A more than thirty-year-old fear became reality on Friday. 75-year-old British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie was stabbed at an event in Chautauqua, New York. There he was about to give a lecture on the United States as a refuge for writing exiles when a man stormed onto the stage and attacked the author. The 24-year-old suspect appears to have acted alone for the time being. He is said to have glorified the Iranian regime on social media. Rushdie, who was on a ventilator until Sunday, is said to be seriously injured but approachable, according to his literary agent.
The attack took place precisely in the country where Rushdie, an American citizen since 2016, has felt increasingly free in recent years. Since 1988, Rushdie had to fear for his safety when, after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses (The Satanic Verses) was threatened by radical Muslims. They regarded passages containing a satirical treatise on the prophet Mohammed as blasphemous. On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Khomeiny, then Iran’s Supreme Leader, issued a fatwa, a religious decree urging Muslims worldwide to kill Rushdie.
The fatwa marked the dramatic low point in what has come to be known as the Rushdie affair. There were fierce protests in the Islamic world, but also in Western Europe. In Bradford, England, where it all began, fundamentalists burned books. During demonstrations in the streets of The Hague and Rotterdam, angry Muslims wished Rushdie dead, in the latter city a doll was also burned to represent the writer. Bookstores sold The Satanic Verses under the counter.
Even after Khomeiny’s death in June 1989, the threat remained undiminished. In 1991 the Japanese and Italian translators were stabbed respectively, the former fatally, the latter seriously injured. In 1993, the Norwegian publisher narrowly survived a shooting.
Salman Rushdie then lived for years in forced isolation and with permanent security. He could never get used to that. “Politicians may find something like that glamorous, I don’t,” he said in 1999 at a performance in New York. “I am a writer. I want to go out, hang out in bars, hear the noise of the world.”
Khomeiny’s death sentence deprived him of his freedom of movement, but not his free spirit. Unwillingly, Rushdie became a symbol of free speech. Uncompromisingly, Rushdie continued to write and continues to champion the freedom of expression. The literary world could not wish for a better ambassador. US President Joe Biden, in a statement Saturday, summed up the literary prowess of Rushdie, a writer who “with his insight into humanity, with his unparalleled sense of storytelling, with his refusal to be intimidated or silenced. , for essential, universal ideals [staat]. Truth. Courage. Resilience. The ability to share ideas without fear.”
“What the fanatic hates are the things that make life enjoyable,” Rushdie told in 2015. NRC right after the attacks in Paris. Rushdie’s assassination attempt is an attack on free speech. There is no better counter-attack than to continue to enjoy his oeuvre.