when our Prophet is maligned, mocked, ridiculed," said the former PM in a UN side event on hate speech, co-hosted by authoritarian zealot Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "Why does it cause so much pain? Because the Prophet lives in our hearts. And we all know that the pain of the heart is far, far, far greater than physical pain.”

Burning books, violent protests that kill and wound countless, vigilante attacks slaughtering humans as if they were sheep… are those the behaviors of people with a serious case of an achy-breaky-heart?

Far be it for me to disbelieve such moving testimony by a politician in one of the most corrupt countries on the planet, but from here, the behavior of Muslims when confronted with blasphemy looks remarkably like rage.

But rage doesn’t sell well in the West. Rage sounds like abuse, and abusers get no love here.

In other societies one might get acquiescence by flexing muscles—by the assertion of dominance and power. But in the West, a different tact has to be taken. Here, moral progress has reached a point where the people recognize the sins of the past, and so the powerful attempt to regain moral authority through performative genuflections to the “marginalized”. In the West, power rests behind the facade of victimhood.

And in a society where material needs rarely make the difference between life and death, grievances take on a psychic nature. Injustice here is as likely to be defined as a crime against the inner sense of self as one against the outer body.

Once you understand these terms, it is a simple thing to reframe the discussion in your favor.

Believers who wish to see state-spon.sored force enacted against blasphemers can point to the harm it causes to their social standing and, therefore, inner state.  In this way, they are no longer extreme dogmatists depriving others of their freedom of speech, they are victims of hate speech by islamophobes.

Amazingly, it is working.

Western countries and international bodies are quietly but meaningfully moving in the direction of more speech restrictions based on the loose and subjective criteria of “hate” (alongside other loosely-defined criteria such as “public order”), with social media companies following suit—what some are calling a global free speech recession.

The blasphemy law proponents are happy to see things turning in their favor.

When the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution introduced by Pakistan declaring March 22 to be the “International Day to Combat Islamophobia”, Imran Khan applauded. Khan, whose time as Prime Minister saw an alarming rise in mob violence and lynchings of religious minorities, saw a path to victory: “Today UN has finally recognised the grave challenge confronting the world: of Islamophobia, respect for religious symbols & practices & of curtailing systematic hate speech & discrimination against Muslims. Next challenge is to ensure implementation of this landmark resolution.”

Khan isn’t alone in conflating discrimination against Muslims with respect for Muslim ideas. There is no major Muslim organization that allows for a distinction between acts of discrimination against Muslims and the badmouthing of their faith. And this makes sense—in the eyes of believers, both are religiously illegal acts (and if anything, the crime against god is the more egregious offense).

Recognizing that the secular West does not acknowledge crimes against god, however, they point instead to hurt feelings (a grievous wound that nevertheless appears to vanish when one encounters materials not intended for Western audiences). The politicians and civil leaders might be speaking strategically, but one can get honesty from the fundamentalists. They are clear, time and time again, that they believe the words themselves to be a crime—that it matters not how it makes anyone “feel”. But their words are never taken at face value, and are instead explained away by the more moderate (read: nonviolent) believers, who reassure us that all will be well once there is enough acceptance of Muslims and respect towards Islam.

With one promising violence, and the other manipulating the liberal language of care and harm, the two form a perfectly balanced weapon. The explicit threat of violence, and the implicit threat of social stigma come together to frighten and bamboozle Westerners, who have already been sensitized by an ideology that expertly re-packages the illiberality of old into an irresistible form.

This ideology, referred to commonly as wokeism, is not in itself very dangerous—and on a superficial level it even appears good, a logical extension of social progress. It is wrong, in that sense, to compare the threats against Rushdie to the threats made against gender-critical author J.K. Rowling. They are not similar in many meaningful ways—not in their substantiality nor in their scope. But while they cannot be easily compared, they are, however, related. The ideology that produces death threats against Rowling is the same that is acting as a solvent on the liberal roots of our society, paralyzing defenses against the greater authoritarianisms. Sean O’Grady, associate editor of the Independent, exemplified the confusion and cowardice perfectly in his review of a documentary about the Satanic Verses controversy.

“Rushdie’s silly, childish book should be banned under today’s anti-hate legislation. It’s no better than racist graffiti on a bus stop. I wouldn’t have it in my house, out of respect to Muslim people and contempt for Rushdie, and because it sounds quite boring. I’d be quite inclined to burn it, in fact. It’s a free country, after all.”

This is why when you reject the accusation of “Islamophobia” - criticism of Islam, the belief, as being a form of “hate” against people - you will often get some retort like “isn’t that splitting hairs?" This sentiment often seems to reflect guilt and/or shame, arguably deserved, over how the USA reacted to the 2001 attacks, And reflects an ignorant fear that criticizing a belief is a return to harassment of people.

