Salman Rushdie was stabbed by someone who was not even born when the Satanic Verses was published. I look at the fatwa, and the role of Governments in normalizing hate, for the FPJ
Last week 75-year-old British Indian author Salman Rushdie was stabbed by 24-year-old Hadi Matar, over 10 times. Since 1988, when he published the Satanic Verses, Rushdie has been living under the Damocles sword of a fatwa, that called for his death. The Satanic Verses, when it was published caused a stir in the Muslim world. Many believed Salman Rushdie – a self-proclaimed atheist – had committed blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed. As the calls for action grew stronger, the then Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, put a bounty on his head. And Rushdie’s life changed forever.
In the years that passed since the Ayatollah’s death sentence, much in the world has changed. For starters, the Ayatollah is dead, and his successors didn’t seem overly enthusiastic in pursuing a cause celebre. The clamour for Rushdie’s head on a platter subsided. But he was still a lightning rod for not just fundamentalists, but also others (not just Muslims) who were offended by his stand on the absolute freedom of speech. He also faced accusations of Islamophobia, as he began attacking the faith followed by millions, based on the actions of the few who would commit violence in the name of Islam. But, his response to it, and that he deliberately insulted Islam with the Satanic Verses was in typical Rushdie style “The book took more than four years to write. Afterward, when people tried to reduce it to an ‘insult’ he wanted to reply, I can insult people a lot faster than that” (from Joseph Anton, his book on his life in the aftermath of the death sentence” (you can read my review of Joseph Anton here. )
Hadi Matar, the man who stabbed Rushdie, was not someone brought up in Iran, or Afghanistan, or even Pakistan – nations accused of fostering terror from the womb to the grave. He was born and brought up in the West – with liberal values, and freedom of choice. Born and brought up in the United States, of Lebanese descent, Hadi Matar somehow self-radicalized – carried out a sentence passed, when he was not even born. While western nations shudder in the aftermath of this violence, there was jubilation on the streets of nations like Iran. Al Jazeera has one of the most ironic quotes, from a delivery person, “I don’t know Salman Rushdie but I am happy to hear that he was attacked since he insulted Islam,”
In the last 40 odd years, the tendency of governments to bow down to religious ‘puritans’ has been excessive. And you see this especially in Western countries, and their encouragement of far-right Islam, as well as far right ideologies from other faiths, in the name of diversity and inclusiveness. As nations normalised fundamentalism and made the fundamentalists the spokespeople for the community at large. The perceived hurts, insecurities, and version of the faith – as interpreted by fundamentalists, became the de facto face of the faith.
And, here in lies a question that perplexes most liberal democracies. How far do you allow people’s faith and injunctions around the faith to determine what large swathes of the population – who many or not be invested in the faith or the injunctions – are allowed to do, or not? Are entire swathes of history, theology, sociology, and evolution of societies going to be out of bounds, because some Mullah sitting in the caves of Afghanistan is going to issue a death sentence – and discussing the repercussions of this gets labelled Islamophobia?
The Islamic injunction against depicting the Prophet, is applicable to those who follow the faith. Why should it apply to others? But it really is unfair to target Islamists alone. In recent years, fundamentalists of other groups have begun imposing their view on those who may or may not believe in those views. For example, should the fundamentalist Christian obsession with the womb and its control – leading to bans on abortion – apply to those who aren’t Christian. Or who don’t believe that abortion is a sin. Or even the belief of some Hindus on the cow being sacred, should it apply to others who do not hold that belief? Are the religious rights of highly motivated groups of people, greater than the rights of individuals to exercise very simple freedoms, without threat to their life or limb.
In Shalimar the Clown, Rushdie makes a plea for freedoms, which should be the mantra for each of us who believe in it. “’Freedom is not a tea party… Freedom is a war.’ He explained this in a speech in Delhi “You keep the freedoms that you fight for; you lose the freedoms that you neglect. Freedom is something that somebody’s always trying to take away from you. And if you don’t defend it, you will lose it.” That starts with defending freedom of choice, and speech. We cannot call ourselves free, if we live in fear of offending the easily offended. On the 75th anniversary of Indian Independence, we need to renew the fight for own freedoms, from those who would curtail it. There is no greater tribute we can give to those who laid down their liberty, and lives to ensure we had the freedoms to be.