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Twenty-five years after the Rushdie fatwa, free speech is in serious danger

Feb 12, 2014 5:52 pm By Robert Spencer

Rushdie

25 years after the Rushdie fatwa, the President of the United States is on record saying, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” instead of being what he should be: the world’s foremost defender of the principle of the freedom of speech. The freedom of speech is under active, explicit and unapologetic international attack from the 57-government Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which has been trying for years to compel Western governments to criminalize criticism of Islam. Twenty-five years after Rushdie, instead of lessons being learned about not giving in to violent intimidation and the importance of defending free speech and free inquiry, the OIC could actually attain its goal.

“The Rushdie fatwa: 25 years on,” by Shamil Shams for DW, February 12 (thanks to Fjordman):

25 years after the Iranian fatwa, author Salman Rushdie is still hated by many Muslims but he is not being hunted down as aggressively as before. What remains unchanged is the challenge to the freedom of expression.

On February 14, 1989, Iran’s former religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a religious edict calling for the death of British-Indian novelist, Salman Rushdie, for writing the controversial novel, The Satanic Verses, which many Muslims regarded as demeaning their Prophet Muhammad. The term “Satanic Verses” refers to a set of alleged Koranic revelations that allowed prayers to be made to three pagan Meccan goddesses.

The book sparked violence around the world and was banned in several countries including India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Pakistan. Those associated with the publication and translation of The Satanic Verses were attacked. Rushdie’s personal freedom was severely limited for 13 years and he was forced to live under police protection.

“When he was first accused of being offensive, he was genuinely perplexed. He thought he had made an artistic engagement with the phenomenon of revelation; an engagement from the point of view of an unbeliever, certainly, but a proper one nonetheless. How could that be thought offensive?” Rushdie writes in third person in his memoir Joseph Anton about the fatwa, which he believed was “baseless”.

A right to offend?

“If you feel offended by something, it’s your problem,” Rushdie said in 2012 at a book launching ceremony of his autobiography in Berlin. “To be offended by a book is quite difficult; you have to work very hard at it. When you close the book, it loses its power to offend you,” he added.

But is the anger directed by Muslims at The Satanic Verses unreasonable? Was the fatwa against Rushdie really uncalled for, and is Rushdie unjustifiably maligned? Do the writers have the right to offend in the name of the freedom of expression?

Dwayne Ryan Menezes, a scholar of religious history at the University of Cambridge, says he finds it hard to empathize with those who do not recognize the richness and diversity of the Islamic world. “However,” Menezes adds, “the ability to tolerate dissent and allow for freedom of expression testify to the strength and maturity of civilisations. Hence, it confounds me as to why the very same people behind some of the richest civilisations are not also the leading advocates of tolerance in the world today.”

Indeed.

The expert also says that the fatwa issued against Rushdie clearly breaches Articles 18 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which stress that everyone has the right to the freedom of thought, conscience and expression. “I, hence, find the fatwa somewhat immature and certainly unjustifiable,” Menezes told DW.

Relevance of the fatwa

On March 7, 1989, Britain broke diplomatic relations with Iran over the Rushdie controversy. But after almost a decade, the ties were restored when the then Iranian leader Mohammad Khatami gave a public commitment that his country would “neither support nor hinder assassination attempts on Rushdie.” Iranian hardliners, however, still reaffirm the “death sentence.”

In September 2012, an Iranian religious organization by the name of “15 Khordad Foundation,” increased the bounty on Rushdie’s head from 2.1 million euros to 2.5 million.

The controversy surrounding the author re-emerged after violent protests broke out in a number of Muslim countries against a low-budget US-made film titled “Innocence of Muslims.” Pakistan and Afghanistan blocked the internet access to this film and banned the video-sharing website YouTube altogether.

“Many Muslims saw the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ as an echo of Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, said Emrys Schoemaker, a communication analyst and researcher at the London School of Economics….

Rushdie is not the only person who has prompted the ire of Muslims. In 1993, Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin wrote the novel Lajja (Shame), which offended many Muslims in the Indian sub-continent. The author had to go into hiding in India because of death threats by Bangladeshi Islamist groups. In 2005, Muslims protested widely when a Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published satirical cartoons by the artist Kurt Westergaar depicting the prophet of Islam.

Experts say that since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan, the Muslim world has radicalized manifold. The threat which was once faced by Rushdie and Nasrim has now extended to a number of authors and intellectuals in the world.

Lindsey German, convener of the London-based organization Stop the War Coalition says there are political reasons to people’s reactions. She believes the Muslims’ hatred for Rushdie should also be looked at in a broader political framework.

“I do not agree with the fatwa that was passed on Rushdie or the increase in bounty on his head. But this is not just about one author. It is about the Western governments’ policies in the Middle East. Until western governments change their policies in Muslim countries, these things will continue to happen.”

Does she honestly think that if Western governments change their policies toward Muslim countries, that Islam’s death penalty for blasphemy will disappear or fall into disuse?

Intolerance

Karachi-based Shiite activist Syed Ali Mujtaba Zaidi told DW it was “necessary to remind (the West) again and again that we will not allow blasphemers to continue with their activities, and will make their lives miserable so that others will not follow them.”…

Islamic supremacist enemies of the freedom of speech such as the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Reza Aslan’s Aslan Media, and the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University are trying to do the same thing here.

“The Satanic Verses is a badly-written novel,” believes Mohsin Sayeed, a journalist in Karachi. “What Rushdie wrote was acceptable in Britain and the West, but not in Muslim countries,” said Sayeed. “The West shows double standards when it comes to issues it deems sensitive.”…

The Satanic Verses is indeed a badly-written novel, but Rushdie has a right to write and publish badly-written novels. There should be no double standards, if indeed there are any: there should be freedom of speech. But it is rapidly vanishing.

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Comments

  1. Bad Mo Foe says

    Feb 12, 2014 at 5:59 pm

    I have actually read The Satanic Verses, and disagree that it’s badly written. Rushdie just has a very dense style is all…

    • Brian C. Hoff says

      Feb 12, 2014 at 8:00 pm

      He wrote that book to make money as his other books wherenot selling well in the west. So he as than hindist wrote than book to insust Islam so he can make lots of money.

      • Defcon 4 says

        Feb 12, 2014 at 11:44 pm

        Yeah, that’s it, he wrote it to “insust islam”. I wonder if the Satanic Verses has already been taken off the bookshelves of public libraries, school libraries and university libraries everywhere.

      • Champ says

        Feb 13, 2014 at 2:46 am

        Well, there’s just so much about islam that’s an insult to humanity, so why *not* write a book about it.

      • Sidney Penny says

        Feb 13, 2014 at 6:26 am

        I like someone to tell me what is wrong with the Rushdie’s book.

        Not as bad as the other book, in fact it is so bad some one tried to ban it.

        Read why they tried to ban it.Robert has read it now it your turn.

        http://voiceofdharma.org/books/tcqp/pref1.htm

        http://voiceofdharma.org/books/tcqp/chi1.htm

        http://voiceofdharma.org/books/tcqp/chii4.htm

  2. Salah says

    Feb 12, 2014 at 6:01 pm

    The Satanic Verses…the shame of a “prophet”!!!

    Satan..put upon his tongue ‘these are the exalted Gharäniq whose intercession is approved.’ When Quraysh heard that, they were delighted and greatly pleased at the way in which he spoke of their gods and they listened to him; while the believers were holding that what their prophet brought them from their Lord was true, not suspecting a mistake or a vain desire or a slip..
    …the Muslims prostrated themselves when their prophet prostrated confirming what he brought and obeying his command, and the polytheists of Quraysh and others who were in the mosque prostrated when they heard the mention of their gods, so that everyone in the mosque believer and unbeliever prostrated.. ..’Muhammad has spoken of our gods in splendid fashion..’

    Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah p. 165-166, The Life of Muhammad (translated by Guillaume – 21st impression 2007)

    http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2011/10/muhammad-and-satan_24.html

  3. Mo-Blows says

    Feb 12, 2014 at 6:14 pm

    How can telling the truth about the Prophet of Islam be slander? seriously?

    FACT: In Islam the prophet himself and his personal deeds are considered to be the PERFECT role model for mankind to EMULATE.

    So I assume that it is also “slander” to state the historical fact that Muhammad :

    – Was a in FACT a slave owner
    – Was in FACT a thief
    – in FACT Ordered raids on Caravans , and participated in banditry
    – in FACT , OWNED a child bride
    – in FACT Ordered assassinations of his political enemies and of those who did not accept his teachings.
    -in FACT Personally ordered executions
    – in FACT Traded in slaves
    – in FACT Taught to forcibly convert
    etc etc etc

    THIS qualifies as Slander?

    Telling the truth?

    FACT: In Islam the prophet himself and his personal deeds( listed above) are considered to be the PERFECT role model for mankind to EMULATE.

    And emulate is what Muslims do. THAT is why we have the level of intolerance and violence we see from Islam.

    Why can’t people understand this?

    • Elisabeth says

      Feb 13, 2014 at 1:51 am

      Yes, all of this is indeed slander as I had to find out the hard and expensive way here in Austria. You just can’t say that. It’ll cost you.

      • Defcon 4 says

        Feb 14, 2014 at 1:02 am

        When justice is denied, I’d think it has to be taken back.

  4. Papa Whiskey says

    Feb 12, 2014 at 6:26 pm

    Be it noted that as US Secretary of State, likely Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton collaborated with the OIC in launching the execrable “Istanbul Process,” whereby the Muslim world is seeking to criminalize the right of free speech as regards the exposure, analysis, criticism or mockery of its odious creed.

  5. Jay Boo says

    Feb 12, 2014 at 6:32 pm

    The Rushdie does not mock Islam Muslims do that all by themselves.

    Khomeini funeral
    Mob stripping Khomeini near naked for souvenirs of his burial cloths
    knocking him out of his coffin.

    ALL CAUGHT ON VIDEO
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k7mpnPJWDo
    In a foreign language (graphic)

  6. Jay Boo says

    Feb 12, 2014 at 6:38 pm

    Why do Muslims pound there chests to mourn Khomeini
    It is all about display to flaunt uncouth ‘look at me’ Islam.

  7. Wellington says

    Feb 12, 2014 at 6:44 pm

    In the final analysis, the Barack Obamas of the world are a far greater danger to free speech than are the Ayatollah Khomeinis out there. When free societies elect people like Barack Obama to a position of leadership, freedom is confronted by its greatest threat of all, the long and the short of which tends to confirm the validity of the maxim that great civilizations collapse far more likely from within than from without.

    • Kepha says

      Feb 12, 2014 at 10:49 pm

      Absolutely right, Wellington. But, could it be, that there a lot more O’s out there in the judiciary, who will be the ones “interpreting” the Constitution when it comes time to challenge some of the attacks on Free Speech?

      • Wellington says

        Feb 13, 2014 at 12:25 am

        The judicial branch, Kepha, concerns me the most. Obama will be gone in less than three years but liberal judges can remain on the bench for decades.

    • JessieJames says

      Feb 13, 2014 at 12:27 am

      Exactly Wellington, I really don’t know why the jihadist are so adamant about destroying the U.S. when obama is doing a damn fine job of it all by himself.

      • Petey says

        Feb 13, 2014 at 6:49 pm

        Thats because if the USA turns muslim they would still be rich and powerful (for a while) But if the USA were conquered by muslim armies, then there would be rape, pillage, plunder and most of all bloodletting on a biblical scale. You wouldnt want to deny allahs soldiers their plunder would you?

  8. mortimer says

    Feb 12, 2014 at 6:52 pm

    By pursuing the attack on free speech, Muslims will get a reaction from the West…expulsion and segregation.

    Muslims will have to be removed from free countries and confined to Sharia countries only to leave if they abandon Islam.

    Obama betrayed American values by telling Americans to surrender to Sharia.

    Some people who are doing the wrong thing SHOULD be offended to challenge their errors. WE DON’T WANT TO THE SLAVES OF THIS DEATH CULT.

  9. Nonbeliever says

    Feb 12, 2014 at 6:56 pm

    Seriously, can anyone imagine Thomas Jefferson saying such a stupid thing? Obama is the OPPOSITE of what the Founding Fathers intended for this country, when it comes to Islam.

    And that’s coming from a liberal – hell no, I didn’t vote for him!

  10. dumbledoresarmy says

    Feb 12, 2014 at 7:21 pm

    Let’s hear what a fiery anticlerical Irishman, Conor Cruise O’Brien, wrote, back when the Rushdie Affair had just hit the headlines.

