The attack in New York on Salman Rushdie has brought back sharply into focus the fact that the Booker-winning novelist has been a target for Islamists for over three decades, ever since the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses in 1988. After that novel’s publication the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa against Rushdie. Encouraged by British Muslims, the Iranian leader accused Rushdie of blasphemy and put a bounty on his head. For many years Rushdie lived in hiding, protected by the British state.
Rushdie described those bewildering, terrifying, heroic years living in hiding in his 2012 memoir Joseph Anton. It is quite a work, detailing every demoralising corner of the affair. It includes accounts of the politicians of both left and right who failed to support the novelist, as well as the writers, artists and other public figures who pretended that the Ayatollah had committed an offence, but so had the author of the novel. And of course the crowds of Muslims in Bradford and other cities who burned copies of the book and were allowed to call for Rushdie´s murder on British streets and television.
For the last 20 years, since the Labour government tried to normalise relations with Iran, the bounty was taken off Rushdie’s head. But the fatwa remained in place – though this is a subject of some contention. Most scholars agree that the fatwa could only truly be rescinded by the person who had issued it and since the Ayatollah is dead, it remains technically in place.
However, in recent years it has been noticeable that Rushdie has been able to return to a normal life of a kind. The last time I saw him I was surprised that he was moving about like any other free citizen. But the events in New York are a reminder that he was never completely free from danger.
His attacker, like millions of others worldwide, almost certainly had no knowledge or understanding of the actual novel that is said to have caused such offence. Most of those who have attacked The Satanic Verses over the years (including the Ayatollah) never bothered to read the novel. And this attack must be understood in that light. It is not a debate about interpretations of Islam or different schools of Islamic jurisprudence and their attitudes on blasphemy. It is simply an attack on literature by those who fail to understand it. An attack on freedom of speech by people who have no concept of it. An attack of the dogmatists and the literalists on people who believe in free inquiry. An attack of the closed mind on the open one.
Let us not have a repetition of the caviling, caveating and cowardice we saw from some quarters in 1989. No ifs. No buts. No “on the one hand, on the other”. A British author has been attacked. This time, let his country be fully behind him.
I’ll be honest, I haven’t read his books (they’re on my neverending list of stuff I should read) but I know of him because of the reaction he caused.
When I saw he had been stabbed I felt sick. He’s a novelist, an artist.
Religious fundamentalism of any kind is a curse of society, the world would be a better place if it were rid of all of it.
The fact that people base their lives, shape their and their childrens views, and attack both physically and mentally, people based on a book written 2000 years ago blows my mind.
British politicians didn’t just fail to support Rushdie… many came out against him, both Labour and Tory.
Keith Vaz lead a demonstration through Leicester calling for the book to be banned & Norman Tebbit described him as a villain. Many other politics from across the spectrum had similar reactions.
They best hope he survives this
Nobody will touch this politically. Too much to lose from an, evidently touchy, voting block.
People, especially those in this sub are in real denial with how popular attacking those who insult mohammed is with Muslims in the UK, it not as fringe as you’d like to believe.
Make a film called the “Life of Mo” and see what happens. People need to stop saying “all religions” – you already see it in the top comments in this thread.
Ps. Want to make it clear not all do, most dont, but a significant amount support, sympathise or have an attitude where they smugly see it as Allah bestowing his justice. Those that do are supporters of right wing (of a different kind) stochastic terrorism.
[removed]
What happened to him was wrong. He has lost one eye, damaged the nerves in his arms and his liver is damaged. I think it will be little consolation to him that people he doesn’t know are “standing behind him” (whatever the heck that means in real life terms). Words are cheap. No one is genuinely going to help him. In a free and just world, this should never have happened and I wish him a speedy recovery.
Imagine being upset because somebody took the extreme actions of writing something you consider mean about something you hold close to your identity. And your response is not to take an eye for an eye and write mean things back, or turn the other cheek. It’s to stab them.
Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. Time to cut them off.
I think what we’ve all learned from this horrendous attack is we must stand behind, in front and side to side with Salman Rushdie.
This case should remind us that it is not immoral to cause offence. It is however immoral to react to offence with threats and violence. Freedom of expression means freedom to offend or it means nothing.
I find it absolutely illogical that self appointed religious leaders take it upon themselves to order the murder of on of God’s creations in the name of God
I have yet to have anyone answer any religion related question without hand waving generalisation or by saying “you just can’t understand, man. it’s beyond your ability to envision”
Google the Sivas massacre: Attending the conference was left-wing Turkish intellectual Aziz Nesin, who was hated by many Muslims in Turkey because of his attempt to publish Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel, The Satanic Verses.
