PEN Canada standing up for Salman Rushdie 30 years after ambitious plan to condemn Iran’s state-sanctioned act of terror against him

2022/09/27 Leave a comment

Good reminder of just how courageous Canadian political leaders, particularly Bob Rae then Premier of Ontario, were. British PM Thatcher was equally principle in providing Rushdie with protection despite his harsh criticism of her policies and reference to her as Mrs. Torture in Satanic Verses.

As noted before, I was posted to Tehran when the fatwa was issued and we were concerned that the Toronto event might impact our safety but fortunately it didn’t.

Proud of the Canadian leaders who stood up for free speech when many did not. Sharp contrast to some of the shallow and tendentious invocations of freedom and free speech that are all too common today:

Thirty years ago, PEN Canada, a non-partisan organization that supports freedom of expression in Canada and writers endangered around the world, staged an extraordinary coup in Toronto. Held in support of award-winning English novelist Salman Rushdie, it went on to have international ramifications – with this country at the root of it.

In 1992, Rushdie was in his fourth year of hiding, under constant police protection for fear of his life. Three years earlier, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran had issued a fatwa calling for his murder, and the murder of those associated with his novel, The Satanic Verses. Khomeini claimed the novel insulted Islam, though his son admitted later that he never read it.

Internationally, political will to stand up to such an astonishing public threat against a private citizen of another country was sadly lacking. But no country was willing to act alone. Louise Dennys, then president of PEN Canada, told the head of the International Salman Rushdie Defence Committee that she believed Canada could break the impasse.

A handful of PEN members – Louise, with Ric Young, John Ralston Saul, Adrienne Clarkson, Marian Botsford-Fraser and Clayton Ruby – hatched an ambitious plan to persuade the Canadian government to condemn Iran’s state-sanctioned act of terrorism against Rushdie. The strategy: to use the annual PEN Canada Benefit to showcase public support for Rushdie in the country and galvanize the government in Ottawa to take the issue to the United Nations. They needed to bring Rushdie to Canada and draw intense media coverage.

This was no easy matter. It required absolute secrecy, the support of MI6 in Britain alongside CSIS and the RCMP in Canada, and a frantic last-minute search for means – ultimately, a private jet offered by an anonymous donor – to bring Rushdie across the Atlantic when the initial flight plan fell through.

Miraculously, they managed it. On Dec. 7, 1992, Rushdie appeared as a surprise guest on stage at the Winter Garden Theatre before an astonished audience of a thousand people. There was a collective gasp as the crowd rose to its feet in applause, even as they suddenly became aware of the 60-some security personnel present in the theatre, talking into their sleeves.

And then Bob Rae, premier of Ontario at the time, came on stage and embraced Rushdie, the first head of government anywhere to publicly stand with him. Rae called upon all governments to “do the right thing.”

It did not end there. The small delegation flew straight to Ottawa. Overnight, a morning press conference was convened. A few hours later, Barbara McDougall became the first secretary of state of any country to meet with Rushdie. Jean Chrétien, then the leader of the Official Opposition, walked him over to the House of Commons where he testified before the Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Development and Human Rights.

The result was electrifying. Within 48 hours, Canada became the first country in the world to pass a unanimous, all-party resolution condemning the Iranian government for its shameful record on human rights, demanding the withdrawal of the fatwa. Three months later, at the instigation of the Canadian government, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva passed a resolution condemning Iran’s actions and calling for sanctions.

Remarkably – and sadly, given the cause – a full generation after the epochal 1992 benefit, the organization is again holding an event to stand with Rushdie after the horrific attack on him in August at the Chautauqua Institute, in upper New York State. Together with the Toronto International Festival of Authors, Penguin Random House Canada and the Writers Trust, PEN Canada will hold a reading of Rushdie’s works on Sept. 27.

Thirty years ago, PEN Canada, a non-partisan organization that supports freedom of expression in Canada and writers endangered around the world, staged an extraordinary coup in Toronto. Held in support of award-winning English novelist Salman Rushdie, it went on to have international ramifications – with this country at the root of it.

In 1992, Rushdie was in his fourth year of hiding, under constant police protection for fear of his life. Three years earlier, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran had issued a fatwa calling for his murder, and the murder of those associated with his novel, The Satanic Verses. Khomeini claimed the novel insulted Islam, though his son admitted later that he never read it.

Internationally, political will to stand up to such an astonishing public threat against a private citizen of another country was sadly lacking. But no country was willing to act alone. Louise Dennys, then president of PEN Canada, told the head of the International Salman Rushdie Defence Committee that she believed Canada could break the impasse.

A handful of PEN members – Louise, with Ric Young, John Ralston Saul, Adrienne Clarkson, Marian Botsford-Fraser and Clayton Ruby – hatched an ambitious plan to persuade the Canadian government to condemn Iran’s state-sanctioned act of terrorism against Rushdie. The strategy: to use the annual PEN Canada Benefit to showcase public support for Rushdie in the country and galvanize the government in Ottawa to take the issue to the United Nations. They needed to bring Rushdie to Canada and draw intense media coverage.

This was no easy matter. It required absolute secrecy, the support of MI6 in Britain alongside CSIS and the RCMP in Canada, and a frantic last-minute search for means – ultimately, a private jet offered by an anonymous donor – to bring Rushdie across the Atlantic when the initial flight plan fell through.

Miraculously, they managed it. On Dec. 7, 1992, Rushdie appeared as a surprise guest on stage at the Winter Garden Theatre before an astonished audience of a thousand people. There was a collective gasp as the crowd rose to its feet in applause, even as they suddenly became aware of the 60-some security personnel present in the theatre, talking into their sleeves.

And then Bob Rae, premier of Ontario at the time, came on stage and embraced Rushdie, the first head of government anywhere to publicly stand with him. Rae called upon all governments to “do the right thing.”

It did not end there. The small delegation flew straight to Ottawa. Overnight, a morning press conference was convened. A few hours later, Barbara McDougall became the first secretary of state of any country to meet with Rushdie. Jean Chrétien, then the leader of the Official Opposition, walked him over to the House of Commons where he testified before the Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Development and Human Rights.

The result was electrifying. Within 48 hours, Canada became the first country in the world to pass a unanimous, all-party resolution condemning the Iranian government for its shameful record on human rights, demanding the withdrawal of the fatwa. Three months later, at the instigation of the Canadian government, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva passed a resolution condemning Iran’s actions and calling for sanctions.

Remarkably – and sadly, given the cause – a full generation after the epochal 1992 benefit, the organization is again holding an event to stand with Rushdie after the horrific attack on him in August at the Chautauqua Institute, in upper New York State. Together with the Toronto International Festival of Authors, Penguin Random House Canada and the Writers Trust, PEN Canada will hold a reading of Rushdie’s works on Sept. 27.