    This was what could still be published, in 1994. Thought experiment: could any major western newspaper publish this article, unaltered, as a feature piece, today? I will include the first few paragraphs, just to encourage my fellow posters to click on the link and read the rest.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/islam-back-to-the-dark-ages-we-should-not-repeal-the-enlightenment-to-appease-ayatollahs-says-conor-cruise-obrien-1382946.html

    ‘Islam: back to the Dark Ages: We should not repeal the Enlightenment to appease Ayatollahs, says Conor Cruise O’Brien

    FRIDAY 12 AUGUST 1994.

    “THE ECONOMIST has devoted more than 30 columns to a ‘survey’ on the subject of how to love fundamentalist Islam.

    “As I realise that I stand in need of instruction on this subject [don’t you love CC O’Brien’s sarcasm? – dda], I read the survey with interest.

    “Specifically, I was curious to read what it would say about the fatwa sentencing Salman Rushdie to death. I thought it would be difficult to avoid this topic in any sustained discussion of the relationship between fundamentalist Islam and the West.

    “Difficult, but not impossible, as I found when I had ploughed my way through that survey.

    “Not a word about Salman Rushdie, unless perhaps we are to understand his case somehow to be subsumed in the following paragraph about the case of Iran, in the context of the hope for ‘harmony’ between the West and fundamentalist Islam:

    QUOTE ‘The hope (of harmony) even survived the Iranian revolution of 1979 . . . Iran’s revolutionaries started out as snarling enemies. They can still growl and bite. But time, and the sobering experience of government, have made them noticeably milder in their foreign policy as well as in what they do at home.’ END QUOTE

    “This is the sort of thing that British and French devotees of appeasement used to write in the mid-Thirties.

    “‘Time, and the sobering experience of government’ were forever about to do wonders for Adolf Hitler, and we may be sure that these factors will exert an equally chastening influence on the character and disposition of Ayatollah Khamenei.”

    “There is no distinction, in Islam, between the spheres of religion and politics, and no terrestrial limit to the dual jurisdiction of such an official.

    “For infidels to seek ‘harmony’ with Islam is an illusion.

    “The only way of attaining harmony with Islam is by conversion.

    “The ‘Economist ‘seems to think that this might not be too bad an idea.”…

    “I had thought that the Enlightenment, that potent dispeller of illusory ‘certainties’, had more to do with ‘what made the West as it is today’ than had the Age of Faith.

    ” I had also thought that the fact that the Islamic world is still stuck in the Age of Faith, and apparently determined to get stuck still deeper in it, had something to do with the present not altogether enviable mental and material condition of the inhabitants of the Islamic world.

    “The Economist, however, implies that we would do well to repeal the Enlightenment in order to attain the bliss of harmony with the likes of Ayatollah Khamenei.

    “Readers will make up their minds as to whether or not this would be a good bargain. “…

  11. Defcon 4 says

    Feb 12, 2014 at 11:41 pm

    Other people have been killed for daring to translate the Satanic Verses, I know of one such case in Japan, I’m sure there are others. Cat Stevens, oops, Yusuf Islam, upheld the death fatwah against Salman Rushdie, but said he wouldn’t do it personally (he probably doesn’t need the money), but would drop the dime on Rushdie.

  12. EYESOPEN says

    Feb 13, 2014 at 1:58 am

    What I would like to know is when are Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Confucians and Christians in sufficient numbers going to loudly protest the verses in the Quran and Haddiths that call for death or subjugation of so-called “infidels”? When is the entire world going to call out the muslims for their mandate to conquer the entire world for “allah”?

    You want to talk about hate speech? Intolerance? Infidelophobia? Why not air that dirty laundry as well? (Robert, I know that you, Pamela, and others are trying to do just that.) I think it’s time we rubbed the noses of those who decry freedom-fighters in the verses of the Quran and Haddiths – and that includes especially, the media and academia’s useful idiots.

  13. tpellow says

    Feb 13, 2014 at 12:51 pm

    Salman Rushdie

    (2012):-

    “Salman Rushdie defends free speech in rousing address in Delhi.
    The author of The Satanic Verses excoriates Imran Khan for claiming to be ‘immeasurably hurt’ by the novel, and calls on Indians to defend freedom of expression.”

    http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/27/salman-rushdie-defends-free-speech

  14. Jacksonl03 says

    Feb 13, 2014 at 3:12 pm

    Test.

  15. Jackson L. Forney says

    Feb 13, 2014 at 6:05 pm

    Test

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