37 people were burnt alive by Muslims from a “moderate” country.
Just a perspective of those you wouldn’t think were radicalised.
I work in the NHS with quite a lot of Muslim colleagues, particularly doctors. Whenever an attack or protest of this sort happens and it’s all the gossip, my Muslim colleagues are always like ‘They shouldn’t have done that’ meaning whoever it was shouldn’t have criticised prophet Mo. These are well educated individuals who are supposed to have empathy and compassion in their profession. Imagine the ones that don’t and have tendencies to violence.
Since when have my freedoms to criticise the religion of others been taken away?
Let’s all be real here.
Everyone here knows Muslim friends, coworkers and families of whom 99% are lovely, giving people…UNTIL you criticise their religion, at which point the men in particular go from peace loving souls to angry, violent prone individuals.
They are a peaceful people, but for some reason they won’t tolerate any criticism of their prophet. Pretty much cult-like behaviour.
Christopher Hitchens in defense of Salman Rushdie’s knighthood:
To paraphrase Hitchens – the only known cure for poverty is the emancipation of women. The only known cure for violence and hatred is education.
We just not too long ago abandoned a teacher to a baying Islamic mob for showing a fucking picture in class. There is precisely 0% chance this spineless nation is standing behind anyone with any principles against anyone we’re afraid of offending.
100% As a gay man, I’m absolutely shitting my self.
The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
I haven’t read the Telegraph for years owing to the fact it’s now more a propaganda outlet for the Tory party than a quality newspaper, but is it now commonplace for them to omit honorifics? He is Sir Salman – it’s not really an issue, but it is something I noticed as they usually seem more deferential.
I think that’s quite misleading. There were some people against him in the UK but the country itself gave him 24hr police protection and aided him.
[deleted]
Gonna be downvoted for this, might be banned. We need to stop allowing large numbers of Muslims coming into our country. Yes, I know I sound like a far-right xenophobic cunt.
But I am from a Muslim background, I left that cult, and I can tell you with complete confidence it is a destructive religion. It is a religion that prides itself on division, and it is completely incompatible with Western (Christian!) morals and ethics. I am not saying a total stop of Muslims coming in, but there needs to be a level where it isn’t a threat to our values and democracy.
I am not saying Muslims are bad – my parents, my sibling, and my friends are Muslims. But the instant you criticise their religion, a large chunk of them turn into monsters. Muslim preachers, Muslims themselves regularly use rhetoric like “the enemies of Islam”. In the mind of most Muslims, there is still a war between Islamic values and outside values. This is either subconsciously or consciously.
Edit: for those replying, for whatever reason I can’t see the comments.
“They’ll be our doctors, our teachers, our engineers”
This and all such attacks must be strongly condemned. Violent religious totalitarianism has no place in western liberal society, where freedom of speech and the exchange of ideas without intimidation is paramount.
Muhammad used his army to destroy and coerce his political and ideological opponents; and the violent political ideology’s spread has historically rarely been successfully checked ever since, except to an extent in Europe through the Crusades, as well as by the Spanish. Others, like the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire where not able to resist, and eventually succumbed through war.
The Crusades were specifically organized by western European Christians after centuries of Muslim wars of expansion. Their primary objectives were to stop the expansion of Muslim states.
It’s sad and alarming, but when you Google this stuff oceans of biased Islamic blog posts are the majority of the results that come up. So it’s fair to say it isn’t easy for the average person to learn about this history fairly. Whether through apologetics or intimidation, the outcome has been a chilling effect on discourse and criticism and a stupification and pacification of its opponents.
This attack on Mr. Rushdie makes these facts all the more poignant and chilling.
Liberalism:
1. willingness to respect or accept behaviour or opinions different from one’s own; openness to new ideas.
2. a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.
White, black, brown if you are killing people over an abstract collection of writings you’re a fucking idiot.
