On 12 August 2022, a murderous attack on the author, Salman Rushdie, who was about to give a talk on the freedom of speech and expression at a New York literary event, delivered a mortal blow to people like us who held this liberty as a birthright.
In this creeping age of ‘wokeism’ and ‘cancel culture’ where people feel increasingly constrained about expressing themselves for fear of reprisal, the news of multiple stabbings of the celebrated literary figure was devastating.
On the tragic event, I wrote the following comment in The New York Times:
“It’s so sad, in Salman Rushdie’s case, a fatwa issued in 1989 was sought to be executed in 2022 by a man who wasn’t even born at that time nor was familiar with the context or controversy”.
As long as the power of fanaticism will keep growing on this earth, there will be an escalating necessity to preserve and promote the narratives of storytellers like Salman.
I was in New Delhi in 1989 when the controversy around the Satanic Verses erupted. I vividly remember at the initiative of the govt, the parliament passed a resolution banning the book. There was no discussion on the content, hardly any parliamentarian had read it. That was regretfully the respect shown to an author born in India and to free speech!
The Indian readers, in general, had no problem reading Salman, his innumerable accounts of Indian poverty, destitution or social divisions. In fact, they showed up in droves to listen to him after the ban on his travel was lifted.
Today, we have to stay vigilant and protect our right to free speech and expression that is constantly under assault from unexpected quarters.
The UK recently debated whether to remove the Holocaust from its school curriculum because it offended a section of the population. The story of 9/11 is also sought to be underplayed for the same reason.
Censorship imposed by the bullies on the freedom of putting across your own point of view (with civility), is a frightening proposition gripping the world.
Free countries appear to be giving into it.”
Spotlight on Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses returns
The brutal attack on Salman Rushdie sent us back into the year 1988 when the publication of his novel, The Satanic Verses, set off a trail of murder, arson and turbulence all around the world. Interpreting the imaginary multilayered story in the novel as a blasphemous attack on Islam, the Islamists bombed six bookstores in the United Kingdom, two in California; a community newspaper in New York was bombed because it had defended people’s right to read the book.
The terrorizing effect of the Islamists’ rampage was grim. One-third of the American bookstores stopped displaying the book; it was banned in at least 21 countries. In 1989, the Shiite Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa directing Muslims to kill Rushdie and his publishers.
In 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi, an academic Japanese translator of the book, was killed; an Italian translator, Ettore Capriolo, was stabbed and seriously wounded. In 1993, the novel’s publisher in Norway was shot but survived. Book companies in France, West Germany, Greece and Turkey decided not to publish it; but publishers in Finland, Norway and Italy went ahead. A Turkish translator, Aziz Nesin, was attacked by Islamist arsonists while praying with others. The fire killed 37 people, though Nesin escaped.
Muslim clerics and government officials of Islamic countries, in coordination with Islamic organizations, were instructing Muslims to hunt and kill Rushdie or anyone associated with the publication and distribution of the novel. They had placed a $2.5 million bounty on Rushdie’s head. The U.K. put Salman Rushdie under police protection at his home in the United Kingdom for the better part of a decade and broke diplomatic relations with Iran over the fatwa. Normal relations were restored only after Iran pledged that it would no longer seek Rushdie’s assassination, a policy denied by the successor Ayatollah.
India was one of the first countries to ban the book, deeming it “hate speech”. In the anti-Rushdie riots (February 1989), at least 12 people died and 40 were wounded in Bombay; three people were killed and more than 100 were injured in clashes between the police and the rioters in the northern state of Kashmir. Syed Abdullah Bukhari, the chief Imam of the largest mosque, Jama Masjid, in Delhi, “endorsed Iran’s condemnation of Mr Rushdie and the calls for his killing.”[4]
What was there in the Satanic Verses that angered the Islamists?
When the Satanic Verses was banned in India, Rushdie responded by saying that the book wasn’t actually “about Islam, but about migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death, London and Bombay.”
Rushdie’s novel did refer to a few sets of verses in the Quran that created controversies around whether or not Muhammad, the founder of Islam, had allowed his followers to worship the pagan goddesses. In Mecca, during his campaign, when Muhammad was confronted by the resisting Meccan tribes, he is said to have accepted the existence of the three goddesses, al-Lat, al-Uzza, and al-Manat (Quran 53:19, 20). Later on, he denied having done so and claimed that Satan had put such verses in his mind to fool him; they weren’t the revelations sent by God. And, therefore, they were removed from the Quran.
Devout Muslims never believed that such “Satanic Verses” ever existed; they were also not willing to accept that their ancestors in Arabia followed the pagan tradition of worshiping idols. According to their faith, before Muhammad and Islam, the world was ignorant (al-jahilliyah) and, therefore, there couldn’t be any positive painting of the pre-Islamic era. Just as idol worship was taboo, critiquing Muhammad and Islam was also unendurable.
Despite the Islamic references, the novel-reading literary world might have treated The Satanic Verses as an entertaining fairy tale and put it back on the shelf after the enjoyment of reading it. This literary work was short-listed for the Booker Prize and was the winner of a Whitbread Book Award in the same year (1988).
The Islamists around the world were, however, angered by the subject matter of Islam, Muhammad and the verses in the Quran being imaginary themes of a novel. Salman’s satire or indirect references to Islamic figures or traditions were picked up by the Islamists as a deliberate attempt at insulting their faith and the Ummah (the global Islamic community).
Rushdie’s attempt to mend fences with unforgiving Islamists
Having received the heat and the furor the novel had created in the Islamic world and more particularly considering the statement of the Iranian president, Ali Khameinei, to the effect that the death sentence might be withdrawn if Salman Rushdie publicly apologized, the Indian-born British author, then only 41 years old, issued a three-sentence statement on 19 Feb 1989:
“As the author of The Satanic Verses, I recognize that Muslims in many parts of the world are genuinely distressed by the publication of my novel. I profoundly regret the distress that publication has occasioned to sincere followers of Islam. Living as we do in a world of many faiths, this experience has served to remind us that we must all be conscious of the sensibilities of others.”
On 24 Dec 1990, Salman Rushdie announced the affirmation of his faith in Islam and asked Viking-Penguin, the publisher of The Satanic Verses, neither to issue the book in paperback nor to allow it to be translated.
On 28 Dec 1990, he wrote a piece in The New York Times wherein he appeared to be trying hard to buy peace with the Islamists. In that endeavour, however, he penned expressions that could be seen as complete volte face to his rebellious-iconoclastic reputation as a literateur. It almost amounted to capitulation.
He began by “his decision to affirm the two central tenets of Islam — the oneness of God and the genuineness of the prophecy of the Prophet Muhammad” – and then, added:
“I have been finding my own way towards an intellectual understanding of religion, and religion for me has always meant Islam. That journey is by no means over. I am certainly not a good Muslim. But I am able now to say that I am a Muslim; it is a source of happiness to say that I am now inside, and a part of, the community whose values have always been closest to my heart.”
Pinning high hopes on the outcome of his meetings with a few Islamic scholars, Salman said, “Well, I’m now inside the family, and now Muslims can talk to Muslims and continue the process of reconciliation..” Salman Rushdie had been led into believing that in “many Muslim countries and communities around the world,” the ‘mood of affection’ had begun to replace ‘anger.’
What sounded like bending over backwards to please the Islamists, Rushdie wrote, “My meeting with the scholars, who declared themselves satisfied with my sincerity, is the traditional Islamic way of resolving an issue of alleged offence against Muslim sanctities.” He concluded by saying, “What I know of Islam is that tolerance, compassion and love are at its very heart.”
Even though Salman Rushdie appeared to be kneeling down before the Islamists to buy their forgiveness, to his credit, he didn’t give in to the pressure of ‘total withdrawal’ of the novel. Many of its readers had found The Satanic Verses to be of value, and “I cannot betray them,” he asserted.
Later on, Salman Rushdie disavowed his claim to embrace Islam and admitted that he had done so to get the fatwa lifted. He called his efforts to appease extremists (by accepting restrictions on the novel) the “biggest mistake of my life.” When Rushdie was asked if he still considered himself a Muslim, he replied: “I am happy to say that I am not.”
Islamic Terrorism and Freedom of Speech and Expression
Thirty two years later, when Rushdie fell victim to the Ayatollah’s fatwa in reality, it raised, to my mind, two leading questions:
First, why and how has the sense of revenge in the Islamic faith persisted for so long? It was mentioned somewhere that in the Shia sect the fatwas normally die with the death of the clergy who had issued them. Doesn’t this revenge killing come from the Islamic preachings or the Islamic cultural tradition?
In June 1989, a Guinean-born Lebanese man, calling himself Mustafa Mazeh, had blown himself up in a hotel in Paddington, West London, preparing a bomb to kill Rushdie. On the same pattern, Hadi Matar, a young man born in the US to Lebanese parents prepared himself to wreak vengeance on Salman Rushdie in 2022. Both Mustafa Mazeh and Hadi Matar, 32 years apart, appeared to be under the spell of the same Islamic preachings of Khomeini.
It’s important to note here that the internecine blood feuds between different sects of Islam were also a testimony to the enmity based on diverse theological interpretations of their faith and preachings: only “sword and blood” could settle a dispute. The Shia-Sunni mutual killings were as old as the founding of the faith itself.
The second question bothering me was if people in the free world had to really guard their freedom of speech and expression in such a way as not to be “offensive” or “insulting” to anyone. Is it true if Salman Rushdie hadn’t offended Muslims around the world, he wouldn’t have met fate as he did? After all, the Islamic terror had silenced or subdued a large part of the literary world that could have been more outspoken in critiquing Islamism or Muhammad. In 1988, the Left unreservedly extended full support to Salman Rushdie for his freedom of expression.
The free world could also be faced with a situation as to who would stand by them when their freedom of speech and expression sanctioned by the Human Rights Charter and separate constitutions were to be restricted or taken away: the politicians, the big tech companies, the media outlets or the people’s consciousness and power?
