Religion is a Mental Illness

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.

[..]

Wakefield shows the emptiness of blasphemy allegations

With each new blasphemy controversy in the West, from The Satanic Verses to Charlie Hebdo, the corrosive effect on free expression worsens. 

UnHerd

With each new blasphemy controversy in the West, from The Satanic Verses to Charlie Hebdo, the corrosive effect on free expression worsens. In Wakefield, we see just how low the bar for blasphemy allegations has fallen, and how readily complaints are legitimised by our own institutions. As reported, four non-Muslim pupils were suspended from school after the unintentional scuffing of an English copy of the Quran. West Yorkshire Police said they were closely “liaising” with the school and that their enquiries “confirmed minor damage” to the text. In their response, the school and local authorities seem to give credence to an understanding of blasphemy which goes beyond the one advanced even by jihadists.  

After a Batley schoolteacher was forced into hiding and a film, The Lady of Heaven, was pulled from cinemas, this is at least Britain’s third major blasphemy ‘affair’ in as many years. The recent review of Prevent drew attention to the frequency and danger of blasphemy controversies, but there is nothing that any counter-extremism initiative can do to address these persistent clashes in the UK. This is not a question of countering extremism, solvable with workshops on ‘British Values’ or critical thinking, but instead concerns the sovereignty of British law and the fundamentals of British democracy.

Prior to the aforementioned controversies, Glaswegian shopkeeper Asad Shah was brutally stabbed and stomped to death over blasphemy, and it seems almost a certainty to say that more people will be killed unless the British state and civil society can get a handle on these campaigns, and fast. This doesn’t mean workshops and interventions; rather, local councils and police forces must stop prizing “community engagement” to the exclusion of almost all other considerations, while positive community engagement or the cooling of tensions must mean more than caving to the whims of an offended minority. This approach leads to the embrace of barely concealed extremist figures in order to preserve local relations, but at the expense of the overall health of British democracy.

To reverse course requires using the measures which have been used to block Right-wingers and even a rapper from entering the country from abroad whereas, presently, preachers who lionise religious assassin Mumtaz Qadri can freely make fundraising trips from Pakistan to Britain which allow them to whip up blasphemy fervour at home. It means the public sector not rushing to adopt a definition of ‘Islamophobia’ which transparently protects belief as much as it is designed to protect individual human beings. It means mainstream political parties ejecting people who inflame these affairs — as one councillor did in his (now-deleted) description of the Wakefield page scuffing as a “desecration”. It means the police declining to have anything whatsoever to do with damage to a text, religious or otherwise. 

They have failed to do this, and inadvertently lent legitimacy to the complaints of the offended, the outraged, and self-proclaimed community leaders. And a new, serious approach certainly means that counter-terrorism or social cohesion funding should not be going to those who look forward to the restoration of Taliban rule.

This is not about Prevent or counter-extremism; it is the very basics which Britain seems to be getting wrong at almost every turn. All this is nicely summed up by a particularly galling spectacle: a police officer and the fearful mother of an autistic child pleading innocence during what amounts to a modern British blasphemy tribunal.

Salman Rushdie and the Cult of Offense

This is what happens when you debase free expression in the name of free expression.

The Atlantic

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died in June 1989, just months after issuing a fatwa ordering the murder of Salman Rushdie and all others involved in the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses. Fatwas cannot be rescinded posthumously, which is why ever since then, this fatwa has hung in the air like a putrid smell, inhaled deeply for inspiration by devout followers of Khomeini and his successors. On Friday, a man stabbed Rushdie in upstate New York. The suspect is 24, from New Jersey, and reportedly an admirer of Iranian theocratic rule. “The news is not good,” Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, said in a statement. Rushdie took a hit to the liver and will likely lose an eye. By Saturday night, Rushdie was reportedly off his respirator and talking.

The honorable response is to say that we are all Rushdie now, and that America’s failure to protect him is a collective shame. In the face of this thuggery, Rushdie’s work should be read publicly, and his name thrown in the face of apologists for the regime that once ordered and offered to pay for his assassination. (In 1998, in an effort to normalize relations with the West, Iran canceled the hit but made clear that if some freelancer wanted to get him, Tehran would not be displeased.)

