Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses and The Case of Free Speech
By
New Age Islam Staff Writer
22
September 2023
Both The
Islamists and The Defenders of Free Speech Learn a Lesson from The Rushdie
Affair
Main
Points:
1. Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a
fatwa of death against Rushdie.
2. Rushdie remained in hiding till
2002.
3. His novel Satanic Verses was burned
in Bradford by Muslims.
4. He was attacked by a Lebanese origin
youth in 2022.
5. He lost an eye in the attack.
------
Salman
Rushdie/ File Photo
------
Salman
Rushdie's novel the Satanic Verses had come out in 1988 and sparked worldwide
protests by the Muslims as the novel had hurt the religious sentiments of the
Muslims. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa of death
against him and a bounty on his head. The copies of the novel were burned in
Bradford in January 1989. The Indian government led by Rajiv Gandhi banned the
novel in India after the Muslim intellectuals represented by Md Shahabuddin
demanded a ban on the book to prevent any violent backlash in the country. Dr
Rafique Zakaria had also supported the ban and had written a rejoinder against
the novel. However, the fatwa and the ban made the book even more popular and
it became a bestseller.
The fatwa
compelled Rushdie to go in hiding and he remained in hiding till 2002. During
the period, he had to change his residence constantly. This affected his
personal life. In August 2022, a Lebanese origin American Muslim Hadi Matar
attacked him on stage during a programme in New York. He sustained some
injuries but recovered soon though he lost his right eye. Still, he did not
show any signs of repentance or remorse. Instead he defended his right to free
speech.
Khomeini's
fatwa, however, was the beginning of the emergence of an aggressive Islamism.
Some critics are of the view that the fatwa led the Muslims on the road to
jihad. What the West called freedom of speech was to them the means of
blasphemy. The Islamists argued that freedom of speech as all other freedoms
was not absolute and it needed to be monitored by self-censorship while the
defenders of the freedom of speech argued that it was absolute and needed no
censorship. On the contrary, the state must protect those expressing their
views. The government of Sweden presents this argument while allowing Quran
burning and providing protection to those burning the Quran. The burning of the
Quran by Muslims in Bradford did not stop blasphemy against Islam and Quran but
it only intensified and became a regular affair. Earlier, Jyllands Posten
published cartoons that mocked the prophet of Islam. Next Charlie Hebdo
published cartoons. Some films were also made showing Islam and its prophet in
bad light. Each time the Muslims protested and each time they were labelled as
fundamentalists not understanding the value of freedom of speech. In India too,
blasphemy against Islam and its prophet was telecast in the mainstream media.
Therefore, the fatwa of death against Salman Rushdie did not work as a
deterrent to those criticising Islam. In the era of social media, Muslims are
more helpless in the face of what they call blasphemy. In this scenario,
Muslims need to learn a lesson and change their religious behaviour. They should
learn to behave as a mature community and should not react violently at every
instance of blasphemy. Even during the life of the prophet, his opponents used
to make insulting remarks against him. He simply ignored them. Indian thinker
and reformer did not issue a fatwa against the author of book against the
prophet but wrote a book to counter his arguments.
The author
also warns those defending absolute freedom of speech against the misuse of the
social media which has
become a
repository of hate speech. Now it is easier to make hate speeches on the social
media. So, every expression of hate and malice towards anybody cannot be
defended as an act of free speech.
Today, the
social media has got a wide reach and the main medium of expression. It impacts
minds and thought process of its users. Social media groups are active and are
used for dissemination of knowledge and information. Most of the time it is
unmonitored and is used for propaganda against groups and communities. These
groups spread hatred and sometimes orchestrate violence. Therefore, such
propaganda or hate material cannot be allowed under freedom of speech.
In fact,
the notion of freedom of speech in the West and in the Islamic world differs.
The Muslims respect and revere their religious symbols and sacred
personalities. Their religion also enjoins on them not to speak ill of the
sacred personalities or deities of other religious communities. The Muslims,
therefore, have never published blasphemous cartoons of the saints and prophets
of other religions nor any Muslim writer has written any book denigrating any
sacred personality of other religions. Maqbool Fida Hussain is an exception.
