what theFreedom of speech is increasingly restricted In countries like Spain (let’s leave the demonstration for another day), little merit is worth to the rulers, and even less so to their partners. Between Salman Rushdie and Pablo Hasél, same principle, difference of degree. The goal of centuries of culture struggle against intolerance, initiated by Erasmus, it wasn’t exactly reaching today’s situation, where if your tongue crosses the limits set by the established power, you’ll be killed. The reality of today’s world goes by cultures, by attitudes, by religions. Here it is backwards, although the measures of the Pope Francisco, which make it difficult for the extreme right to take refuge in Catholicism. In Islam it is stable, resistance against the advances of freedom and equality. The difference: in the name of Christianity, evil is not inflicted; to safeguard Islamism it is necessary to cause as much as is convenient.
Whether due to an understandable convenience at the time or due to a real change of conviction, Rushdie has gone from being a Muslim supporter of the autonomy of the individual conscience in the nineties, when execution was perhaps imminent, to hardline atheist. Beliefs, each one seasons them as he can. Another thing is the facts. Rushdie has been brave, it has been played and now it is a symbol of a fight that we have not won, far from it. That of freedom against fear. Let’s stay as a legacy ‘urbi et orbi’ with its most heartbreaking and forceful affirmation. That they would not award him the Nobel for let’s say non-literary reasons. Very brave were the academics of the Swedish kingdom to grant it, well sheltered behind an ideology, to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. And very under cover they were to rmeet Orhan Pamuk. Now, not Rushdie. Although perhaps Rushdie does not give too much thought to the anti-communist Russian, he presents literary merits light years away from the Turk. The reason for such ignominy? Rushdie’s translators in Japanese and Italian, one killed and one seriously injured. Anyone takes risks like him!