*The British state* protected Rushdie for a decade then negotiated his safe resumption of something like a normal life
*’Britain’* can’t get behind Rushdie any more than *’Britain’* can agree unanimously about politics, football or what to put on chips
Some UK citizens chickened out or were indifferent at the time the fatwa was declared, the vast majority thought it was barbaric and were essentially sympathetic, which is probably as much as we can hope for this time
If Rushdie spends the rest of his life chaperoned by two SAS guys squeezed into ill-fitting suits at the expense of HMRC, nobody except opinion columnists would complain
Real question is what are we going to do about it? Any reasonable response to this madness is apparently racciastttta
I don’t care what kind of ludicrous restrictions people want to put on their own lives. It’s when they come after *our* lives that I feel the need to come out fighting.
There is no such thing as blasphemy. Anyone who believes that people should be punished for blasphemy is beyond delusional. I’m an agnostic atheist. If there really is a heaven or hell, I believe it will 100% be based on morality and nothing more to it. So it’s funny to me that if these people are right, they’re going straight to hell anyway. (But I see no reason for an afterlife to exist and if it did, it wouldn’t be based on human standards)
I’ve got a lot of Muslim friends and they’re pretty hardcore about religion, it’s like a switch.
I don’t like this tendency within Islam to exempt Muslims from personal responsibility in certain situations. “The whore was tempting the good man!” kind of logic you find in sharia, for example, just looks to me like the most blatant way to excuse Muslim men from having to learn to exercise self-control, at the expense of freedom for women. Seeing the sorry lot of neckbeard militants the Taliban paraded before the world after taking over Afghanistan cemented that pretty well. Talk about photos and videos you can smell: BO, smegma, and unwashed balls. Nice.
And you see that rejection of personal responsibility in “oh well, they shouldn’t have insulted Islam.” kinds of platitudes too. We need political leaders in this country to firmly blaze a new trail with regards to Islam, one that strongly rejects both Islamophobia and efforts by certain Muslim groups to exceed freedom of religion and instead impose their sense of morality upon others.
Now remember that there are nearly four million Muslims in the UK, that number is growing, and they are sufficiently powerful enough a group that various police forces didn’t want to touch the industrial-scale rape perpetuated by members of that group.
Justin Welby won’t be calling for people to be stoned to death, and I’ve not heard any calls to violence from Ephraim Mirvis.
What is the UK going to look like in thirty years time, when the fundamentally Christian assumptions that gave rise to the Enlightenment are replaced with those from the Qu’ran?
36 comments
The attack in New York on Salman Rushdie has brought back sharply into focus the fact that the Booker-winning novelist has been a target for Islamists for over three decades, ever since the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses in 1988. After that novel’s publication the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa against Rushdie. Encouraged by British Muslims, the Iranian leader accused Rushdie of blasphemy and put a bounty on his head. For many years Rushdie lived in hiding, protected by the British state.
Rushdie described those bewildering, terrifying, heroic years living in hiding in his 2012 memoir Joseph Anton. It is quite a work, detailing every demoralising corner of the affair. It includes accounts of the politicians of both left and right who failed to support the novelist, as well as the writers, artists and other public figures who pretended that the Ayatollah had committed an offence, but so had the author of the novel. And of course the crowds of Muslims in Bradford and other cities who burned copies of the book and were allowed to call for Rushdie´s murder on British streets and television.
For the last 20 years, since the Labour government tried to normalise relations with Iran, the bounty was taken off Rushdie’s head. But the fatwa remained in place – though this is a subject of some contention. Most scholars agree that the fatwa could only truly be rescinded by the person who had issued it and since the Ayatollah is dead, it remains technically in place.
However, in recent years it has been noticeable that Rushdie has been able to return to a normal life of a kind. The last time I saw him I was surprised that he was moving about like any other free citizen. But the events in New York are a reminder that he was never completely free from danger.
His attacker, like millions of others worldwide, almost certainly had no knowledge or understanding of the actual novel that is said to have caused such offence. Most of those who have attacked The Satanic Verses over the years (including the Ayatollah) never bothered to read the novel. And this attack must be understood in that light. It is not a debate about interpretations of Islam or different schools of Islamic jurisprudence and their attitudes on blasphemy. It is simply an attack on literature by those who fail to understand it. An attack on freedom of speech by people who have no concept of it. An attack of the dogmatists and the literalists on people who believe in free inquiry. An attack of the closed mind on the open one.
Let us not have a repetition of the caviling, caveating and cowardice we saw from some quarters in 1989. No ifs. No buts. No “on the one hand, on the other”. A British author has been attacked. This time, let his country be fully behind him.
I’ll be honest, I haven’t read his books (they’re on my neverending list of stuff I should read) but I know of him because of the reaction he caused.
When I saw he had been stabbed I felt sick. He’s a novelist, an artist.
