Quantcast
Connect with us

Salman Rushdie says the world learned the ‘wrong lessons’ from his Iran fatwa ordeal

Published

on

AFP/AFP/File - Writer Salman Rushdie, pictured on October 5, 2014, told L'Express, "Instead of concluding we need to oppose these attacks on freedom of expression, we believed we should calm them through compromises and ceding"

More than a quarter century after being slapped with a fatwa fromIran calling for his murder over his book “The Satanic Verses”, Salman Rushdie says the world has learned the “wrong lessons” about freedom of expression.

The British author, in an interview published Wednesday by the French news magazine L’Express, said his ordeal by religious fanatics determined to violently avenge what they construed as blasphemy should have served as a wake-up call to the world.

ADVERTISEMENT

Instead, after the September 11, 2001 attack on America and the massacre in Paris in January this year of cartoonists and staff at the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly, and with the ongoing rampage of the brutal Islamic State group in the Middle East, Rushdie said some writers and other people were too cowed to talk freely about Islam.

“It seems we learned the wrong lessons,” he said in the interview printed in French. “Instead of concluding we need to oppose these attacks on freedom of expression, we believed we should calm them through compromises and ceding.”

The “politically correct” positions voiced by some — including a few prominent authors who disagreed with Charlie Hebdo receiving a freedom of speech award at a PEN literary gala in New York in May — were motivated by fear, Rushdie said.

– ‘Fear disguised as respect’ –

“If people weren’t being killed right now, if bombs and Kalashnikovs weren’t speaking today, the debate would be very different. Fear is being disguised as respect,” he said.

ADVERTISEMENT

Rushdie, born in India to non-practising Muslims and himself an atheist, said the 1989 fatwa issued against him by Iran’s then supreme leader, the late Ruhollah Khomeini, was, as he wrote in his 2012 memoir, “a first note of the dark music”.

Following the fatwa, bookstores carrying his book were firebombed and the Japanese translator of the novel was stabbed to death.

Iran’s government said in 1998 it had suspended the murder fatwa, though other regime organs insist it remains in place.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Extremism constitutes an attack against the Western world as much as against Muslims themselves,” Rushdie told L’Express.

“Keeping silent does not help Muslims…. Fighting extremism is not fighting Islam. To the contrary, it defends it.”

ADVERTISEMENT

The writer said that the controversy that surrounded the PEN prize to Charlie Hebdo this year convinced him that, if the attacks against “The Satanic Verses” had occurred today, “these people would not come to my defence and would use the same arguments against me by accusing me of insulting an ethnic and cultural minority”.

He added that he had “greatly suffered” from being forced to live in hiding and under police protection after Iran’s fatwa. But he appreciated the fact that his book was now being looked at for the work it was meant to be, and was studied in universities.

Rushdie, 68, has lived since 2000 in the United States and was knighted in Britain in 2007.

ADVERTISEMENT


Report typos and corrections to: [email protected].
READ COMMENTS - JOIN THE DISCUSSION
Continue Reading

2020 Election

‘I WON THE ELECTION IN A LANDSLIDE’: Trump continues freakout on Twitter after brutal Supreme Court loss

Published

on

On Saturday morning Donald Trump picked up where he left off late Friday night by insisting that he is being robbed of his re-election and with an all-cap exclamation: "I WON THE ELECTION IN A LANDSLIDE."

Following the Supreme Court's denial to consider a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton seeking to throw out votes in four other states, the president went on a Twitter jag on Friday night, calling the decision a "disgrace."

On Saturday, he continued in that vein, writing, "I WON THE ELECTION IN A LANDSLIDE, but remember, I only think in terms of legal votes, not all of the fake voters and fraud that miraculously floated in from everywhere! What a disgrace!" among other tweets.

Continue Reading

Breaking Banner

Psycho secession: Texas’ lost-cause lawsuit was the first shot in a new Civil War

Published

on

They didn't bother with writing articles of secession this time. No, Ken Paxton, the disgraced attorney general of the state of Texas, did that for them when he filed a lawsuit directly with the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the presidential election. On Wednesday, Missouri and 16 other states filed a brief with the court seeking to join the Texas lawsuit, which alleges that the four decisive swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia violated the Constitution by allowing mail-in voting in the November election. On Thursday, a majority of the Republican caucus in the House, 126 members of Congress, signed on to the lawsuit along with the instigator in chief, Donald Trump. Twenty-five states and territories signed a brief opposing the Texas lawsuit. Friday evening, the Supreme Court rejected the suit out of hand.
Continue Reading
 

2020 Election

Conservative slams evangelicals descending on DC for last gasp march to ‘pray’ for God to intercede on Trump’s behalf

Published

on

In his column for the Daily Beast, conservative commentator Matt Lewis expressed exasperation with evangelical leaders who are set to lead what has been dubbed the "Jericho March" in Washington D.C. on Saturday under the belief they can pray God into helping Donald Trump remain in the Oval Office for four more years.

Lewis, who wears his faith on his sleeve, has long condemned members of the Christian community who have attached themselves to the president who, by his actions and his deeds, has never exemplified any Christian values other than giving them occasional lip service.

Continue Reading
 
 

Happy Holidays!

As a special thank you from all of us at Raw, we're offering Raw Story ad-free for 15% off - just $2 per week. Now 'til Dec. 31st.