Source: PEN Canada standing up for Salman Rushdie 30 years after ambitious plan to condemn Iran’s state-sanctioned act of terror against him

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Tremblay: Le sang de Salman Rushdie

2022/08/19 Leave a comment

From Le Devoir film critic Odile Tremblay:

« Quand la superstition entre par la porte, le bon sens se sauve par la fenêtre », écrivait Salman Rushdie dans Les versets sataniques.

Ce livre, qui lui valut en 1989 la fatwa de l’anathème en Iran par la voix de l’ayatollah Khomeini appelant à son assassinat, le déchirera jusqu’au tombeau.

Survivra ? Survivra pas ? On aura suivi en quelques jours avec horreur la nouvelle de son assaut par un jeune Américain d’origine libanaise (dix coups de couteau) lors d’une de ses conférences dans l’État de New York, puis l’hospitalisation, l’évolution de son état de santé. L’écrivain indo-britannique s’en sort, mais risque de perdre un œil. Son cou, son bras, son foie sont en piteux état. Il parle un peu, plaisante ; trait d’héroïsme. On imagine sans peine les mois, les années de physio et de thérapies qui l’attendent avant le retour à un certain équilibre physique et psychologique. Philippe Lançon, l’auteur de l’immortel Lambeau, en a su quelque chose, lui qui traversa les affres de la réadaptation après avoir été grièvement blessé lors du massacre islamiste chez Charlie Hebdo.

Espérons que l’attentat contre Rushdie ne sera pas qu’un fait divers décrié par les grands de ce monde (pas tous) puis effacé au profit d’un nouveau scandale. En Iran, des fondamentalistes se réjouissent de son sort. C’est lui qui conservera le vrai pouvoir magique des mots.

Je l’avais interviewé il y a dix ans au Festival de Toronto, quand un film avait été tiré de son roman Les enfants de minuit. Il se disait lassé de revenir sur cette fatwa, qui fit de lui longtemps un reclus, un homme traqué. Dix ans d’escorte policière. Dix ans de fuites et de repaires secrets. Des autodafés du livre, des manifestations sanglantes, le meurtre du traducteur japonais des Versets sataniques, la peur et les cris étaient les jalons de son parcours. Puis vint une accalmie. « Il n’y a que les journalistes pour me demander si ma vie est encore en danger », s’irritait-il en 2012 d’un sourcil hérissé. Salman Rushdie se déclarait heureux depuis une décennie, enfin sorti de cette galère. Pensez-vous… On lui prédit d’autres gardes du corps, de nouvelles retraites. Il était déjà un symbole. Aujourd’hui… Un mythe sanglant.

Depuis l’attentat, tout le monde s’arrache ces Versets sataniques en version numérique. Dans les librairies, c’est la rupture de stock. Les lecteurs trouveront-ils sa prose difficile d’accès ? Près de 35 ans après son lancement, dans un monde où la facilité intellectuelle domine, l’œuvre d’un auteur exigeant et complexe risque d’en égarer plusieurs. Cette dérive-là, l’attentat contre Salman Rushdie nous la rappelle tristement aussi.

Ce roman, une brique touffue de 600 pages, ne tient pourtant pas de la provocation frontale. Tissé d’intrigues multiples sur les mille fléaux du monde, il aborde entre autres l’exode et l’exil, le racisme et la violence policière. Mais en quelques pages, au cours d’un épisode rêvé, le prophète Mahomet, sous le nom de Mahound, prenait des libertés face au dogme officiel. Un imam venait dévorer son peuple. Une jeune fille invitait des pèlerins à traverser à pied la mer d’Arabie, sur la foi du miracle. Rien pour appeler à la guerre sainte. Les imams qui hurlaient le plus fort au blasphème n’avaient guère lu le livre avant de sonner l’hallali, mais le titre du roman faisait déjà scandale.

Les écrivains, les journalistes, les artistes, champions de la liberté d’expression, sont des cibles à travers le monde, en Chine comme en Russie, au Moyen-Orient et ailleurs. Mais ils ne sont pas les uniques victimes de la barbarie. Des personnes parfois sans histoire se font blesser ou tuer pour des motifs religieux, politiques, pour leur couleur, leur genre, leur orientation sexuelle, un regard de travers, un territoire à soumettre par les armes ou parce qu’elles passaient dans le coin. Quant à l’intolérance, comment la résumer aux seules dérives islamiques ? Sur les réseaux sociaux, dans les rues, dans une Amérique déchirée et armée, l’obscurantisme et la pulsion de mort ravagent de concert les esprits.

Rushdie, écrivain athée de culture musulmane, me l’affirmait en substance : la bataille pour la liberté d’attaquer la religion a d’autres moteurs que le combat touchant les crimes raciaux, puisqu’elle touche au monde des idées. Reste que l’extrémisme à pourfendre naît sur bien des terrains, enfourchant les idées et les croyances comme les pulsions discriminatoires de tous acabits, des enjeux sanitaires, des mirages trumpiens, des rêves d’appartenance. La religion fanatisée constitue un vecteur de haine rouge, mais les motifs de polarisation violente sont devenus si nombreux et parfois si futiles qu’on n’aura jamais assez d’écrivains, même incompris, même ensanglantés, pour dénoncer la bêtise humaine qui fleurit partout.

Source: Le sang de Salman Rushdie

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Rothman: Where Did All the [fatwa] Apologists Go?

2022/08/17 Leave a comment

Legitimate call-out:

Salman Rushdie was stabbed ten times last Friday afternoon when a 24-year-old attacker rushed the stage of the Chautauqua Institution where the author was speaking. The attack was premeditated, and Rushdie’s injuries are severe. The interruption of this placid intellectual setting with an act of murderous violence—one that the Iranian regime has long encouraged—has shocked American consciences. At least, that’s what we can infer from the silence of those who attached themselves in recent years to the voguish notion that provocative speech is tantamount to violence.

It is reasonable to assume that Rushdie’s attacker was animated by the grievances that led Tehran to order devout Muslims to kill him on sight. That 1989 fatwa, issued shortly after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, is believed to have influenced his attacker. Indeed, this may have been a more “guided” attack than that, according to the NATO officials who spoke with Vice reporter Michael Prothero. “A Middle Eastern intelligence official said it was ‘clear’ that at some point prior to the attack,” Prothero wrote, the alleged assailant “had been in contact with ‘people either directly involved with or adjacent to the Quds Force.”

Perhaps the ambiguity over whether Rushdie’s attacker was acting on Iran’s orders, actively or tacitly, has led those who have argued for years that speech can produce trauma (and can, therefore, justify meting out trauma in equal measure) to hold their tongues. Maybe their silence is indicative of the fact that the target of this assassination attempt bears too much resemblance to themselves for comfort. If there was any intellectual consistency among those who subscribe to this proposition, though, they would be holding fast to their conviction that Rushdie had it coming.