Religious fundamentalism of any kind is a curse of society, the world would be a better place if it were rid of all of it.
The fact that people base their lives, shape their and their childrens views, and attack both physically and mentally, people based on a book written 2000 years ago blows my mind.
British politicians didn’t just fail to support Rushdie… many came out against him, both Labour and Tory.
Keith Vaz lead a demonstration through Leicester calling for the book to be banned & Norman Tebbit described him as a villain. Many other politics from across the spectrum had similar reactions.
They best hope he survives this
Nobody will touch this politically. Too much to lose from an, evidently touchy, voting block.
People, especially those in this sub are in real denial with how popular attacking those who insult mohammed is with Muslims in the UK, it not as fringe as you’d like to believe.
Make a film called the “Life of Mo” and see what happens. People need to stop saying “all religions” – you already see it in the top comments in this thread.
Ps. Want to make it clear not all do, most dont, but a significant amount support, sympathise or have an attitude where they smugly see it as Allah bestowing his justice. Those that do are supporters of right wing (of a different kind) stochastic terrorism.
[removed]
What happened to him was wrong. He has lost one eye, damaged the nerves in his arms and his liver is damaged. I think it will be little consolation to him that people he doesn’t know are “standing behind him” (whatever the heck that means in real life terms). Words are cheap. No one is genuinely going to help him. In a free and just world, this should never have happened and I wish him a speedy recovery.
Imagine being upset because somebody took the extreme actions of writing something you consider mean about something you hold close to your identity. And your response is not to take an eye for an eye and write mean things back, or turn the other cheek. It’s to stab them.
Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. Time to cut them off.
I think what we’ve all learned from this horrendous attack is we must stand behind, in front and side to side with Salman Rushdie.
This case should remind us that it is not immoral to cause offence. It is however immoral to react to offence with threats and violence. Freedom of expression means freedom to offend or it means nothing.
I find it absolutely illogical that self appointed religious leaders take it upon themselves to order the murder of on of God’s creations in the name of God
I have yet to have anyone answer any religion related question without hand waving generalisation or by saying “you just can’t understand, man. it’s beyond your ability to envision”
Google the Sivas massacre: Attending the conference was left-wing Turkish intellectual Aziz Nesin, who was hated by many Muslims in Turkey because of his attempt to publish Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel, The Satanic Verses.
37 people were burnt alive by Muslims from a “moderate” country.
Just a perspective of those you wouldn’t think were radicalised.
I work in the NHS with quite a lot of Muslim colleagues, particularly doctors. Whenever an attack or protest of this sort happens and it’s all the gossip, my Muslim colleagues are always like ‘They shouldn’t have done that’ meaning whoever it was shouldn’t have criticised prophet Mo. These are well educated individuals who are supposed to have empathy and compassion in their profession. Imagine the ones that don’t and have tendencies to violence.
Since when have my freedoms to criticise the religion of others been taken away?
Let’s all be real here.
Everyone here knows Muslim friends, coworkers and families of whom 99% are lovely, giving people…UNTIL you criticise their religion, at which point the men in particular go from peace loving souls to angry, violent prone individuals.
They are a peaceful people, but for some reason they won’t tolerate any criticism of their prophet. Pretty much cult-like behaviour.
Christopher Hitchens in defense of Salman Rushdie’s knighthood:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEVA4EAP_S0
(Includes Boris Johnson being a dick.)
To paraphrase Hitchens – the only known cure for poverty is the emancipation of women. The only known cure for violence and hatred is education.
We just not too long ago abandoned a teacher to a baying Islamic mob for showing a fucking picture in class. There is precisely 0% chance this spineless nation is standing behind anyone with any principles against anyone we’re afraid of offending.
100% As a gay man, I’m absolutely shitting my self.
The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
I haven’t read the Telegraph for years owing to the fact it’s now more a propaganda outlet for the Tory party than a quality newspaper, but is it now commonplace for them to omit honorifics? He is Sir Salman – it’s not really an issue, but it is something I noticed as they usually seem more deferential.
I think that’s quite misleading. There were some people against him in the UK but the country itself gave him 24hr police protection and aided him.
[deleted]
Gonna be downvoted for this, might be banned. We need to stop allowing large numbers of Muslims coming into our country. Yes, I know I sound like a far-right xenophobic cunt.