How dependable are the politicians?
Politicians couldn’t be trusted. They would prefer to be politically correct and pander to the Islamo-Leftists for votes. They usually spoke from both sides of their mouth. For example, Jimmy Carter, the former U.S. president, called Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa of death against Salman Rushdie “abhorrent” and declared it to be “our duty” to protect the author and “honour Western rights of publication and distribution.” But, in the same breath, he added that “we should be sensitive to the concern and anger” that prevailed among “the more moderate Moslems.” Jimmy Carter alleged that The Satanic Verses went “much further in vilifying the Prophet Mohammed and defaming the Holy Koran.”
Reputed for his advocacy for human rights, Jimmy Carter was a politician too. Stung by the Iranian US hostage crisis, and constantly engaged in Arab-Israel peace negotiations, he had a constituency in the Middle East and the Islamic world to win over. However, he was also a religious preacher at his church and knowledgeable about the challenges Christianity and other faiths faced against Islam. He had a grasp of Islam better than many followers of that faith. He should have explained how certain theological teachings of Islam were irreconcilable with the western concept of the freedom of speech and expression.
Freedom of Expression and the leading corporate info-tech companies
The major global tech companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter have greatly facilitated speedy information dissemination and empowered the weakest to communicate with the world. At the same time, however, they have put a garrote around the neck of every potential user, thereby holding their freedom of expression hostage. Recently, the suspension of President Trump’s Twitter and Facebook accounts while allowing Islamist terrorist organizations to use their services brought this contradiction to the fore. The giant tech companies can whimsically and indiscriminately make the playing field uneven.
The media outlets
Major media outlets were also mysteriously promoters of the Islamo-Leftist agenda of curtailing the freedom of speech and expression of people they disagreed with. To illustrate with an example, following the stabbing of Salman Rushdie, The New York Times, ran an opinion piece, wherein the writer, instead of unequivocally supporting the freedom of the author, revived the controversy around The Satanic Verses and stressed that the “battle lines” around the novel were “never clearly drawn.”
The writer apparently endorsed the arguments of the Islamo-Left that it was “wrong to give offence to certain people, certain groups, certain religions, and so on..” She stressed that the conversation over free speech had shifted among the “younger progressives” and a new “notion” was gaining ground that “offensive speech” was “violence.” They “increasingly critiqued the principle of free speech as too often providing cover for hate speech.”
The readers are the best guarantors of free speech and expression
An overwhelming number of the New York Times left-leaning readers didn’t buy this argument supposed to have been made by the ‘younger progressives’. Their consensus appeared to be: Words couldn’t “offend” and cause “violence” as long as the power to make a counter-speech was available. If censorship was sought to be imposed through coercive methods, both the Left and the Right would be tempted to resort to it. In Salman Rushdie’s own words, freedom of expression would cease to exist without “the freedom to offend”. There were many uncomfortable ways literature and art could question society, making fun of faith and its founder didn’t pass the threshold of hate speech.
Furthermore, it was not possible to produce any powerful creative art without offending someone. In the USA, the words of Martin Luther King Jr. offended millions, and so did the play, Hamilton. The art of Robert Mapplethorpe (a creative American photographer) and Robert Rauschenberg (an American painter and graphic artist), the writings of Toni Morrison, or virtually any artistic expression made millions feel affronted or insulted. If “comfort,” “sentiments” or “feelings” were the restraining considerations, one would never have challenged the perspective, preconceptions, biases, or interpretations of others.
In the author-reader relationship, moreover, the rule has always been very simple: “Don’t like it, don’t read it – no book should ever be banned or destroyed and no author should be attacked for what they write.”
With a sense of setback, one will have to give credit to the Islamists (and terrorists) who with the aid of the Leftists changed this rule of behaviour. Now, authors, opinion makers or public figures who could have spoken fearlessly and condemned attacks on the freedom of speech and expression preferred to stay silent.
In their defiant killing spree, the Islamists and their brain-washed terrorist foot soldiers seem to be telling the world that any critical or even allegorical reference to their Faith (that included the Founder, the Book and the Hadees) might cost them their lives. In India, the controversy surrounding the statement of Nupur Sharma, a BJP official, and the subsequent chain of murders by the Islamists were the latest examples of a murderous worldwide cult that is gaining in strength.
There’s no scope to be gloomy, however. In the end, the pen will be mightier than the sword and the tide of freedom and liberty will prevail.
Let’s be assured Salman Rushdie’s own words of confidence in the triumph of the freedom of expression over the forces of terror and death will keep inspiring the world.
As he very well prophesied:
“A poem will not stop a bullet. A novel cannot defuse a bomb. But we are not helpless. The battle is not only on the battlefield. Even after Orpheus was torn to pieces, his severed head, floating down the river Hebrus, went on singing, reminding us that song is stronger than death. We can sing the truth and name the liars. We can stand in solidarity with our fellows on the front lines and magnify their voices by adding our own …. We can emulate Orpheus and sing on in the face of horror, and not stop singing until the tide turns, and a better day begins.”