“Words can have a powerful effect on your nervous system,” Northwestern University psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett wrote in a 2017 New York Times op-ed. “Certain types of adversity, even those involving no physical contact, can make you sick, alter your brain — even kill neurons — and shorten your life.” The professor attempted to distinguish “abusive” speech from the “merely offensive,” the former of which can, she asserted, produce negative physical consequences. “We must also halt speech that bullies and torments,” she concluded.

This is the rationale that led college newspaper editorials in the last decade to argue that offensive speech constitutes “an act of violence” and to endorse “appropriate measures” to ensure controversial speech does not fall on fragile ears. It’s this logic that led a majority of college students who responded to a 2015 survey to agree with the idea that “choosing to use or not use certain words can constitute an act of violence.” It is this framing that convinced nearly one-fifth of college students to endorse the proposition that violence may be an “acceptable” way to prevent challenging ideas from ever being expressed.

This infantilizing notion has been trotted out to justify the violence committed by Islamist fundamentalists. “Charlie Hebdo has a long record of mocking, baiting, and needling French Muslims,” wrote Tony Barber in the Financial Times, after the bloody massacre of that French publication’s cartoonists and writers. After all, that’s “what happens when you get a culture that, rather than asking to what end we defend free speech, valorizes free speech for its own sake and thus perversely values speech the more pointlessly offensive it is.” Even then-Secretary of State John Kerry lent credence to this notion when he said of the murderers that they at least had “a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, ‘Okay, they’re really angry because of this and that.’”

Four months after the bloodshed, American blogger Pamela Geller tried to repeat the behavior that supposedly led to this attack. Geller’s “cartoon drawing contest,” an act of solidarity with a famous stunt executed by the Danish publication Jyllands-Posten, had its intended effect. Two radicalized gunmen attacked the Dallas, Texas, venue hosting Geller, where they were killed by security. For successfully duplicating the conditions that inspire violence in the violent, Geller was pilloried. MSNBC host Chris Matthews accused her of “taunting,” “daring,” and “provoking” her would-be murderers. CNN’s Erin Burnett accused her of enjoying “being a target of these attacks,” and New York Daily News columnist Linda Stasi said that it was Geller’s “wish” that there be “more dead Americans at the hands of radical Muslims.”

In 2015, following the bloodshed in Paris, the annual PEN American Center Literary Gala sought to award that year’s Freedom of Expression Courage award to Charlie Hebdo. In response, six well-known authors disassociated themselves from the organization. One of the boycotters, the Booker Prize-winning novelist Peter Carey, complained of PEN’s “blindness to the cultural arrogance of the French nation.” The slaughter of innocents over little more than having the temerity to offend the easily offended was not, he said, something the West should be “self-righteous” about.

Rushdie disagreed. “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,” he wrote. “What I would say to both Peter [Carey] and Michael [Ondaatje] and the others is, I hope nobody ever comes after them.” Of course, no one did. Why would they? Their actions were in line with the intellectual fad of the moment. Dissociating from an organization that celebrated speech for speech’s sake required no courage because it incurred no consequences. Rushdie, by marked contrast, has bled for his consistency.

Source: Where Did All the Apologists Go?

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Atwood: If we don’t defend free speech, we live in tyranny: Salman Rushdie shows us that

2022/08/16 Leave a comment

I was in working at the Canadian Embassy in Tehran when Rushdie spoke in Toronto and appeared on stage with then premier Bob Rae. We were worried regarding potential fall-out and possible threats but fortunately none materialized. (I read The Satanic Verses in Tehran, adding another personal twist to my time there).

Usual trenchant commentary by Atwood:

A long time ago – 7 December 1992, to be exact – I was backstage at a Toronto theatre, taking off a Stetson. With two other writers, Timothy Findley and Paul Quarrington, I’d been performing a medley of 1950s country and western classics, rephrased for writers – Ghost Writers in the Sky, If I Had the Wings of an Agent, and other fatuous parodies of that nature. It was a PEN Canada benefit of that era: writers dressed up and made idiots of themselves in aid of writers persecuted by governments for things they’d written.

Just as the three of us were bemoaning how awful we’d been, there was a knock on the door. Backstage was locked down, we were told. Secret agents were talking into their sleeves. Salman Rushdie had been spirited into the country. He was about to appear on stage with Bob Rae, the premier of Ontario, the first head of government in the world to support him in public. “And you, Margaret, as past president of PEN Canada, are going to introduce him,” I was told.

Gulp. “Oh, OK,” I said. And so I did. It was a money-where-your-mouth-is moment.

And, with the recent attack on him, so is this.

Rushdie exploded on to the literary scene in 1981 with his second novel, Midnight’s Children, which won the Booker prize that year. No wonder: its inventiveness, range, historical scope and verbal dexterity were breathtaking, and it opened the door to subsequent generations of writers who might previously have felt that their identities or subject matter excluded them from the movable feast that is English-language literature. He has ticked every box except the Nobel prize: he has been knighted; he is on everyone’s list of significant British writers; he has collected an impressive bouquet of prizes and honours, but, most importantly, he has touched and inspired a great many people around the globe. A huge number of writers and readers have long owed him a major debt.

Suddenly, they owe him another one. He has long defended freedom of artistic expression against all comers; now, even should he recover from his injuries, he is a martyr to it.

In any future monument to murdered, tortured, imprisoned and persecuted writers, Rushdie will feature large. On 12 August he was stabbed on stage by an assailant at a literary event at Chautauqua, a venerable American institution in upstate New York. Yet again “that sort of thing never happens here” has been proven false: in our present world, anything can happen anywhere. American democracy is under threat as never before: the attempted assassination of a writer is just one more symptom.

Without doubt, this attack was directed at him because his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, a satiric fantasy that he himself believed was dealing with the disorientation felt by immigrants from (for instance) India to Britain, got used as a tool in a political power struggle in a distant country.

When your regime is under pressure, a little book-burning creates a popular distraction. Writers don’t have an army. They don’t have billions of dollars. They don’t have a captive voting block. They thus make cheap scapegoats. They’re so easy to blame: their medium is words, which are by nature ambiguous and subject to misinterpretation, and they themselves are often mouthy, if not downright curmudgeonly. Worse, they frequently speak truth to power. Even apart from that, their books will annoy some people. As writers themselves have frequently said, if what you’ve written is universally liked, you must be doing something wrong. But when you offend a ruler, things can get lethal, as many writers have discovered.