The Muslim community did not defend his alleged sketches as right or the Muslim
media did not support him. This is what they expect from the western world.
However, the violent attacks or fatwas of death against those showing disrespect
to Islam cannot be justified as the Quran does not support it. It asks Muslims
to demonstrate restraint and ignore such content. The western world too should
review their concept of freedom of speech in order to ensure a peaceful
co-existence in a globalised community.
-----
By
Amir Ali
21.09.23
This year
marks 35 years since the publication of Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel,
The Satanic Verses. In October 1988, India became the first country to ban the
book when the Rajiv Gandhi government was petitioned by the Muslim
parliamentarian, Syed Shahabuddin. The Rushdie affair stands out in public
memory because of the public burning of the book in the northern England town
of Bradford in January 1989. On February 14, 1989, the Iranian spiritual
leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued the infamous fatwa calling for Rushdie’s
death. This made the Rushdie affair into an international and diplomatic event.
It also resulted in the word, fatwa, being included in the English lexicon. The
word has since mostly been understood as a binding legal diktat, when in
classical Islamic jurisprudence it may merely mean a non-binding legal opinion.
The Rushdie
affair never seems to go away. In August 2022, Salman Rushdie was injured in a
stabbing incident by the Lebanese-origin Hadi Matar in New York state,
resulting in Rushdie losing vision in one eye. Rushdie himself has, over the
years, become a figure associated with a valiant and principled defence of free
speech. He has refused to be cowed down by those seeking to silence him.
Despite the
defence of free speech mounted by Rushdie and his peers, the principle is even
more precariously positioned today than it was three and a half decades ago
when the Rushdie affair first broke out. This may suggest that grandstanding
defences of free speech have had the opposite effect. Ironically, even as the
public burning of The Satanic Verses was denounced in the Western media as
medieval and reminiscent of the Nazi era, there have been a spate of public
burnings of the Quran in Europe recently. The problem of Islamic fundamentalism
became further entrenched in the Western political imagination as the Rushdie
affair was followed by the US-led war on terror.
Among the
many books written on the controversy was Kenan Malik’s From Fatwa to Jihad.
Malik is otherwise a balanced and sensible political commentator. But the title
of his book suggests that it is only a small step from fatwa to jihad to
Islamic terrorism and, beyond, to a sharia-compliant and enforcing State. The
reinforcement of an exclusive and uncritical association of Islam with
terrorism seems then to be a fall-out of the Rushdie affair. This unfortunate
association has been amplified by other influential members of the British
literary establishment through their writings, such as Fay Weldon, V.S. Naipaul
and Martin Amis, and, at times, by their defence of Rushdie.
The Rushdie
affair has become extremely important in terms of its political and
philosophical implications for societies of the late 20th and early 21st
centuries as they contend with fundamentalism, terrorism, Islamophobia and free
speech. A historical parallel can be drawn with the Dreyfus affair of France in
the late 19th century in terms of its implications and the anti-Semitism that
it gave rise to in France and other parts of Europe.
There are
lessons to be learnt from the Rushdie affair. One big lesson for the Muslim
side is to prioritise free speech, the lack of which must be acknowledged as a
pressing problem. For the West, the Rushdie affair offers a lesson in how not
to defend free speech. Free speech cannot be defended by merely asserting its
significance ad infinitum. Free speech requires enabling conditions, such as
ensuring education remains a public good, a press free from the malign
influence of media barons, and prevention of the internet and the social media
from becoming commercialised repositories of hate speech in the guise of free
speech.
Remarkably,
the more vociferous voices have been in the West in making the case for free
speech, quite often against Islamists, the more the principle has been
undermined. The clue to this curious puzzle of wasted efforts in the cause of
free speech could lie in the evisceration of every single one of the enabling
conditions just mentioned.
-----
Amir Ali
teaches at the Centre for Political Science, JNU
Source: The Rushdie Affair
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-tolerance/salman-rushdie-satanic-verses-free-speech/d/130733
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism