A fight over free speech

 

alman Rushdie had wondered in recent years whether the public was losing its appetite for free speech, a principle on which he staked his life when Iran sought to have him killed for his 1988 novel, “The Satanic Verses.” As Rushdie told The Guardian last year, “The kinds of people who stood up for me in the bad years might not do so now.” Two years ago Salman Rushdie joined prominent cultural figures signing an open letter decrying an increasingly “intolerant climate” and warning that the “free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.” It was a declaration of principles Mr. Rushdie had embodied since 1989, when a fatwa by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, calling for his murder, made him a reluctant symbol of free speech. The letter, published by Harper’s Magazine in June 2020 after racial justice protests swept the United States, drew a backlash, with some denouncing it as a reactionary display of thin-skinnedness and privilege — signed, as one critic put it, by “rich fools.”

 

“The novel, ‘The Satanic Verses,’ continues to be published,” he said. But “the argument at the heart of their claim, that it is wrong to give offense to certain people, certain groups, certain religions, and so on, has become much more mainstream.” “To a degree,” he said, “you could say that many societies have internalized the fatwa and introduced a form of self-censorship in the way we talk about each other.”  The American writer David Rieff suggested on Twitter that “The Satanic Verses” would run afoul of “sensitivity readers” if it were submitted to publishers today. “The author would be told that words are violence — just as the fatwa said,” he wrote. When “The Satanic Verses” was published in 1988, the battle lines over free speech were not as neat as some may remember. The novel, which fictionalized elements of the life of the Prophet Muhammad with depictions that offended many Muslims and were labeled blasphemous by some, inspired sometimes violent protests around the world, including in India, where at least a dozen people were killed in 1989 after the police fired at Muslim demonstrators in Mumbai, where Mr. Rushdie had been born into a prosperous liberal Muslim family in 1947. The British writer Roald Dahl called Mr. Rushdie “a dangerous opportunist.” The British novelist John Berger suggested Mr. Rushdie withdraw the novel, lest it unleash “a unique 20th-century holy war” that would endanger bystanders who were “innocent of either writing or reading the book.” As the fatwa (which was never officially rescinded) seemed to fade in significance, the conversation over free speech shifted, particularly in the United States. The notion that offensive speech is “violence” gained ground, as younger progressives increasingly critiqued the principle of free speech as too often providing cover for hate speech. “Free speech” became a rallying cry of conservatives, who used it as a weapon against liberals they accuse of wanting to censor opposing views. Tensions over free speech were thrown into high relief in 2015, when the writers group PEN America decided to present an award for courage to the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had continued publishing after French Muslim terrorists murdered 12 staff members in an attack on its offices.  Six writers withdrew as hosts of PEN’s annual gala over concerns about the award, on the grounds that the magazine had trafficked in racism and Islamophobia. More than 140 prominent writers subsequently signed a letter protesting the honor.  Mr. Rushdie’s reaction to the protest was blunt. “I hope nobody ever comes after them,” he told The New York Times. (On Twitter, he called the six writers who withdrew, some of whom were good friends, an obscene name and labeled them “Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character.”)  In an email, the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, one of the organizers of the Harper’s letter, said he had been impressed by the response from many writers, if struck by the “comparatively muted response” from “many of the voices who have dominated conversations around justice and oppression since the summer of 2020.”  He wrote on Twitter after the attack on Friday: “Words are not violence. Violence is violence. That distinction must never be downplayed or forgotten, even on behalf of a group we deem oppressed.”

Author Salman Rushdie stabbed onstage before lecture in New York, on ventilator

 Author Salman Rushdie — the subject of a decades-old death threat from Iranian Muslim clerics — was knifed in the neck Friday in a stunning attack as he prepared to deliver a lecture in western New York.

Rushdie, 75, was on a ventilator Friday night, his agent, Andrew Wylie said. He has a damaged liver, severed nerves in one arm and is likely to lose an eye, the agent said. Rushdie was flown to a hospital in Erie, Pa., where he underwent surgery.

Dr. Martin Haskell, one of the people one the scene who rushed to help, described the prolific and controversial author’s wounds as “serious but recoverable.”

At the scene, cops arrested 24-year-old Hadi Matar of Fairview, N.J., a town in Bergen County across the Hudson River from Manhattan.

Rushdie was set to speak as part of an event held at the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit center near Lake Erie. The institution, about 55 miles southwest of Buffalo, describes itself as “a community of artists, educators, thinkers, faith leaders and friends dedicated to exploring the best in humanity.”

Instead, the audience saw a stunning display of the worst in humanity.

Rushdie was being introduced around 11 a.m. when a man rushed the stage and then began punching and stabbing him, sending shockwaves through audience members gathered together to participate in the lecture series, titled “More than Shelter.”

Author Salman Rushdie appears at a signing for his book "Home" in London on June 6, 2017. (Grant Pollard/Grant Pollard/Invision/AP)

Matar managed to knock Rushdie off his feet and stab him at least once in the neck and once in the abdomen before he was detained by a state trooper assigned to the event, according to New York State Police. The amphitheater was quickly evacuated.

Photos taken on the scene show a small crowd of people huddled around Rushdie, some of who can be seen tending to his injuries. Blood can also be seen on the ground near Rushdie and on the chair he was sitting in just prior to the attack.

Author Salman Rushdie is tended to after he was attacked during a lecture, Friday at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, N.Y., about 75 miles south of Buffalo. (Joshua Goodman/AP)

His condition was not immediately known, but he was able to walk off the stage with some assistance, said witnesses. The person set to interview Rushdie, Henry Reese, suffered a minor head injury during the chaos.

Gov. Hochul praised the speedy action by New York State Police and all those who responded following the stabbing.

“Our thoughts are with Salman and his loved ones following this horrific event,” she said. “I have directed State Police to further assist however needed in the investigation.

Law enforcement officers detain a person outside the Chautauqua Institution, Friday in Chautauqua, N.Y. (Charles Fox/AP)

While a motive for the attack was unclear on Friday evening, the Mumbai-born writer has faced much controversy over the course of his decades-long career.

Rushdie — the author of 14 novels, four works of nonfiction and a collection of short stories — is perhaps best known for penning “The Satanic Verses.” The piece was dubbed blasphemous by many Muslims and has been banned in Iran since 1988. The following year, the nation’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.

Iran has also offered a $3 million reward to anyone able to kill Rushdie.

At age 24, Matar was not alive when “The Satanic Verses” was published. Fairview, the town where he lives, is southern Bergen County, about 3 1/2 miles south of the George Washington Bridge, roughly across the Hudson River from the Upper West Side.

Author Salman Rushdie, behind screen left, is tended to after he was attacked during a lecture, Friday, Aug. 12, 2022, at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, N.Y. (Joshua Goodman/AP)

After the issuance of the fatwa, Rushdie spent nearly a decade under British protection before slowly returning to the public eye. In 2008, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

After “The Satanic Verses” was published, more than 40 people were killed in varying riots across the world. Twelve people were killed in Mumbai.

In 1991, a man who translated the book into Japanese was stabbed to death. That same year, an Italian translator survived a knife attack. In 1993, a Norwegian publisher of the book was shot three times but survived.

In 2012, Rushdie published a memoir, “Joseph Anton,” about his life in hiding following the Iranian fatwa. The title came from the pseudonym Rushdie used for nine years.