In Rushdie’s case, the power that used him as a pawn was the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. In 1989, he issued a fatwa – a rough equivalent to the bulls of excommunication used by medieval and renaissance Catholic popes as weapons against both secular rulers and theological challengers such as Martin Luther. Khomeini also offered a large reward to anyone who would murder Rushdie. There were numerous killings and attempted assassinations, including the stabbing of the Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi in 1991. Rushdie himself spent many years in enforced hiding, but gradually he came out of his cocoon – the Toronto PEN event being the most significant first step – and, in the past two decades, he’d been leading a relatively normal life.

However, he never missed an opportunity to speak out on behalf of the principles he’d been embodying all his writing life. Freedom of expression was foremost among these. Once a yawn-making liberal platitude, this concept has now become a hot-button issue, since the extreme right has attempted to kidnap it in the service of libel, lies and hatred, and the extreme left has tried to toss it out the window in the service of its version of earthly perfection. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to foresee many panel discussions on the subject, should we reach a moment in which rational debate is possible. But whatever it is, the right to freedom of expression does not include the right to defame, to lie maliciously and damagingly about provable facts, to issue death threats, or to advocate murder. These should be punished by law.

As for those who are still saying, “yes, but …” about Rushdie – some version of “he should have known better”, as in “yes, too bad about the rape, but why was she wearing that revealing skirt” – I can only remark that there are no perfect victims. In fact, there are no perfect artists, nor is there any perfect art. Anti-censorship folks often find themselves having to defend work they would otherwise review scathingly, but such defending is necessary, unless we are all to have our vocal cords removed.

Long ago, a Canadian member of parliament described a ballet as “a bunch of fruits jumping around in long underwear”. Let them jump, say I! Living in a pluralistic democracy means being surrounded by a multiplicity of voices, some of which will be saying things you don’t like. Unless you’re prepared to uphold their right to speak, as Salman Rushdie has done so often, you’ll end up living in a tyranny.

Rushdie didn’t plan to become a free-speech hero, but he is one now. Writers everywhere – those who are not state hacks or brainwashed robots – owe him a huge vote of thanks.

Source: If we don’t defend free speech, we live in tyranny: Salman Rushdie shows us that

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Attack on Salman Rushdie prompts Canadians to highlight author’s relentless fight for free speech

2022/08/15 Leave a comment

As someone posted to Iran when the fatwa was issued, and as a fan of his writing, this attack strikes close to home along with the importance of free speech. We will see if some in Canada defend or excuse the indefensible:

Canadian writers, publishers and literary figures doubled down on the right to freedom of thought and expression on Saturday, one day after an attack in the U.S. on award-winning author Salman Rushdie that has left him on a ventilator in hospital.

Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses drew death threats from Iran’s leaders in the 1980s, was stabbed in the neck and abdomen Friday by a man who rushed the stage as the author was about to give a lecture in western New York.

Louise Dennys, executive vice-president and publisher of Penguin Random House Canada, has published and edited Rushdie’s writings for over 30 years. She condemned the attack on her longtime friend and colleague as “cowardly” and “reprehensible in every way.”

“He is without doubt one of the greatest proponents of freedom of thought and speech, and debate and discussion in the world today,” Dennys said in a telephone interview. “I have hopes of his recovery. He’s a great warrior and fighter, and I hope he is fighting back.”

Rushdie, 75, a native of India who has lived in Britain and the U.S., is known for his surreal and satirical prose style

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 1989 fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.

A 24-year-old man is in custody, facing charges in Friday’s attack. The accused was born a decade after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Police said the motive was unclear. Investigators were working to determine whether anyone else could be linked to the incident.

After the publication of The Satanic Verses, often-violent protests erupted across the Muslim world against Rushdie. At least 45 people were killed in riots over the book, including 12 people in Rushdie’s hometown of Mumbai. In 1991, a Japanese translator of the book was stabbed to death and an Italian translator survived a knife attack. In 1993, the book’s Norwegian publisher was shot three times and survived.

The death threats prompted Rushdie to go into hiding under a British government protection program, though he cautiously resumed public appearances after nine years of seclusion, maintaining his outspoken criticism of religious extremism overall.

‘He couldn’t be silenced by fear’

“We all depend on the storytelling, power and imagination of writers,” Dennys said. Rushdie “came out of hiding because he realized he wanted to play a role in the world we live in, defending those rights, she said.

“He couldn’t be silenced by fear, and I think that point is something he will continue to make if, as we all hope, he survives.”

Dennys said the attack is already having the opposite effect of its suspected intentions given the outpouring of support from the international literary community, as well as activists and government officials, who cited Rushdie’s courage for his longtime free speech advocacy despite risks to his own safety.

“It’s brought everyone together to realize how precious and fragile our freedoms are and how important it is to speak up for them,” Dennys said.

The president of PEN Canada, an organization that defends authors’ freedom of expression, condemned the “savage attack” on their “friend and colleague,” Rushdie, who is a member.

Canadian writer John Ralston Saul, who has known Rushdie since the 1990s, said the author was always aware that someone might attack him, but he chose to live publicly in order to speak out against those trying to silence free expression and debate.

“[Rushdie’s] work and whole life are a reminder of what the life of the public writer is in reality,” he said. “This would be the worst possible time to give in or show any sense that we must be more careful with our words. We’re not really writers if we give in to that kind of threat.”

The accused, Hadi Matar, was arrested after the attack at the Chautauqua Institution, a non-profit education and retreat centre. Matar’s lawyer entered a not guilty plea in a New York court on Saturday to charges of attempted murder and assault.

After the attack, some longtime visitors to the centre questioned why there wasn’t tighter security for the event, given the threats against Rushdie and a bounty on his head offering more than $3 million to anyone who killed him.

Saul, who spoke at the Chautauqua Institution years before Rushdie’s attack, said it has an “open tradition” of debate, free expression and anti-violence going back over 100 years.

“It’s one of the freest places to take advantage of our belief in freedom,” he said.

Witnesses to the attack on Salman Rushdie Friday in western New York recount how a man approached the stage at the Chautauqua Institution where the author was about to give a lecture, attacked him and was later pinned down by people from the audience.

Roland Gulliver, director of the Toronto International Festival of Authors, tweeted Saturday that literary festivals and book events are “spaces of expression, to tell your stories in friendship, safety and respect.”

“To see this so violently broken is incredibly shocking,” he wrote.

Expressions of sympathy came from the political realm as well, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemning the attack as a “cowardly … strike against freedom of expression.”

“No one should be threatened or harmed on the basis of what they have written,” read a statement posted to Trudeau’s official Twitter account. “I’m wishing him a speedy recovery.”

Rushdie suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in his arm, and is likely to lose an eye as a result of the attack, the author’s agent, Andrew Wylie, said Friday evening.

A physician who witnessed the attack and was among those who rushed to help described Rushdie’s wounds as “serious but recoverable.”

