Thirty-three years ago, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a religious decree ordering the assassination of author Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses, a work of magical realism partly inspired by the life of the Prophet Muhammad. A multi-million dollar reward was offered by the 15 Khordad Foundation, a revolutionary organization controlled by the Supreme Leader, to anyone who carried out the death sentence.
When attempts to appease the regime with an apology were rejected, Rushdie went into hiding and was forced to spend the second half of his life under threat of assassination. As part of an attempt to restore diplomatic relations with Britain in 1998, the Iranian government of Mohammad Khatami indicated that it would no longer support Rushdie’s assassination. Three years later, Khatami declared the matter “closed”.
Iran’s religious leaders, however, care far less about the demands of international diplomacy and have been remarkably frank about saying so to anyone who would listen. Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly stated that the fatwa will not – indeed cannot – be lifted even if Rushdie “repents and becomes the most pious Muslim on Earth”. Just three years ago, the Supreme Leader’s Twitter account was briefly locked after he posted the following tweet:
Although important details are yet to emerge, statements of this type almost certainly help explain why a 24-year-old man named Hadi Matar attacked Rushdie at a literary festival in Chautauqua, New York, on Friday, August 12. Matar rushed to the stage where Rushdie was sitting and stabbed the writer repeatedly in the neck and abdomen until the assailant was physically restrained by those present. A dark irony: Rushdie was reportedly waiting to deliver a lecture in which he would describe the United States as a safe haven for writers and artists in exile.
Rushdi’s attacker was arrested and charged with attempted murder, but his victim suffered serious injuries in the frenzied attack. Later that evening, Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, broke the alarming news that “Salman is likely to lose one eye; the nerves of his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.
The Satanic Verses was published in 1988. The following year it was banned in India and copies were burned during street protests in Bradford, UK. An American cultural center in Islamabad was attacked after the book was published in the United States. Khomeini’s fatwa was broadcast on Iranian radio on February 14, 1989:
We are from Allah and to Allah we shall return. I inform all brave Muslims around the world that the author of The Satanic Verses, a text written, edited and published against Islam, the Prophet of Islam and the Qur’an, along with all editors and publishers familiar with its contents, have been sentenced to death. I appeal to all valiant Muslims wherever they are in the world to kill them immediately so that no one dares to insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims from now on. And whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr, Allah willing. Meanwhile, if someone has access to the author of the book but is unable to do the execution, they should inform people, so [Rushdie] is punished for his actions.
A wave of bloodshed ensued. Rushdie’s Japanese translator was killed, his Italian translator was stabbed, and 37 people died in a fire aimed at the book’s Turkish translator. Although the level of violence and threat seemed to diminish over time, allowing Rushdie to come out of hiding and re-enter public life, his growing sense of security proved illusory. Indeed, the intervening years have taught the most troubling lesson of all—that no one marked for death can ever afford to let their guard down or return to what Rushdie called “normal life.”
Rushdie is not the only person Iran wants to terrorize. And the murderous fanaticism of its leaders remains in evidence even as it seeks to renegotiate an accord with the West over its nuclear program. US law enforcement officials recently uncovered assassination plots by operatives linked to the Iranian regime against Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, Iranian dissident journalist Masih Alinejad and Iranian-American poet (and Quillette contributor) Roya Hakakian. Writing in The New York Review of Books a year ago, Hakakian relayed the story of her 13-year-old opening the door to FBI agents, who then informed Hakakian that Iranian agents were hatching a plan to kill her.
In a timely essay on Quillette published in May, Paul Berman notes:
Roya Hakakian and Masih Alinejad are friends, as Hakakian noted in the New York Review, and the combined threats against them suggest a broader policy of violence and intimidation by the Islamic Republic and its agents in the United States.
It’s a policy aimed not just at a pair of awkwardly articulate émigrés, but at the larger circles of Iranian émigrés in America and elsewhere, whose members are bound to pause for an extra thoughtful moment before they start talking publicly about life and oppression. home in distant Iran. Politics is a display of power. It terrorizes. He manages to do this even if a plot is thwarted, or stopped, or merely hinted at.
Roya Hakakian and how to talk about what no one wants to hear
I. Roya Hakakian is an Iranian-American writer who has a distinctive ability to talk about large and terrifying events in a raspy tone that seems to downplay the horrific quality and, by apparently downplaying, ends up subtly emphasizing. It’s an artful tone. He is cunning, charming, obnoxious…
We still don’t know the nature of the relationship—if any—between the Iranian government and Rushdie’s attacker. Early reports indicated that “Matar has posted on social media in support of Iran and its Revolutionary Guards, as well as in support of Shiites [Islamist] extremism more broadly,” which may point to Iranian inspiration rather than direction. Either way, Rushdie’s assassination attempt illustrates the dedication with which bigots pursue the objects of their hatred, even those who create only imaginary works.
Rushdie understands as well as anyone that this threat is by no means unique to the Islamic Republic of Iran. It characterizes the adherents of all kinds of radical Islamic movements. In 2005, during the controversy that followed the publication by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten of 12 editorial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, Rushdie was one of 12 signatories to a defiant manifesto entitled Together Against a New Totalitarianism, the full text of which appears below:
Having overcome fascism, Nazism and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism. We, the writers, journalists and intellectuals, call for resistance against religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunities and secular values for all. Recent events triggered by the publication of drawings of Muhammad in European newspapers have revealed the need to fight for these universal values.
This struggle will not be won by arms, but on the ideological stage. It is not a clash of civilizations or an antagonism between West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle between democrats and theocrats. Like all totalitarian ideologies, Islamism is fueled by fear and frustration. Hate preachers play on these feelings to build the forces with which they can impose a world in which freedom is crushed and inequality reigns supreme.
But we say this, loud and clear: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology that kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. His victory can only lead to a world of injustice and domination: men over women, fundamentalists over the rest. To counter this, we must ensure access to universal rights for the oppressed or discriminated against.
We reject ‘cultural relativism’, which implies an acceptance that men and women of Muslim culture are deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secularism in the name of respect for certain cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit for fear of being accused of “Islamophobia,” a deplorable concept that confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatization of those who believe in it.
We defend the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on every continent, against every abuse and dogma. We call upon the democrats and independent spirits in every country to make our century an age of enlightenment and not of obscurantism.
Signed by: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Chahla Chafiq, Caroline Furest, Bernard-Henri Levy, Irshad Manji, Mehdi Mozaffari, Maryam Namazieh, Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie, Antoine Sfeir, Philippe Wahl, Ibn Waraq.
Salman Rushdie risked everything for his art. Like Jyllands-Posten editor Fleming Rose, the murdered Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and satirists, and many other brave writers, thinkers, artists and intellectuals persecuted around the world for violating ancient taboos against blasphemy, he stood up for free thought and expression, even as others have disgraced themselves by offering excuses on behalf of those who commit deadly violence in the name of religion.
Rushdie’s unfailing courage and dependable willingness to defend individual freedom have earned him the status of one of the great moral heroes of our time. “A poet’s work,” observes one of his characters in The Satanic Verses, “is to name the unnameable, to point out frauds, to take sides, to start arguments, to shape the world, and to keep it from sleeping.” Rushdie.. .
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