Motivated Islamic zealots have quickly picked up on this language, and you can see them mimic it, having witnessed how successfully shrill Intersectional scolding has silenced legitimate discourse. Even though there’s literally no reason, other than the word salad of pseudo-intellectual jargonese, why it should, since it is, likewise, merely an idea. And even though these zealots are only using the language as a weapon and don’t get or adhere to the ideology. It’s useful and that’s all.

“If Islam is the same as every other religion, why do I have to walk around with armed bodyguards?” -- Ayaan Hirsi Ali

It has been narrated on the authority of Anas b. Malik (through a different chain of transmitters) that the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: Nobody who enters Paradise will (ever like to) return to this world even if he were offered everything on the surface of the earth (as an inducement) except the martyr who will desire to return to this world and be killed ten times for the sake of the great honour that has been bestowed upon him.

If Islam was only spread by peaceful means, what would the kuffaar have to be afraid of? Of mere words spoken on the tongue?

Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.

Man arrested after author Salman Rushdie attacked on stage

Author Salman Rushdie, who suffered years of Islamist death threats after writing The Satanic Verses, has been attacked on stage in New York state.

www.rnz.co.nz

Author Salman Rushdie, who suffered years of Islamist death threats after writing The Satanic Verses, has been attacked on stage in New York state.

The Booker Prize winner, 75, was speaking at an event at the Chautauqua Institution at the time.

New York State Police said a male suspect ran up onto the stage and attacked Rushdie and an interviewer.

At a media conference, police confirmed the attacker was Hadi Matar, 24, of New Jersey.

Matar stabbed Rushdie at least once in the neck and once in the abdomen, police said.

Police said they had not yet established a motive for the attack and were still working to determine what charges would be laid against Matar. Police assumed he was acting alone and were working to confirm that.

Rushdie was initially given medical treatment by a doctor who was in the audience at the Chautauqua Institution, then airlifted to a local trauma centre where he had surgery, police said.

Police are still working to determine the charges against the suspect.

The interviewer of the event, who was also attacked by Matar, was taken to hospital and treated for facial injury, police said.

In a statement Rushdie's agent Andrew Wylie said Rushdie was on a ventilator and would likely lose an eye after the incident.

He also suffered severed nerves in an arm and damage to his liver after being stabbed, Wylie said.

"The news is not good. Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged," Wylie said in a written statement.

Witnesses told US media he was stabbed multiple times in the neck and torso area, and appeared to fall backwards as he tried to move away from the assailant.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul told a press conference about an hour later that Rushdie was alive.

He was taken to a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania, by helicopter. There has been no further official confirmation on the extent of his injuries.

The interviewer who was also on stage, Henry Reese, suffered a minor head injury. Reese is the co-founder of a non-profit that provides sanctuary to writers exiled under threat of persecution.

The suspect was immediately taken into custody, police said.

Mark Sommer, a reporter for Buffalo News, told the BBC News Channel that the attacker had emerged from the audience in a black mask.

A video posted online shows attendees rushing onto the stage immediately following the incident.

Indian-born novelist Rushdie catapulted to fame with Midnight's Children in 1981, which went on to sell over one million copies in the UK alone.

But his fourth book, in 1988 - The Satanic Verses - forced him into hiding for nine years.

The surrealist, post-modern novel sparked outrage among some Muslims, who considered its content to be blasphemous, and was banned in some countries.

A year after the book's release, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini called for Rushdie's execution. He offered a $3 million reward in a fatwa - a legal decree issued by an Islamic religious leader.

The bounty over Rushdie's head remains active, and although Iran's government has distanced itself from Khomeini's decree, a quasi-official Iranian religious foundation added a further $500,000 to the reward in 2012.

The British-American citizen - who was born to non-practising Muslims and is an atheist himself - has become a vocal advocate for freedom of expression, defending his work on several occasions.

When Rushdie was knighted in 2007 by Queen Elizabeth II, it sparked protests in Iran and Pakistan, where one cabinet minister said the honour "justifies suicide attacks".

Several literary events attended by Rushdie have been subject to threats and boycotts - but he continues to write. His next novel, Victory City, is due to be published in February 2023.

His appearance at the Chautauqua Institution event, in western New York, was the first in a summertime lecture series hosted by the non-profit organisation.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted: "Appalled that Sir Salman Rushdie has been stabbed while exercising a right we should never cease to defend."

Writer and graphic novel creator Neil Gaiman said he was "shocked and distressed" by the attack on his friend and fellow writer.

"He's a good man and a brilliant one and I hope he's okay," Gaiman wrote on Twitter.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul vowed to "assist however needed in the investigation" into the stabbing.

"Here's an individual who has spent decades speaking truth to power. Someone who's been out there, unafraid, despite the threats that have followed him his entire adult life," she said.

• http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-21/indonesia-vaccines-measles-fatwa-issued-by-mui/10147040