Source: Attack on Salman Rushdie prompts Canadians to highlight author’s relentless fight for free speech

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Salman Rushdie demands apology from Yusuf Islam after he ‘supported the fatwa’ against the author

2020/10/05 Leave a comment

Of note (I was posted to the Canadian Embassy in Tehran at the time, so this brings back vivid memories):

The then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, despite being no fan of Rushdie’s Left-leaning politics, staunchly defended him: ‘Whether or not we have any sympathy with Rushdie’s views is not the point.

‘We must react strongly to any state murder-hunt made against one of our citizens.’

The fatwa has never been lifted. Rushdie now lives at a secret location in New York City.

Unfortunately, despite her £400,000 a year from the BBC, Lauren Laverne in her Desert Island Discs interview failed to probe Islam on the life sentence Rushdie has endured as a result of the fatwa — she was anything but ‘sharp-toothed’.

She chose not to ask why he had repeatedly appeared to support the death sentence of a British author — or how he believed he had been ‘framed’. So what did Islam say or not say? Did he call for the violent death of a respected writer — or was it, as he claims, all a misunderstanding?

The controversy began in the late 1980s, when the fervour surrounding the fatwa was at its most poisonous and potent.

Soon after Rushdie published The Satanic Verses it was condemned as ‘blasphemous’ by Ayatollah Khomeini.

He and other Islamic fundamentalists were enraged by the book’s supposed mocking of the prophet Abraham and claims that Rushdie had allegedly cast doubt upon the divinity of the Koran.

In February 1989, Khomeini went on Iranian state radio to call for Rushdie’s murder — and for good measure his publishers’, too.

‘I am informing all brave Muslims of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses . . along with all the editors and publishers aware of its contents, are condemned to death.

‘I call on all valiant Muslims, wherever they may be in the world, to kill them without delay . . . and whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr, Allah willing.’

Days later, the man who had once called himself Cat Stevens gave a talk at Kingston Polytechnic (now Kingston University) in London. Asked about the fatwa, he said: ‘He [Rushdie] must be killed. The Koran carries the death sentence.

‘If someone defames the prophet, then he must die.’

Islam subsequently clarified that he was not condoning the killing of Rushdie but simply stating that, in the Koran, blasphemy is punishable by death.

Later, he said: ‘My only crime was, I suppose, in being honest. I stood up and expressed my belief and I am in no way apologising for it.’

He went on to outline these ‘beliefs’ in richer detail elsewhere.

A few months after the fatwa was declared, Islam appeared on a late-night Granada TV talk show, The Hypotheticals, presented by the respected human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC, who had represented Rushdie in a blasphemy case brought in London by a group of Muslim barristers.

Robertson asked Islam to imagine he was in a restaurant and recognised Salman Rushdie at the next table. What might he do?

Robertson asked: ‘You don’t think that this man deserves to die?’

Islam: ‘Yes, yes.’

Robertson: ‘You have a duty to be his executioner?’

Islam: ‘No, not necessarily, unless we were in an Islamic state and I was ordered by a judge or by the authority to carry out such an act — perhaps, yes.’

Robertson was visibly taken aback. He later questioned Islam about an imaginary protest at which an effigy of Rushdie was to be burned.

He asked: ‘Would you be part of that protest, Yusuf Islam? Would you go to a demonstration where you knew that an effigy was going to be burned?’

Without a pause, Islam replied: ‘I would have hoped that it’d be the real thing.’

He went on to say that if Mr Rushdie turned up at his doorstep looking for help: ‘I might ring someone who might do more damage to him than he would like. I’d try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is.’

Far from apologising for these comments, Islam later said that it was an example of ‘British dry humour’. He claimed that the recording had been edited to make it look very serious, with laughs and ‘balanced arguments’ removed, while ‘the most sensational quotes’ were included.

The novelist Fay Weldon also appeared on the programme. She said she was offended by Islam’s remarks, which it seemed to her incited violence.

This week I asked Mr Robertson, still a leading QC and now head of Doughty Street Chambers in London (where, among others, the barrister Amal Clooney practises), what he recalled of this extraordinary broadcast — and of Islam’s words.

Robertson told me: ‘At the time it was dramatic and seemed quite chilling — I don’t recall anyone thinking it was funny. I didn’t rehearse my questions but his answers surprised me so I came up with a scenario about the effigy to give him an opportunity to retract. He didn’t.

‘He may have been a bit disconcerted by the Hypotheticals format, which can cut to the truth better than a studio interview.

‘The programme showed that the fatwa was, and remains, an act of state terrorism.’

Islam abhors terrorism. He spoke out forcefully against the 9/11 attacks and has engaged in charity initiatives in areas blighted by Islamist fundamentalism. His philanthropic work is, he says, an echo of his faith. When he became a Muslim in the 1970s, he turned his back on secular music, saying it might ‘divert me from the true path’.

However, his back catalogue has made him a rich man and he has continued to release music — he was appearing on Desert Island Discs to promote his latest album.

Born in London (as Steven Georgiou, to a Greek Cypriot father and Swedish mother), he now lives in Dubai with his wife Fauzia Mubarak Ali, whom he married in 1979. They have four daughters and one son.

As well as Princess Cheyenne —real name Louise Wightman — Islam’s previous partners include the American singer Carly Simon and the actress Patti d’Arbanville.

Yusuf Islam, who was in London this week, did not want to talk to the Mail for this article.

He did, however, instruct his lawyers, to issue a statement: ‘Mr Islam stands by what he said on Desert Island Discs. Mr Islam . . . [believes that] people should abide by the law of the land, and not become involved in vigilantism of any kind. Mr Islam fully accepts that certain of the statements he made on Mr Robertson’s programme were naive. He sought to make light of certain questions by giving flippant answers which he has long since publicly made clear he regrets.

‘Regardless of the interpretation that was put on his statements in 1989, he does not support the fatwa, which he believes goes against the principles and system of law in Islam.’

Meanwhile, after all these years, Sir Salman Rushdie is still waiting for his apology.

In a TV interview in 2010, the writer said of Islam: ‘He’s not a good guy.

‘It may be that he once sang Peace Train. There was a point when I was a college student when I had a copy of [the album] Tea For The Tillerman. But he hasn’t been Cat Stevens for a long time.’

Source: Salman Rushdie demands apology from Yusuf Islam after he ‘supported the fatwa’ against the author

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Against Literalism—’The Satanic Verses’ Fatwa at 30

2019/08/12 Leave a comment

Good commentary (was posted to Iran when published and the fatwa issued):

I have written elsewhere about the fatwa issued 30 years ago by a sinister religious cleric commanding the world’s Muslims to murder the writer and everyone involved in the publication of The Satanic Verses. But the best way to repudiate the authoritarian, constricted, literal mindset is by celebrating its opposite. And so, with as little mention as possible of the events the publication of The Satanic Verses engendered, what follows is simply an appreciative analysis of that extraordinarily epic, satirical, ironic, and multifaceted novel.

