Salman Rushdie Slams Critics of Charlie Hebdo’s PEN Award
2015/04/29 2 Comments
A fair amount of coverage and commentary with respect to Charlie Hebdo’s PEN award on both sides of the issue (I lean towards Rushdie’s position):
Six writers have withdrawn as literary hosts of the 2015 PEN American Center gala, criticizing the organization’s choice to honor satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo with the Freedom of Expression Courage award—a move author Salman Rushdie calls “horribly wrong.”
The writers—Peter Carey, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose and Taiye Selasi—believe it’s wrong to reward the publication for free speech, since they feel its depiction of Islam was often offensive, the New York Times reports. Carey acknowledged that the terrorist act that killed many of Charlie Hebdo‘s staff members was “a hideous crime,” but also noted that France as a nation “does not recognize its moral obligation to a large and disempowered segment of their population.”
Though Rushdie (whose death was called for by a Muslim leader over his book The Satanic Verses) calls both Carey and Ondaatje “old friends,” he said the choice of Charlie Hebdo was perfectly appropriate. “What I would say to both Peter and Michael and the others,” he told the Times, “is, I hope nobody ever comes after them.”
Salman Rushdie Slams Critics of Charlie Hebdo’s PEN Award | TIME.
Commentary magazine, while predictably using this to assail the left, nevertheless has a point:
“If PEN as a free speech organization can’t defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organization is not worth the name,” Mr. Rushdie said. “What I would say to both Peter and Michael and the others is, I hope nobody ever comes after them.”
Indeed. Liberals have apparently graduated from telling Muslims what is and isn’t truly Islamic to telling Muslims (and their victims) what is and isn’t blasphemy. According to the left, blasphemy is not a religious term so much as it just shouldn’t be applied to people who draw yucky pictures. This is, to say the least, a standard that bodes poorly for those who truly do support free speech. Where are their allies going to come from if not from free-speech organizations?
And there’s also something quite hilarious in the don’t-worry-Rushdie-you’re-still-good defensiveness in the anti-Charlie Hebdo group. That may be true today, but for how long will it continue to be true? At what point will the left finally throw Rushdie under that bus? Because that moment is coming, and I suspect everyone knows it.
The Left Will Disown Rushdie Too; the Only Question Is When
The Globe’s editorial board tries to find a middle approach:
For writers who deal in human complexity like Mr. Ondaatje, context matters. If an awards night is to be more than a self-congratulatory fundraiser, abstract notions like freedom of expression and courage must defer to a harder literary question: Should the boundaries of both free speech and courage necessarily adapt to local realities?
Charlie Hebdo’s cartoonists, working in the persistent French spirit of secularism and anticlericalism, saw themselves as caricaturing a monolithic sect that consistently behaves with barbaric cruelty and unreason. Islam, for Charlie Hebdo, became an updated version of the Catholic Church, and so a deserving target of ferocious satire.
But for the dissenting authors at PEN, these broad-brushed satirical attacks necessarily had damaging consequences at the human level. France’s colonial past has produced a modern culture of inequality, they say. In Paris, where encouraging anti-Islamic sentiments shades too easily into racism, Muslims are much more likely to be the oppressed than the oppressors PEN normally rails against.
For other prominent PEN members, all this literary ambivalence is a weak-kneed diversion from the no-compromise ideals of free speech. Salman Rushdie, who knows a thing or two about attempts to limit free expression, said his old friend Mr. Ondaatje was “horribly wrong.” But he’s not wrong, just different – and right to avoid the gala’s awkward culture of unanimity.
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 
Though never a fan of Charlie Hebdo, I too lean towards Rushdie’s stand. It’s important to note that Charlie Hebdo has taken on a whole range of targets, not just Islam. It has been particularly harsh on the right wing in France, on anti-Semitism, on the Catholic hierarchy, on Jewish orthodoxy, and on the intolerance and violence of certain Muslims and of certain trends and groups in Islam, and on the racism that hits all minorities. Charlie Hebdo in its iconoclastic – very French secular – take-no-prisoners satire is the opposite of racist. The famous cartoons of the Prophet were, if looked at cooly, rather tender towards the Prophet, seeing him as the victim of certain crazy followers, not their accomplice. More generally, if we fence off areas which are ‘sacred” – and immune to mockery and satire and criticism – if we shrink from offending “identities” – we will end up, in multicultural societies, with no space for criticism and freedom at all. Somebody will be offended by almost anything. In Italy, when abortion was being debated, a weekly featured on its cover a spectacular image of a pregnant woman crucified on a cross. This was very offensive to Catholics – and certainly to the hierarchy. Should that cover have been banned? I think Michael and the others are very much mistaken on a vital question regarding the freedom of everyone to think for him or herself and to express those thoughts – and this freedom is as necessary to Muslims as it is to the rest of us. Freedom is not an acquired right, it is an ongoing struggle. Freedom is not particularly politically correct. It is neither Imperialist nor Anti-Imperialist, neither progressive nor reactionary. And freedom can flicker out not with a bang but with a whimper. The road to hell is, as they say, paved with good intentions – and alluring well-meaning slogans.
Good comments. Agree.