But we are not all Rushdie. And in fact the past couple decades have led me to wonder if some of us are more Khomeini than we’d like to admit.

In 1989, the reaction to the fatwa was split three ways: Some supported it; some opposed it; and some opposed it, to be sure, but still wanted everyone to know how bad Rushdie and his novel were. This last faction, Team To Be Sure, took the West to task for elevating this troublesome man and his insulting book, whose devilry could have been averted had others been more attuned to the sensibilities of the offended.

The fumes are still rising off of this last group. Former president Jimmy Carter was, at the time of the original fatwa, the most prominent American to suggest that the crime of murder should be balanced against Rushdie’s crime of blasphemy. The ayatollah’s death sentence “caused writers and public officials in Western nations to become almost exclusively preoccupied with the author’s rights,” Carter wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times. Well, yes. Carter did not only say that many Muslims were offended and wished violence on Rushdie; that was simply a matter of fact, reported frequently in the news pages. He took to the op-ed page to add his view that these fanatics had a point. “While Rushdie’s First Amendment freedoms are important,” he wrote, “we have tended to promote him and his book with little acknowledgment that it is a direct insult to those millions of Moslems whose sacred beliefs have been violated.” Never mind that millions of Muslims take no offense at all, and are insulted by the implication that they should.

Over the past two decades, our culture has been Carterized. We have conceded moral authority to howling mobs, and the louder the howls, the more we have agreed that the howls were worth heeding. The novelist Hanif Kureishi has said that “nobody would have the balls” to write The Satanic Verses today. More precisely, nobody would publish it, because sensitivity readers would notice the theological delicacy of the book’s title and plot. The ayatollahs have trained them well, and social-media disasters of recent years have reinforced the lesson: Don’t publish books that get you criticized, either by semiliterate fanatics on the other side of the world or by semiliterate fanatics on this one.

It is unfair to pick on Carter, because many who have less excuse for these atrocious opinions have agreed with him. These include professional writers. (Carter is a writer and poet, but his writing is more an unfortunate hobby than a real calling.) Like Carter, these writers have condemned murder, to be sure, but hastened to change the subject to the apparently equally urgent problem of the victims’ own sins.

In 2015, after jihadists killed eight members of the staff of Charlie Hebdo, PEN America, a venerable institution promoting the interests of writers and of free expression—and one that Salman Rushdie himself once led—presented the survivors with an award for their courage. Fanatics had warned them for years that they’d be killed for their cartoons, but they published anyway. After the slaughter, hundreds of PEN members, led by Teju Cole and Francine Prose, doubted whether they deserved an award, and objected in a sententious, scolding open letter. (I joined PEN that year, and where the application asked my reasons, I wrote “to cancel out the vote of Joyce Carol Oates,” another one of the signers.)

Today, with Rushdie sliced to ribbons in a hospital bed in Erie, it is impossible to read their letter without noticing how fully they surrendered to this cult of offense and took the side of those offended against those slain.

How awful that the Charlie Hebdo artists and writers were shot to death, the signers said. But should we really applaud them? “​​There is a critical difference between staunchly supporting expression that violates the acceptable,” they wrote, “and enthusiastically rewarding such expression.” They then proceeded to explain (after, to be sure, a statement that mass murder is not acceptable) that Charlie Hebdo’s ridiculing of the “marginalized, embattled, and victimized” was also not acceptable. In 1989, Team To Be Sure had betrayed its philistinism by reducing Rushdie’s novel, one of the greatest by a living writer, to an “insult.” PEN’s critics of Charlie Hebdo declared that its “cartoons of the Prophet must be seen as being intended to cause further humiliation and suffering.” The letter did not even attempt to criticize Charlie Hebdo on literary grounds.

It takes nerve to describe artists and journalists who were recently shot in the face as having themselves caused “suffering.” To do this in one’s capacity as a PEN America member speaks to a larger faltering of the culture, in its confidence that the liberty of individuals is worth fighting and dying for. (I note that since the attempt on Rushdie's life, almost no one has advanced these arguments. I am not sure why successfully killing several cartoonists contemptuous of religion gets to be sure treatment, but trying to kill a novelist contemptuous of religion does not. In any case I welcome into the ranks of the sensible whoever wishes to join.)

