New in PJ Media:
The stabbing of Salman Rushdie by an open supporter of the Islamic Republic of Iran, who ingenuously explained that he attacked the famed writer because he “insulted Islam,” has put much of the Leftist intelligentsia in the West in a tough position. For years they’ve been insisting that any criticism of Islam, including any opposition to jihad violence, is “Islamophobic.” Even to stand against Sharia oppression of women is to manifest a “white savior complex.” Yet now the world’s most renowned insulter of Islam has been critically injured for it. How can a good Leftist stand with Rushdie and yet maintain his or her or xis credentials as a staunch foe of “Islamophobia”? The New Yorker has come to the rescue.
Longtime New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik begins by declaring that the attack on Rushdie was “triply horrific to contemplate,” because of its “sheer brutality and cruelty,” as well as “in the madness of its meaning and a reminder of the power of religious fanaticism to move people,” and “because it had seemed to those who knew him that the fatwa had faded in significance and threat.” Gopnik is most intent, however, on demonstrating that the attack didn’t even have the justification of being a response to blasphemy against Islam because Rushdie hadn’t really insulted Islam at all.
Gopnik thus notes that “the evil absurdity of the death sentence pronounced on Rushdie for having written a book actually more exploratory than sacrilegious—in no sense an anti-Muslim invective, but a kind of magical-realist meditation on themes from the Quran—was always obvious.” Gopnik then hastens to assure us that he doesn’t mean that Rushdie deserved to be attacked if he had actually written an “anti-Muslim invective: “Of course, Rushdie should have been equally invulnerable to persecution had he written an actual anti-Muslim—or an anti-Christian—diatribe, but, as it happens, he hadn’t.” OK, fine — but despite the fact that he has made his point, Gopnik continues to go out of his way to emphasize that neither Rushdie nor The Satanic Verses are anti-Islam.
The New York article then invokes Seyed Mohammad Marandi, “a figure involved in the U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations,” who “announced on Twitter that he ‘won’t be shedding tears for a writer who spouts endless hatred & contempt for Muslims & Islam.’” Gopnik adds: “Of course, Rushdie did no such thing.”
Right. And not only that, but “we met when we walked through the great 1992 Matisse show at moma together, at the height of the threat, and he was full of delight in each painting as it passed, with a nice, fully developed if slightly ironic sense of how much Matisse had drawn on Islamic civilization, on Persian ornaments and North African textiles, for his inspiration.” So not only is Salman Rushdie not an “Islamophobe,” but Gopnik tells us this to show that Rushdie positively admires Islam and Islamic culture, with the unspoken “Isn’t that wonderful?” hovering in the air above the text.
There is more. Read the rest here.
mortimer says
Salman Rushdie was condemned by the Shi’ites for three reasons: Rushdie is 1) a Sunnite Muslim be birth and thus a natural enemy of Shi’ites 2) an apostate from Islam who (Sharia law says) may be lawfully executed by anyone Muslim or not 3) a blasphemer whose book ‘The Satanic Verses’ was intentionally blasphemous.
The naive Leftists like Gopnik have no clue about Sharia blasphemy laws which also include the idea that ‘SHAME’ inflicted upon Islam is also a crime deserving execution. In Islam, ‘shame’ is removed by the shedding of blood. Rushdie physical blood is what the mullahs want.
Rushdie brought shame upon Islam, upon Muslims and upon the powerless mullahs who attempted to have Rushdie assassinated.
Rushdie’s continued survival is a challenge to all Muslims. Allah is defeated by Rushdie.
The Leftists haven’t sufficient understanding of the complexities of Islam to understand any of this. All they ‘know’ is that their communist critical theory says Muslims are part of the intersectionality of victims … and Muslims must be defended even when they are practicing discriminatory, brutal Sharia law.
mortimer says
The Leftist writer Gopnik is not only inadequately informed about Islam, but inadequately informed about art. Matisse was one of a group of artists who called themselves ‘les fauves’ (the savages). Any references in fauvist art would be ‘barbaric’ and ‘savage’ references and would thus be understood as ‘Orientalism’ which has a condescending flavor for Muslims and Leftists like Gopnik. At best, we may say that Matisse’s references to eastern styles is somewhat ‘Orientalist’ and condescending. So that doesn’t back up Gopnik’s Leftist perspective much either.
Rushdie is a native who abandoned his culture and then acculturated himself to the Western world. Leftists haven’t studied Islam, and furthermore they don’t know the history between communism and Islam exemplified by Lenin and Stalin. Stalin performed one of the biggest mass betrayals of Muslims in history in the late 1920’s and 1930’s.
It is looking like the temporary alliance that the mullahs made with Leftism is coming to a conclusion. Islam is actually an aggressive, and brutal ideology that is just as opportunistic as Leftism and in competition with Leftism. Stalin showed that massive brutal repression and mass incarceration is the only way to control Muslims and stop their jihad.
Once again, Gopnik doesn’t even know that either.
mortimer says
The Leftists must now be wondering how much longer they can support dissenters from Islam such as Rushdie. Apostates from Islam who expose the evils of Islam are undermining Leftists support for Islam and attempts to claim Islam is ‘benign’.
Embarrassingly, Rushdie is exposing the Marxist narrative as incoherent, self-contradictory and intentional bunkum. Islam is not ‘benign’. The ayatollahs (with PhDs in Islamic studies) are the authorities on Islam, not Gopnik. The ayatollahs say Islam is brutal.
Leftists are some of the most condescending people I know. They view everyone who dissents from their critical theories as an idiotic fool who should be thoroughly re-educated Ias the Maoists did in China) or rounded up and worked to death in arctic gulags as the Soviets did.
It is Gopnik who is condescending here when he refers to Satanic Verses as: “a book actually more exploratory than sacrilegious—in no sense an anti-Muslim invective”.
Does he think Rushdie didn’t know what he was doing? Rushdie grew up in the Islamic ‘HONOR/SHAME’ culture and thus Rushdie knew EXACTLY the response that his book would get … but he insulted Islam and Muslims anyway. To assume otherwise is to infantilize Rushdie.
Leftists are unaware how much they are filled to the brim with the assumption of their own infallibility. Why should we listen to dissenters, they say to us, when we have scientific Marxism, and now we can silence dissenters, demonize them, deplatform them and then have them fired and finally round them up at our leisure?
No, Gopnik, Rushdie (‘rush-to-die’) knew exactly what he was doing when he pulled on the tail of the Islamic sleeping lion.
Beneath the Veil of Consciousness says
Enjoyed your comments, mortimer.
Very insightful and educational.
+1.