Salman Rushdie is one of the finest writers of recent times, whose work celebrates hybridity and intermingling of culture over narrow-minded puritanism.

This theme is at the heart of The Satanic Verses, as suggested by the questions posed near the beginning of the novel: “How does newness come into the world? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made?” These questions are asked as the two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, fall from the sky above the English Channel after the hijacked plane they were travelling in is torn apart by explosives. Gibreel and Saladin are the only survivors but there is a price for this miracle. They both undergo a metamorphosis; Gibreel gains a halo while Saladin sprouts horns.

The story follows these two men as they grapple with these changes and explore themselves. In his memoir Joseph Anton, Rushdie states that his inspiration for the novel was the globalising world of modern times where migration and cultural rootlessness are norms rather than exceptions. The novel quotes Daniel Defoe on the plight of the devil, cast out of paradise and doomed to travel the world “without any certain abode.” This diabolic tragedy is treated by Rushdie with empathy as well as sympathy, for his own experiences inform the character of Saladin, whose transformation into a devil reflects his inauthenticity and rootlessness, his wearing of a mask to cover up the Indian heritage he is ashamed of and which he wishes to replace with an English identity. Rushdie says in his memoir that his sympathy is with the devil, as should be the case with all great poets, according to William Blake.

The novel’s protagonists are Indian-born Muslims. Saladin is a voiceover artist and an immigrant from Bombay to London whose shame about his Indian-ness and desire to be anglicised form the backdrop to a complex interrogation of what it means to be rootless and how migrants in a globalised world can find a sense of identity. Gibreel, meanwhile, is a legend of the Bombay movie scene whose recent health crisis has led him to lose his faith and travel to London to be with the woman he loves, Alleluia Cone. Famous for portraying Hindu gods on screen, Gibreel’s newfound archangelic nature sorely tests his mind—a newly godless man condemned to act as God’s (or is that Satan’s?) right hand on earth.

But both protagonists are hybrids who contain elements of the saintly and the diabolical. They both face challenges and crises of identity. Through them, Rushdie explores what it means to lose and then find one’s identity and what the true experience is of migrants whose rootlessness and existence in a foreign culture leads to a crisis of selfhood. The intermingling of elements—culture, language, religion—is celebrated, while the concept of purity in identity and culture is repudiated as too constricting.

Saladin reconciles with the father he thought he hated, accepts his Indian-ness, and begins to live authentically, while Gibreel’s end is much sadder. Rushdie celebrates the hybrid and the multifarious over the narrow-mindedness of those who wish to keep everyone in a straitjacket. Culture, civilisation, and identity mean, for Rushdie, open-mindedness and a rooted rootlessness; spiritual and intellectual strength arise from the hybrid while puritanism leads only to individual and collective suffering.

Rushdie himself has stated that these ideas are central to the book:

Those who oppose the novel most vociferously today are of the opinion that intermingling with a different culture will inevitably weaken and ruin their own … The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure … It is a love song to our mongrel selves.

The main narrative is interspersed with chapters devoted to parallel stories. Gibreel dreams of the prophet Mahound’s difficulties proselytizing for his new religion and his eventual triumph over those who laughed at him in Jahilia (Mecca?); he is drawn into the ambiguous recollections of a dying old woman whose past involves love and murder; a sinister imam, exiled in London, uses Gibreel’s power to revenge himself upon impurity and paganism; and Gibreel’s archangelic powers are used by a prophetess named Ayesha to convince an Indian village to go on a pilgrimage by foot to Mecca—and to part the Arabian Sea which stands in the way.

We are left to wonder if Gibreel was just insane, if the novel tells the sad story of a man’s mental decline. If so, did Saladin go mad, too? In which case, Gibreel, the archangel, was undone while the devil, Saladin, emerged triumphant and whole again to live authentically. When they fell from the sky the two men were physically and mentally intertwined, their bodies wrapped around each other. The hybrid nature of the two men is explored in great depth and with great beauty throughout the novel. Interconnection is explored with reference to contrasting concepts, such as love and hate, death and life, rebirth and reinvention, while Saladin’s experiences as an immigrant yearning to be accepted is an analysis of migration, change, and identity—and all the conflicts engendered thereby.

In the end, obsession with purity and rigidity give way to reconciliation and compromise; the colonial subject is freed from a mental oppression which says he is inferior; and hybridity is shown to be superior to purity, as epitomised by the sixteenth century Hamza-nama cloths which display, in the view of Saladin’s friend and lover Zeeny Vakil, “the eclectic, hybridized nature of the Indian artistic tradition…you could see the Persian miniature fusing with Kannada and Kerala painting styles, you could see Hindu and Muslim philosophy forming their characteristically late-Mughal synthesis.”

The Satanic Verses is critical of Islam, but not very. Mahound (Muhammad?) is presented as a secular leader who is slowly corrupted as his power grows (and whose supposed access to divinity is undermined by his companion, Salman the Persian, who notes the suspicious convenience of the archangel’s revelations to the prophet). But he is angelic in other ways—a freer of slaves and a man of principle willing to spare those who submit rather than just a warlord and temporizer. The book’s title relates to the historical episode in which Muhammad stated that some pagan goddesses could be brought into his new religion—an act which was quickly repudiated so as not to dilute the faith’s monotheism, and which Muhammad put down to being confounded by the devil masquerading as the archangel Gabriel.

In my reading, “the satanic verses” evoke human frailty rather than diabolical design. For Mahound they are a compromise, a way to ingratiate himself with the Jahilians and win new converts by accepting the existence of some lesser pagan goddesses; this is a secular, material tactic rather than an exercise in theology. For Gibreel, “the satanic verses” are the rhymes an embittered Saladin pours into his ears to turn him against Alleluia. Again: ambiguity, mixture, hybridity, and interconnectedness—good, evil, love, hate, death, life, compromise, and jealousy; all very human strengths and frailties.

“The satanic verses” is a phrase which also suggests hybridity because, as mentioned, they refer to Muhammad’s brief acceptance of pagan deities. The novel celebrates diversity and the multifaceted and so this mixing of paganism with Islam’s purity should be taken as the prime example of the beauty of hybridity. Why restrict oneself to narrow monotheism when there is so much colour and delight to be found in every tradition?

Ironically, life imitated art and Rushdie himself was transformed, like Saladin, into the devil; as he recounts in Joseph Anton (itself a remarkable and beautiful book and a cogent defence of freedom and literature), he was renamed “Satan Rushdy,” and his image was paraded by mobs to be scorned.