V. S. Naipaul called Khomeini’s fatwa “a most extreme form of literary criticism”—a macabre joke that seemed at the time to come at Rushdie’s expense. Today it sounds just as macabre but hits a worthier target: those who muddle the distinction between offense and violence, and between a disagreement over ideas and a disagreement over whether your head should remain attached to your body.

Now that Rushdie’s head has been partially detached, and on American soil, I hope these distinctions will need no further elaboration, and that those who elided them will swallow their full helping of shame. Rushdie has survived long enough to see free expression debased in the name of free expression. Survive a bit longer, Salman, and we’ll see this cause restored to the status it deserves.

He turned on the car radio and the Bradford burning was at the top of the news. Then they were home, and the present engulfed him. He saw on television what he had spent the day trying to avoid. There were perhaps a thousand people in the demonstration, and all of them were male. Their faces were angry, or, to be precise, their faces were performing anger for the cameras. He could see in their eyes the excitement they felt at the presence of the world's press. It was the excitement of celebrity, of what Saul Bellow had called “event glamour.” To be bathed in flashlight was glorious, almost erotic. This was their moment on the red carpet of history. They were carrying placards reading RUSHDIE STINKS and RUSHDIE EAT YOUR WORDS. They were ready for their close-up.

A copy of the novel had been nailed to a piece of wood and then set on fire: crucified and then immolated. It was an image he couldn't forget: the happily angry faces, rejoicing in their anger, believing their identity was born of their rage. And in the foreground a smug man in a trilby with a little Poirot mustache. This was a Bradford councilor, Mohammad Ajeeb—the word “ajeeb,” oddly, was Urdu for “odd”—who had told the crowd, “Islam is peace.”

He had been sent a T-shirt as a gift from an unknown admirer. BLASPHEMY IS A VICTIMLESS CRIME. But now the victory of the Enlightenment was looking temporary, reversible. Old language had been renewed, defeated ideas were on the march. In Yorkshire they had burned his book.

Now he was angry, too.

-- Salman Rushdie, “Joseph Anton: A Memoir”

“When the Ayatollah Khomeini offered money - money in his own name, without shame, for the suborning of murder of a novelist, the Cardinal Archbishop of New York, the chief Rabbi of Israel the Archbishop of Canterbury, all condemned what?

The novel! The author, for blasphemy!

Now, get used to this, because you may be living in the last few years where you can complain about it.

In other words, ladies and gentlemen, the barbarians are not at the gate. They’re not at the gate. They’re well inside, and who held open the door for them? The other religious did.”

– Christopher Hitchens

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.

FAIR

... “A poet's work...to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it

fairforall.org

“A poet's work...to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.” — Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

FAIR is committed to advancing individual civil rights and liberties for all. The most vital among these rights are freedom of speech and free expression.

The August 12th attack on Salman Rushdie in Chautauqua, New York is a sobering example of what can happen when we abandon those principles. Intolerance of free speech is the first step on the road to violence, and we must oppose it emphatically for the sake of free society.

Salman has been a staunch supporter and defender of free speech and free expression for over 30 years—ten of which he spent in constant mortal danger as a result. We unequivocally condemn the violence perpetrated against Salman, and stand with individuals everywhere who are brave enough to speak their mind in the face of intolerance.

What we can all learn from Salman Rushdie’s bravery

The attack on Rushdie is an attack on all Americans because this single heinous act wasn’t just to end the life of a defiant man but to terrorize the rest of us into censoring our speech.

nypost.com

The art of modern terrorism is to perform a single heinous act that directly affects a few but permeates fear throughout society so people change their behavior to avoid being the next target. Consequently, self-preservation through compliance with these terrorists’ demands becomes normal, making the few that dare not to submit appear brave yet insane. But I find it insane that it’s seen as brave to speak freely and critically.

There are few people in my lifetime who have stood in defiance of terrorist threats and fearmongering for decades like Salman Rushdie, who faced another attempt on his life Friday, with a vicious stabbing by 24-year-old Hadi Matar in Chautauqua, NY.

This attack on Rushdie is an attack on all Americans because this single heinous act wasn’t just to end the life of a defiant man but to terrorize the rest of us into censoring our speech lest we face the same fate.

