RUSHDIE ALSO STABBED IN THE BACK

By the "Liberal" Left

Most of you know I’ve been away at the cottage undergoing my own Great Reset — mandatory after two and half tough years. But I couldn’t resist telling you all about Bari Weiss’ latest triumph - her response to the knife attack on Salman Rushdie by a fanatic who nearly succeeded in killing his target. Rushdie has been on the radical Islamic hit list (Iranian version) since the publication of his lauded novel that ran afoul of Muslim cleric Ayatollah Khomeini.

The Satanic Verses drew death threats after it was published in 1988, with many Muslims regarding as blasphemy a dream sequence based on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, among other objections. Rushdie’s book had already been banned and burned in India, Pakistan and elsewhere before Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death in 1989.

The attack reminds us of the dangers of radical religious zealotry but also, sadly, of the groupthink and cowardice that have infected Liberal elites who have been slow to step forward in Rushdie’s defence. But here is Weiss pulling no punches in her piece called We Ignored Salman Rushdie’s Warning. This is a Pulitzer Prize worthy burn and she shames them all with her opening graphs:

We live in a culture in which many of the most celebrated people occupying the highest perches believe that words are violence. In this, they have much in common with Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who issued the first fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989, and with Hadi Matar, the 24-year-old who, yesterday, appears to have fulfilled his command when he stabbed the author in the neck on a stage in Western New York. 

The first group believes they are motivated by inclusion and tolerance—that it’s possible to create something even better than liberalism, a utopian society where no one is ever offended. The second we all recognize as religious fanatics. But it is the indulgence and cowardice of the words are violence crowd that has empowered the second and allowed us to reach this moment, when a fanatic rushes the stage of a literary conference with a knife and plunges it into one of the bravest writers alive.

Spend the next days watching to see who, of our vaulted, Liberal literary class stick their necks out — literally — to defend Rushdie and his work. Of course steadfast JK Rowling was first out of the gate with a tweet that prompted a death threat — one that Twitter, says does not violate its rules. Seriously.

Thank God one of my favourite novelists, Ian McEwan released a statement but where are there rest?

I had forgotten the history of hysteria around this book and Weiss has summarized nicely how dire the response was.

In July 1991, the Japanese translator of the condemned book, Hitoshi Igarashi, 44-years-old, was stabbed to death outside his office at the University of Tsukuba, northeast of Tokyo. The same month, the book’s Italian translator, Ettore Capriolo, was also stabbed—this time, in his own home in Milan. Two years later, in July 1993, the book’s Turkish translator, the prolific author Aziz Nesin, was the target of an arson attack on a hotel in the city of Sivas. He escaped, but 37 others were killed. A few months later, Islamists came for William Nygaard, the book’s Norwegian publisher. Nygaard was shot three times outside his home in Oslo and was critically injured. 

And those are stories we remember. In 1989, 12 people were killed at an anti-Rushdie riot in Mumbai, the author’s birthplace, where the book was also banned. Five Pakistanis died in Islamabad under similar circumstances. 

As for Rushdie himself, he took refuge in England, thanks to round-the-clock protection from the British government. For more than a decade, he lived under the name “Joseph Anton” (the title of his memoir), moving from safe house to safe house. In the first six months, he had to move 56 times. (England was not immune from the hysteria: Rushdie’s book was burned by Muslims in the city of Bradford—and at the suggestion of police, two WHSmith shops in Bradford stopped carrying the book.)

I had planned to attempt a booking of Rushdie for my podcast to talk about free speech based on an interview he’d given — in which he suggested the times in which we live now are more dangerous than they were in the 1980s when he was first targeted.

It’s hard to be nostalgic about a fatwa, but Sir Salman Rushdie‘s recent comments in The Telegraph remind us that his Valentine’s Day card from the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 were the good old days. Leading figures from around the world linked arms to express solidarity with him, and to protest any encroachment on freedom of speech. Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, Joseph Brodsky, Christopher Hitchens, Seamus Heaney, and others stood for Rushdie. There was no backing down. And today?

Said Rushdie, “We are living in the darkest time I have ever known.” The author of the condemned Satanic Verses, told France’s L’Express. “I’ve since had the feeling that, if the attacks against Satanic Verses had taken place today, these people would not have defended me, and would have used the same arguments against me, accusing me of insulting an ethnic and cultural minority.”

We’ll see who shows up this time. Until then, do watch this clip of Ben Affleck — representing Hollywood imbecility by arguing against Sam Harris and Bill Maher making perfect sense. Painful for me as The Town is a favourite flick. I wish movie stars would just stay quiet. Work out. Look good. Speak the words of others but please zip it.

In the meantime — Bari Weiss gets the last word. Do read her whole piece.

The words are violence crowd is right about the power of language. Words can be vile, disgusting, offensive, and dehumanizing. They can make the speaker worthy of scorn, protest, and blistering criticism. But the difference between civilization and barbarism is that civilization responds to words with words. Not knives or guns or fire. That is the bright line. There can be no excuse for blurring that line—whether out of religious fanaticism or ideological orthodoxy of any other kind.

Today our culture is dominated by those who blur that line—those who lend credence to the idea that words, art, song lyrics, children’s books, and op-eds are the same as violence. We are so used to this worldview and what it requires—apologize, grovel, erase, grovel some more—that we no longer notice. It is why we can count, on one hand—Dave Chappelle; J.K. Rowling—those who show spine.

Of course it is 2022 that the Islamists finally get a knife into Salman Rushdie. Of course it is now, when words are literally violence and J.K. Rowling literally puts trans lives in danger and even talking about anything that might offend anyone means you are literally arguing I shouldn’t exist. Of course it’s now, when we’re surrounded by silliness and weakness and self-obsession, that a man gets on stage and plunges a knife into Rushdie, plunges it into his liver, plunges it into his arm, plunges it into his eye. That is violence.

Please post Rushdie defenders names in the comments.

Back to the beach with much to think about.