The greatest irony, though, is that a novel about the power of culture and literature and the superiority of expansiveness and mongrelisation to the narrow and the pure should itself become a focal point in the real-life battle between those things. As Christopher Hitchens put it at the time of the fatwa: “This is an all-out confrontation between the literal and the ironic mind.” This could describe the novel itself as well as the contest it aroused.

This is not a simple matter of West versus East (Rushdie would have much to say about such a simple demarcation), but a matter of civilisation versus barbarism, wherein the artists, secularists, writers, and reformers of all colours and creeds must make a united stand against the authoritarians and narrow-minded fundamentalists of all kinds and in all places, whether they be Islamists, righteous far-leftists for whom “dissent” means “impure,” windbag religious reactionaries, or white nationalists. On the latter group, recall Rushdie’s words, quoted above, on the strength and beauty of the hybrid compared to the weaknesses and fears of those who see change and mixing as a threat.

Baal the poet, an enemy of Mahound in the novel, sums up the writer’s task: “A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.” Once more, life imitates art—who better to epitomise this ideal than Rushdie himself? Who better than a great novelist with roots in multiple cultures to act as symbol of and warrior for freedom of expression, the power of literature, and the beauty of the multifaceted against the many enemies of those ideas?

Joseph Anton shows that Rushdie’s life and art are intimately jumbled up together—his was a family which encouraged rationalist criticism of the divine Qur’an and which venerated storytelling’s power to shape individuals and undermine tyrants. The family surname was changed to Rushdie by his father in honour of Ibn Rushd, known in the west as Averroes, that ironic and rationalist philosopher of the Islamic medieval golden age who opposed religious literalism and narrow-mindedness. This is a fact of which Rushdie is proud—in his memoir he reflects that at least he was on the right side of the right war armed with the right name for the task. If there were such a thing as destiny, it seems that Salman Rushdie would have been chosen as liberty’s champion. But there is only the material universe populated with imperfect beings and Rushdie is one of them—no saint, but a dogged and humane defender of civilisation.

I said I would try not to focus on the external events surrounding Rushdie’s novel but the content and themes of the book are, in the end, inseparable from what happened after the book was published. Hybridity, irony, and interconnectedness once more, it seems—the fictional and the real intermingling and synthesising to form a powerful defence of openness and civility.

The Satanic Verses is therefore not only a work of astonishing beauty but also a foundational document in the fight for culture, openness, civilisation, and civility against those who wish to see those things stifled by narrow-minded faith-based puritanism. Salman Rushdie’s life and work remind us of the importance of this battle and the necessity of remaining staunch and unyielding in the task of defending civilisation against its enemies in whatever grotesque permutations they appear.

Source: Against Literalism—’The Satanic Verses’ Fatwa at 30

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Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth, and British Anti-Semitism

2018/10/18 Leave a comment

Speaks for itself:

A year ago, the late Philp Roth invited Salman Rushdie to give the Newark Public Library’s annual Philip Roth Lecture. Delivering the lecture in September of this year, as scheduled, Rushdie took the opportunity to eulogize Roth, to speak of Roth’s influence on his own work, and to comment on a particular conversation that made a lasting impression:

“My most vivid memory [of Roth] is of a conversation in London in the mid-1980s, at a dinner in the house in Chelsea where he was living with Claire Bloom, [whom he would later marry]. He spoke of his desire to return to America because of his growing dislike of British anti-Semitism, and the irritation caused by the accompanying British refusal to admit that there was such a thing as British anti-Semitism, and their desire to explain to Philip that he had probably made some sort of cultural misunderstanding.

I have been thinking again about what Philip perceived all those years ago, because the British Labor party is presently in the throes of a dispute about the widespread anti-Semitism within its ranks, a problem the existence of which the party leadership has appeared to minimize or even deny until quite recently, and which, even now, has not been firmly dealt with. . . .

I told [Roth] that evening about my only personal experience of anti-Semitism. One summer when I was young, before I had published anything, and when I was not even slightly fashionable, I was somehow invited to a fashionable rooftop party in London, at which I was introduced to a designer of extremely fashionable hats named Tom Gilbey, whose work, I was told, was often featured in Vogue. He was quite uninterested in meeting me, was curt to the point of discourtesy, and quickly went off in search of more fashionable party guests.

A few minutes later, however, he came back toward me at some speed, his whole body contorted into a shape designed to convey embarrassment and regret, and offered the following apology. “I’m so sorry,” he said, “you probably thought I was very rude to you just now, and actually, I probably was very rude, but you see, it’s because they told me you were Jewish.” The explanation was offered in tones which suggested that I would immediately understand and forgive. I have never wanted so much to be able to say that I was in fact Jewish. . .”

Source: Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth, and British Anti-Semitism

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25 Years Later, Norway Files Charges in Shooting of ‘Satanic Verses’ Publisher

2018/10/12 Leave a comment

About time:

William Nygaard, publisher of the Norwegian edition of Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses,” was shot three times and left for dead outside his home in a quiet suburb of Oslo on the morning of Oct. 11, 1993.

Twenty-five years later, just two days before a deadline that would have foreclosed prosecution, the Norwegian police have at last filed charges in the shooting of Mr. Nygaard, who recovered from his wounds. And the authorities stated what many people had always taken for granted: that the attack had to do with Mr. Rushdie’s book, which infuriated Muslims around the world — a theory that the police played down a generation ago.

“We have no reason to believe there is any other motive for the attempted killing than the publication of ‘The Satanic Verses,’ ” said Ida Dahl Nilssen, a spokeswoman for Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service. The shooting was about more than an attack on one man, she said, it was a violent attempt to shut down free speech.

But the charges, announced on Tuesday, remain steeped in uncertainty, leaving it unclear how close the authorities really are to holding anyone responsible for one of Norway’s most notorious unsolved crimes. Officials have refused to say publicly what evidence they have or how many people have been charged, or to disclose the suspects’ names, nationalities or current locations.

In 1989, shortly after the book’s initial publication in English, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, declared it offensive to Islam and called on Muslims to kill Mr. Rushdie and anyone involved in publication of the book. But Mr. Nygaard, then the chief of the publishing house Aschehoug, which his family controls, went ahead with publication of a Norwegian-language edition, two months after the ayatollah’s edict.

The Iranian threat, followed by protests and attacks on bookstores in other countries, was not an idle one, and Mr. Rushdie went into hiding for several years.

In 1991, Ettore Capriolo, who had translated the book into Italian, was stabbed in Milan by a man who tried — and failed — to get him to disclose Mr. Rushdie’s location. Mr. Capriolo survived, but days later, Hitoshi Igarashi, the novel’s Japanese translator, was fatally stabbed in Tokyo.

Ayatollah Khomeini died within months of declaring the death sentence. Iran’s government said in 1998 that the threat had been dropped, but religious authorities there have said it still stands, and there is a bounty on Mr. Rushdie’s head.