But I am from a Muslim background, I left that cult, and I can tell you with complete confidence it is a destructive religion. It is a religion that prides itself on division, and it is completely incompatible with Western (Christian!) morals and ethics. I am not saying a total stop of Muslims coming in, but there needs to be a level where it isn’t a threat to our values and democracy.
I am not saying Muslims are bad – my parents, my sibling, and my friends are Muslims. But the instant you criticise their religion, a large chunk of them turn into monsters. Muslim preachers, Muslims themselves regularly use rhetoric like “the enemies of Islam”. In the mind of most Muslims, there is still a war between Islamic values and outside values. This is either subconsciously or consciously.
Edit: for those replying, for whatever reason I can’t see the comments.
“They’ll be our doctors, our teachers, our engineers”
This and all such attacks must be strongly condemned. Violent religious totalitarianism has no place in western liberal society, where freedom of speech and the exchange of ideas without intimidation is paramount.
Muhammad used his army to destroy and coerce his political and ideological opponents; and the violent political ideology’s spread has historically rarely been successfully checked ever since, except to an extent in Europe through the Crusades, as well as by the Spanish. Others, like the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire where not able to resist, and eventually succumbed through war.
The Crusades were specifically organized by western European Christians after centuries of Muslim wars of expansion. Their primary objectives were to stop the expansion of Muslim states.
It’s sad and alarming, but when you Google this stuff oceans of biased Islamic blog posts are the majority of the results that come up. So it’s fair to say it isn’t easy for the average person to learn about this history fairly. Whether through apologetics or intimidation, the outcome has been a chilling effect on discourse and criticism and a stupification and pacification of its opponents.
This attack on Mr. Rushdie makes these facts all the more poignant and chilling.
Liberalism:
1. willingness to respect or accept behaviour or opinions different from one’s own; openness to new ideas.
2. a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_career_of_Muhammad
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Moriscos
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Islamic_Arabia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologetics#Islam
[removed]
White, black, brown if you are killing people over an abstract collection of writings you’re a fucking idiot.
*The British state* protected Rushdie for a decade then negotiated his safe resumption of something like a normal life
*’Britain’* can’t get behind Rushdie any more than *’Britain’* can agree unanimously about politics, football or what to put on chips
Some UK citizens chickened out or were indifferent at the time the fatwa was declared, the vast majority thought it was barbaric and were essentially sympathetic, which is probably as much as we can hope for this time
If Rushdie spends the rest of his life chaperoned by two SAS guys squeezed into ill-fitting suits at the expense of HMRC, nobody except opinion columnists would complain
Real question is what are we going to do about it? Any reasonable response to this madness is apparently racciastttta
I don’t care what kind of ludicrous restrictions people want to put on their own lives. It’s when they come after *our* lives that I feel the need to come out fighting.
There is no such thing as blasphemy. Anyone who believes that people should be punished for blasphemy is beyond delusional. I’m an agnostic atheist. If there really is a heaven or hell, I believe it will 100% be based on morality and nothing more to it. So it’s funny to me that if these people are right, they’re going straight to hell anyway. (But I see no reason for an afterlife to exist and if it did, it wouldn’t be based on human standards)
I’ve got a lot of Muslim friends and they’re pretty hardcore about religion, it’s like a switch.
I don’t like this tendency within Islam to exempt Muslims from personal responsibility in certain situations. “The whore was tempting the good man!” kind of logic you find in sharia, for example, just looks to me like the most blatant way to excuse Muslim men from having to learn to exercise self-control, at the expense of freedom for women. Seeing the sorry lot of neckbeard militants the Taliban paraded before the world after taking over Afghanistan cemented that pretty well. Talk about photos and videos you can smell: BO, smegma, and unwashed balls. Nice.
And you see that rejection of personal responsibility in “oh well, they shouldn’t have insulted Islam.” kinds of platitudes too. We need political leaders in this country to firmly blaze a new trail with regards to Islam, one that strongly rejects both Islamophobia and efforts by certain Muslim groups to exceed freedom of religion and instead impose their sense of morality upon others.
Now remember that there are nearly four million Muslims in the UK, that number is growing, and they are sufficiently powerful enough a group that various police forces didn’t want to touch the industrial-scale rape perpetuated by members of that group.
Justin Welby won’t be calling for people to be stoned to death, and I’ve not heard any calls to violence from Ephraim Mirvis.
What is the UK going to look like in thirty years time, when the fundamentally Christian assumptions that gave rise to the Enlightenment are replaced with those from the Qu’ran?