The assassination attempt of Salman Rushdie in New York is a painful reminder of the bloody contrasts between fundamentalist Islam and Western culture. It's hard to think of members of another religion who would persecute a spiritual man, a writer, because of a book he published, because that's what a religious leader who became the head of state ordered.
It should be explained to the young readers that there was once Ayatollah Khomeini, who led the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, and a decade later he published a Muslim ruling that every Muslim must kill Salman Rushdie, because of his book "The Satanic Verses".
From the beginning the leaders of Western culture did not close ranks around Rushdie.
Two of the most prominent critics who criticized him, not to mention condemned him, were then-US President Jimmy Carter and spy writer John Le Carré. Both condemned Khomeini's sentence, but Carter wanted us to remember the "millions of Muslims whose sacred beliefs have been violated." Cara regretted saying similar things a few years later. Roald Dahl also refused to support Rushdie. There seems to be something in the opinions of people like them that binds them to divisive political difficulties.
Lived for years in the shadow of the threat.
Salman Rushdie, photo: Dan Keenan
Not by chance the writers J.
Kay.
Rowling, Stephen King and Ian McEwan were the first to condemn the attack on Rushdie.
So did the Pakistani writer Hanif Qureshi, who also had the courage to condemn the murder fatwa, when it was issued 33 years ago.
It was not simple.
The Muslim student associations in Europe supported the sentence at the time.
It turns out that it is precisely Muslim students in the institutions of higher education in the West who connect to the fundamentalist values of Islam, thus expressing their abhorrence towards Western culture.
Gagging is acceptable
It will also be written how the absorption of millions of Muslims in Europe and the USA changed the ethos of ideological currents in the West. There were quite a few points of contact between radical Islam and the ideology of the post-colonialist left. Today, keeping one's mouth shut is an accepted, even standard, mindset in universities and the media.
A tweet by Khamenei, supporting Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie, from three years ago, photo: from Twitter
No wonder that among Rushdie's staunch defenders were writers Gunter Grass, Martin Amis, Saul Bellow, Nadine Gordimer and Christopher Hitchens.
Around the world, translators and publishers who decided to publish the "Devil's Verses" took on a great risk. The Japanese translator was murdered in July 1991, the Italian translator was stabbed and seriously injured, and the Norwegian publisher was also shot and survived.
The biggest mistake of his life
Rushdie himself tried the path of appeasement towards Islam, so that they would release him from the threat of the fatwa.
He issued a clarification in which he expressed understanding towards the feelings of the Muslims, and some will say that it was an apology, but the Iranians made it clear that the apology is not accepted - and the sentence remains the same.
A few years later, Rushdie said that this attempt at reconciliation was the biggest mistake of his life.
In fact, what was issued against him is not a sentence - it is a fatwa, which most fundamentally expresses the terrorist nature of the Ayatollahs' regime in Tehran, the one that the current American administration is courting with tireless vigor and devotion.
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