In the attack on Mr. Nygaard, Norwegian authorities filed charges under a rarely used article of the criminal code, protecting fundamental societal values from attack. Under Norwegian law, if they had not filed by Thursday, they would have been required to drop the case.

“As a consequence of the charges, the investigation may now go on,” Ms. Nilssen said. “We have a strong desire to solve this case.”

On Wednesday, Norwegian news organizations, citing unnamed sources, said there were at least two suspects, one from Iran and the other a former resident of Norway with ties to Lebanon.

In a statement provided by his agent, Mr. Rushdie said: “This is good news, and one can hope that this 25-year-old case will now finally advance.” He has long criticized the investigation, and in his statement, he questioned “why the names and nationalities of the indicted persons have been withheld.”

The announcement also came as a relief to Mr. Nygaard, who is retired from publishing and is the chairman of the Norwegian chapter of PEN, a worldwide association of writers that fights for freedom of expression.

Asked if he regretted publishing “The Satanic Verses,” Mr. Nygaard, now 75, replied with an emphatic “absolutely not.” He did not publish the work, he said, to be provocative, but “to build dialogue,” and if given a choice, he would do it again in the name of freedom of speech.

He shrugged off his own remarkable survival and recovery from the shooting, which included months of hospitalization, calling it a matter of mental and physical vigor.

“I used to be a very good Norwegian ski jumper,” he said. “And quite a good publisher.”

After the attack, the police focused principally on investigating personal motives, rather than wider political or religious ones, according to a 2008 documentary by Odd Isungset, an investigative journalist who also wrote a book about the case.

That documentary reawakened interest in the shooting, and the police reopened the case in 2009.

Knut Olav Amas, a former deputy culture minister who now runs a free speech advocacy group, said it was a major “scandal” that investigators did not pursue the possibility of terrorism and a religious motive.

“The Nygaard investigation itself should be investigated,” Mr. Amas said.

At a 2012 celebration of “Joseph Anton: A Memoir,” Mr. Rushdie’s book about his time living under a death threat, he described decisions like Mr. Nygaard’s to publish the book, as “one of the greatest defenses of free speech of our time.”

Source: 25 Years Later, Norway Files Charges in Shooting of ‘Satanic Verses’ Publisher

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Barbara Kay: The Jewish blindspot to the horrors of the niqab

2017/11/02 Leave a comment

Interesting thought experiment regarding the Jewish equivalent of the niqab, but with Kay’s usual lack of nuance in discussing the issues and rants about cultural Marxism:

Sir Salman Rushdie spoke at Montreal’s Jewish Public Library last week. We were two of an estimated 700-strong (mostly Jewish) audience.

Rushdie’s insightful and entertaining address on “literature and politics in the modern world” was excellent, but the evening’s most noteworthy moment arrived with the Q&A, when, inevitably, his response was solicited regarding Quebec’s new Bill 62, which bans face coverings in the realm of public services. Rushdie gracefully sidestepped any comment on the law itself, but did express a robust opinion on the niqab.

His own family, Rushdie said, ranged from atheism to full Islamic practice, but “Not even the religious members would accept wearing a veil. They would say it is an instrument of oppression.” My husband and I applauded loudly, but few others did. Rushdie added, “Muslim women in the West who see it as an expression of identity are guilty of what Karl Marx called ‘false consciousness.’ A lot of women are forced to wear the veil. To choose to wear it, in my view, assists in the oppression of their sisters in those parts of the world.”

At this point I clapped even more enthusiastically and (alone) bellowed, “Bravo!” But most of the audience continued to sit on their hands. To say I was disappointed in my fellow Jews is an understatement. Here, after all, is a man who knows Islamic fundamentalism and oppression first hand, having endured 20 years of tense vigilance following fatwas against his life for the alleged crime of insulting Islam.

The tepid reaction to Rushdie’s statements thus struck me as a rebuke both to Rushdie’s personal ordeal and to the wisdom he brings to the face-covering debate as a critical insider. It’s also proof that even someone of Rushdie’s moral authority is powerless to shift liberal Jews’ reflexive instinct to identify with a perceived underdog, whatever the actual stakes at issue. I even had the sneaking suspicion that if a niqab’d woman in the audience had risen to shake her fist at Rushdie, she would have sparked an approving ovation.

I understand why young people are loath to criticize any cultural practice by the Other. They’ve long been steeped in cultural Marxism, which encourages white guilt and forbids criticism of official victim groups, including Muslims (but not Jews). But how did so many of my pre-Marxist, classically liberal Jewish contemporaries, who were, age-wise, disproportionately represented in the audience — especially the women, feminists one and all — fall for what public intellectual Phyllis Chesler calls a “faux feminism” that is “Islamically correct”?

I had assumed that my opinion on Bill 62 — that it is a fair law that privileges socially-level communications over a misogynist tribal custom — had solid, if minority, support in my community. The Rushdie evening disabused me of that illusion. Yet, I remain bewildered that Rushdie’s words don’t ring as true to my peers as they do to me. And not just Rushdie. Many Muslims are as “triggered” by the niqab as I am, and for better reason: they came to Canada to escape what it represents in those Islamic countries where it is customary (or obligatory) to wear it. They’re eager to speak up, but most media are too busy romancing the niqab-wearers to hear them.

Here’s a thought experiment I’d put to my progressive Jewish friends: How do you feel about the “frumqa”? “Frum” means religious in Yiddish. A frumqa is the Jewish burqa, worn by a few hundred Haredi women in Jerusalem who are sometimes called the “Taliban women.” The frumqa’s creator, Bruria Keren says she wears it “to save men from themselves. A man who sees a woman’s body parts is sexually aroused … Even if he doesn’t sin physically, his impure thoughts are sin in themselves.”

I’m glad the frumqa exists for one reason: I can say I find it disturbing in itself and abusive to girls without being called Islamophobic. I can freely say that Haredi fundamentalism and the obsessive gender extremism it incubates is a blot on the Jewish halachic and cultural landscape. Please don’t speak to me of a Jewish woman’s “right” to wear such a travesty of “tzniut” (modesty in dress and behaviour). Indoctrinated women, like inebriated women, are not competent to give informed consent to practices that reduce them to sexual and reproductive “things.”

I’d wager there isn’t a single Jewish woman in that Rushdie audience who wouldn’t privately express her visceral disgust with the frumqa, and who furthermore wouldn’t turn a hair if it were banned in Israel (it can’t be: the Haredim hold too much political power there). But over the Other’s burqas they draw a politically correct veil. Forgive me if I conclude it isn’t just Muslim women in the West who are guilty of false consciousness.

Source: Barbara Kay: The Jewish blindspot to the horrors of the niqab | National Post

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