Suppressing Free Speech

We still haven't learned any lessons have we ....

Sir Salman Rushdie Speaking

 

.... this is obvious after last weekends attempted murder of Indian born author Salman Rushdie, when he was stabbed several times on a stage at an event in New York state.

Ironically, the event was being hosted by Henry Reese, the founder of a non-profit organisation which protects persecuted writers, and he also was injured in the attack.

Hadi Matar Is Facing
A Long Time In Prison

His attacker Hadi Matar is apparently a 24 year old, currently from Fairview, New Jersey (b. California) to parents who had emigrated from Yaroun, in Lebanon, and he reportedly has shown Shia Islam extremist sympathies, despite being a native born US citizen, with images of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated in 2020, on one of his phone apps. 

However his Western freedom birthright, apparently didn't deter his Iranian sympathies developing, to the point where he determined to attempt to kill the author, apparently in fulfilment of Iranian ex-Leader Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa (Islamic religious judgement) against Rushdie. 

The Satanic Verses

This fatwa called for the murder of British Indian novelist Rushdie, and for the killing of anyone involved in the publication of his book, 'Satanic Verses,' which was published in 1988 .. the fatwa put a bounty of $3m (£2.5m) put on Rushdie's head. An amount boosted by a further $600,000 (£430,000) raised by other Muslims worldwide including a quasi-official Iranian religious foundation in 2012, with some donations as recently as 2016 (according to The Index on Censorship).

The book itself primarily deals with two Muslim immigrant characters caught up in a terrorist plane bombing on a flight to India, but uses allegorical elements of magic and dreams to move the storyline. The half-magic dream vision sequences in the book incudes a fictionalised narration of a character called "Mahound" or "the Messenger" aka a thinly veiled Muhammad. 

In it Mahound removes two verses of the Quran as being as an error induced by the Devil i.e the 'Satanic verses' of the title. However the inclusion of the name of the Muslim Prophet in the book (even by allusion), was deemed by many Muslims as a grave insult to their faith (this despite few if any Muslims reading either the book, or even the 'offending' passages in context e.g. Matar admitted to looking at, or reading, just two pages before determining to kill Rushdie as 'not a very good person'). Finally, another dream sequence in the book presents the figure of a fanatic expatriate religious leader, the "Imam", in a late-20th-century setting ... something Iran would be sensitive too as Khomeini himself was an expatriate Iman in exile in France for a number of years.

The other objections to the book also included the fact that prostitutes in the book were given the same names of wives of their Prophet ... this despite about a third of all Muslim males being called Muhammad / Mohammed etc, and any prison in Pakistan etc will contain hundreds of men with that forename, but having criminals carrying his name, apparently causes no religious or offence problems (just fictional characters and Teddy Bears it seems). The subsequent death threats and fatwa made against Rushdie, forced him to go into hiding, and the British government had to place him under 24 hour police protection, where he stayed for nearly 10 years under the pseudonym “Joseph Anton.”

This controversy was probably the first real challenge to Western freedom of speech posed by Muslims .... but not the last as the Charlie Hebdo incident, and others since have confirmed. But back then in 1989, Muslims in Bradford in the UK ritually burnt a copy of the book, and newsagents WHSmith stopped displaying it in Bradford. While abroad, Muslims in Paris demonstrated, in India intense Muslim rioting led to 12 people being killed in Mumbai. The book was banned in Pakistan, Iran, India and some other Muslim countries, and the British embassy in Tehran was stoned. A few (very few) Muslim leaders urged moderation (but still wanted the book banned), many more supported the ayatollahs fatwa, while the UK, US, France and other Western countries condemned the death threat.

Rushdie remained hiding for nearly 10 years, but the retribution against the book, its author, and publishers/translators continued over the years:

The Other Defenders Of Free Speech

• In July 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses was found stabbed to death at a university north-east of Tokyo ... his killer has never been found.
• In July 1991, Ettore Capriolo the Italian translator of The Satanic Verses was stabbed in his apartment in Milan, though he survived the attack.
• In 1993, William Nygaard the Norwegian translator of The Satanic Verses was shot in 1993 outside his home in Oslo - he also survived.
• In 1993, Aziz Nesin the Turkish translator of The Satanic Verses was the intended target of a mob of arsonists who set fire to the Madimak Hotel after Friday prayers on 2 July. The mob attack killed 37 people, mostly Alevi scholars, poets and musicians and is still remembered by Alevi Turks as the Sivas Massacre. Mr Nezin was missed by the mob.
  

The death sentence against Rushdie stopped being formally backed by Iran's government in 1998, and the author recently started to make more frequent public appearances, in the now apparently mistaken belief that he was comparatively safe ... sadly he also failed to appreciate how long the urge for revenge was in the Muslim world. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Iran's current supreme leader, had in fact confirmed that a fatwa could only be withdrawn by the issuer (who was now dead), and had also previously said that the fatwa against Rushdie was "fired like a bullet that won't rest until it hits its target" ... and apparently it now has.

As expected the Iranians have been gleeful, with the state broadcaster daily Jaam-e Jam reporting on the news that Rushdie might lose an eye following the attack, saying "an eye of the Satan has been blinded". However the Iranian foreign ministry said that Iran "categorically" denied any link to the attack, adding "no-one has the right to accuse the Islamic Republic of Iran".

They went on "In this attack, we do not consider anyone other than Salman Rushdie and his supporters worthy of blame and even condemnation. By insulting the sacred matters of Islam and crossing the red lines of more than 1.5 billion Muslims and all followers of the divine religions, Salman Rushdie has exposed himself to the anger and rage of the people." ... they really are just like it says on the tin.

Mr Rushdie had long ago allowed his Muslim faith to lapse (another sin in the eyes of Islam) since arriving in the UK aged 14 and later becoming a British citizen, gaining an honours degree in history at Kings College in Cambridge. He now lives in the US, and was knighted in 2007 by the Queen for his services to literature.

Rushdie himself thinks that no one would publish The Satanic Verses these days, as Islam's continued violent assaults on Western freedom of speech, have eroded the resistance we once had, leaving publishers and indeed authors in a climate of "fear and nervousness". His attacker, who was caught on the stage during the attack, and even filmed, has still pleaded 'Not Guilty' to charges of attempted murder, which just shows you what a dumbass he really is ... he is not even brave enough to claim credit for his cowardly knife attack on a 75 year old man, but how he expects to be found not guilty, just further confirms that he is even more stupid than we thought possible.

We reap what we sow.