Unfortunately, some feel the need to downplay attacks when people they disagree with become victims of speech terrorism. Columnist Kurt Schlichter called Rushdie a “Trump-hating leftist” the day of his attempted assassination, insinuating that how much we should care depends on the victim’s politics instead of on his humanity or his right to express his politics.

If you claim to be a proponent of open speech and dialogue yet you rationalize or minimize physical harm to your ideological opponents because of their viewpoints, you’re exposing yourself as a hypocrite.

I probably don’t agree with many views that Salman Rushdie holds, but I still recognize the importance of mourning the attack on him because if he can’t speak freely, neither can I.

But the terrorism I’m concerned with doesn’t come just in the form of physical harm but also in reputational and economic destruction from the formation of a culture of cancelation terrorism to force compliance from a fearful populace.

The average American has been gradually and methodically intimidated to socially accept remaining silent on criticisms of an ever-expanding list of topics and demographics. We’ve adopted disclaimer language like “I’m not supposed to say this but . . .” before unleashing poignant critiques, and when we’re fatigued from constantly warning others before we speak, we begin to withhold our voices altogether.

We’ve allowed language terrorists to control not only what we discuss but how we discuss it in fear of losing our comforts and conveniences. We’re increasingly passionless about a protected right that no other country guarantees: the right to speak recklessly and informally without persecution.

Our overvaluation of the importance of self-preservation has allowed us to undervalue the importance of occasionally sacrificing for things outside ourselves that we must preserve — our right to speech is one of them. We cowardly sit back and watch as some are persecuted for expressing themselves because we don’t want to be next on the chopping block.

Salman Rushdie never allowed language terrorists to control his voice, and he didn’t live in constant hiding. He recognized the danger he faced, yet didn’t allow fear to override his desires and ambitions because then the terrorists would win.

We can learn a lot from his willingness to stand against tyrannical people and sacrifice himself in the process. For years I let others speak for me and grew quieter along with everyone else, behaving as the coward that I’m maligning here.

Today, I understand why these language terrorists exist: It’s because there is real power in your voice, which is why they want to extract it from you and make you fearful of exercising your jaw muscles as you see fit.

The language terrorists are thriving because we’ve forgotten how powerful we actually are, and we’ve become soft due to our American daily comforts making us unwilling to experience momentary discomfort for long-term freedom.

Comfortable people have a hard time fighting for what is theirs. Become less comfortable.

Adam B. Coleman is the author of “Black Victim to Black Victor” and founder of Wrong Speak Publishing.

Sir Salman Rushdie attack suspect 'only read two pages' of Satanic Verses

After giving the interview, Hadi Matar appears in court to plead not guilty to stabbing Salman Rushdie.

www.bbc.com

The man accused of stabbing Sir Salman Rushdie has reportedly said he has only read two pages of the author's controversial novel The Satanic Verses.

Hadi Matar, 24, has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from the assault at an event in New York last week.

In an interview with the New York Post from jail, Mr Matar said Sir Salman was "someone who attacked Islam".

But he did not confirm that his alleged actions were driven by a fatwa issued by Iran in the 1980s.

In a court appearance on Thursday, a judge ordered Mr Matar be held without bail at Chautauqua County Jail, in New York state, after the accused entered a not guilty plea to second-degree attempted murder and assault charges.

Sir Salman published his famous and controversial novel The Satanic Verses in 1988, sparking outrage among some Muslims, who considered its content to be blasphemous.

The book's release prompted the Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa calling for the writer's death in 1989.

Mr Matar told the New York Post he had only read "a couple of pages" of the book and did not say whether the fatwa had inspired him.

"I respect the Ayatollah. I think he's a great person. That's as far as I will say about that," he said.

Mr Matar also told the newspaper he was "surprised" to hear that Sir Salman had survived the attack.

"I don't like the person. I don't think he's a very good person. I don't like him very much," Mr Matar said, according to the paper. "He's someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems."

Earlier this week, Mr Matar's mother said she had disowned her son after his alleged behaviour. "I'm done with him," Silvana Fardos said on Monday, adding: "I have nothing to say to him."

Sir Salman suffered a damaged liver as well as severed nerves in an arm and eye injuries in the attack, but was taken off a ventilator on Saturday.

Despite his "life-changing" injuries, the Booker Prize-winning author has retained his "usual feisty and defiant sense of humour", his family said earlier this week.

On Friday, a number of literary figures will read from his works on the steps on New York's public library to show solidarity with the novelist.

Tina Brown, Paul Auster, Kiran Desai, Andrea Elliott, Hari Kunzru and Gay Talese will be among those taking part in Stand With Salman: Defend the Freedom to Write.

The cause of slaying him (Ka'b bin Ashraf) was that he was a poet and used to satirize the Prophet, may Allah bless him, and his Companions, and used to instigate (polytheists) against them, and offended (يوذى) them....Then they cut his head and took it with them. When they reached Baqi' al-Gharqad, they said takbir (Allah is Great). The Apostle of Allah, may Allah bless him, passed the night, offering prayers. When he heard their takbir (Allah is Great) he also recited takbir (Allah is Great). He knew that they had killed him. When they reached the Apostle of Allah, may Allah bless him ; he said : (Your) faces be lucky. They said : Yours too ! O Apostle of Allah. They cast his head before him. He (the Prophet) praised Allah on his being slain.

-- "Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History,” Andrew G. Bostom

Then (occurred) the sariyyah [raid] of Umayr ibn adi Ibn Kharashah al-Khatmi against Asma Bint Marwan, of Banu Umayyah Ibn Zayd, when five nights had remained from the month of Ramadan, in the beginning of the nineteenth month from the hijrah of the apostle of Allah. Asma was the wife of Yazid Ibn Zayd Ibn Hisn al-Khatmi. She used to revile Islam, offend the prophet and instigate the (people) against him. She composed verses. Umayr Ibn Adi came to her in the night and entered her house. Her children were sleeping around her. There was one whom she was suckling. He searched her with his hand because he was blind, and separated the child from her. He thrust his sword in her chest till it pierced up to her back. Then he offered the morning prayers with the prophet at al-Medina. The apostle of Allah said to him: “Have you slain the daughter of Marwan?” He said: “Yes. Is there something more for me to do?” He [Muhammad] said: “No. Two goats will butt together about her. This was the word that was first heard from the apostle of Allah. The apostle of Allah called him Umayr, "basir” (the seeing).

-- Sources: Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabagat al Kabir, trans. S. M. Haq (New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 1972), vol. 2, p. 31

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.

“When the Ayatollah Khomeini offered money - money in his own name, without shame, for the suborning of murder of a novelist, the Cardinal Archbishop of New York, the chief Rabbi of Israel the Archbishop of Canterbury, all condemned what?

The novel!

The author, for blasphemy!

Now, get used to this, because you may be living in the last few years where you can complain about it.

In other words, ladies and gentlemen, the barbarians are not at the gate. They're not at the gate. They're well inside, and who held open the door for them? The other religious did.”

-- Christopher Hitchens

On this much-discussed occasion, Muhammad was seeking to conciliate some leading Meccan poly-theists and in due course experienced a “revelation” that allowed them after all to continue worshipping some of the older local deities.

It struck him later that this could not be right and that he must have inadvertently been “channeled” by the devil, who for some reason had briefly chosen to relax his habit of combating monotheists on their own ground. (Muhammad believed devoutly not just in the devil himself but in minor desert devils, or djinns, as well.)

It was noticed even by some of his wives that the Prophet was capable of having a “revelation” that happened to suit his short-term needs, and he was sometimes teased about it.

We are further told—on no authority that need be believed—that when he experienced revelation in public he would sometimes be gripped by pain and experience loud ringing in his ears. Beads of sweat would burst out on him, even on the chilliest of days.

Some heartless Christian critics have suggested that he was an epileptic (though they fail to notice the same symptoms in the seizure experienced by Paul on the road to Damascus), but there is no need for us to speculate in this way.

It is enough to rephrase David Hume’s unavoidable question. Which is more likely—that a man should be used as a transmitter by god to deliver some already existing revelations, or that he should utter some already existing revelations and believe himself to be, or claim to be, ordered by god to do so?

As for the pains and the noises in the head, or the sweat, one can only regret the seeming fact that direct communication with god is not an experience of calm, beauty, and lucidity.