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Deadly Patience: What is behind the campaign to hunt down Salman Rushdie | Israel today

2022-08-20T21:12:32.485Z


The attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie reminded us of the campaign of persecution that Iran has been leading against him since the late 1980s. • Tehran was suspected of ordering the assassination of a Japanese translator and an assassination attempt in Europe.


A little after 10:45 a.m. on Friday, August 12, a suspect ran through the sleepy New York conference attendees.

He grabbed a knife, with which he stabbed the famous writer in the neck and stomach, beating him while he was on the floor.

The attacker was arrested, and 75-year-old Salman Rushdie was taken to the hospital by helicopter.

He was sedated and ventilated until recently, and is now recovering from his injuries.

In September, it will be 34 years since the publication of the novel "The Satanic Verses", and Salman Rushdie is still considered a target of incitement by fundamentalist Islamists.

In 1989, the leader of Iran at the time, Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for the murder of the writer.

Indeed, decades later, the attacker was apparently in contact with members of the Revolutionary Guards.

Salman Rushdie.

Iran got it, photo: Reuters

It has already been said that the book contains criticism of the Prophet of Islam Muhammad, but reading it reveals that it is more complex than one might think, and does not necessarily refer only to Islam.

However, Rushdie's sources of inspiration are deeply rooted in the Islamic tradition, which is probably what complicated him.

One of the plot lines in "The Satanic Verses" traces the Prophet Mahund and the conquest of the city of Jahiliya.

It is an adaptation of the conquest of Mecca by Muhammad in the seventh century.

Later, an extensive expression is given to the episode known as the "Satan's Verses".

The quarrel affair

Commentators of the Koran referred to Sura 53 in the book, which speaks of three goddesses that Muhammad's tribe worshiped before he accepted Islam: Al-Lat, Al-Uzza and Al-Manat.

According to them, Muhammad wanted to do good to the members of the Quraysh tribe, and said that one could "trust their recommendation before God."

From this it was possible to understand that they have status in the new religion.

However, later, it is said that Muhammad retracted and said that there is no standing for gods because the words were mixed up by the devil - and did not come from the angel Gabriel, the messenger of Allah.

From this "midrash" Salman Rushdie made a fortune and paid dearly for it.

In the novel he actually justifies the devil who whispered to Mahund, who according to him promotes a pluralistic and tolerant view.

At the beginning of the plot, an Indian movie star named Jibril Farishta, and the voice actor Saladin Chamcha fall from a plane hijacked by a terrorist squad.

After the plane crashes near an English beach and they survive unscathed, Jibril slowly discovers that he has supposedly become an angel (but actually a madman), and Chamcha takes on the guise of the Christian Satan.

And here, precisely the latter turns out to be the main hero, who learns to live with his otherness.

Not only as a devil, but also as an immigrant in a foreign land.

Hadi Mater, the accused in the attempted murder.

Influenced by Iran, photo: Reuters

Elsewhere in the book, a local poet named "Salman the Persian" appears.

The same poet mocks the prophet of the new religion in his poems - and hides in a brothel.

There he chooses to give the women the names of the 12 wives of the Prophet Mahund.

It seems that Rushdie came out against the persecution of freedom of expression, but the "setting" for the message he wanted to convey got him in trouble with the believers of the Islamic religion.

Ayatollah Khomeini also receives a tribute as an exiled and bearded imam, who is determined to return to his country and take control of it.

In this sense, the imam is presented as someone who strives to impose his ideology on the general by force.

Here, it seems that Rushdie has already focused his criticism specifically, and perhaps this is why Iran is at the head of the camp that pursues him.

The terror of the translators

Indeed, Tehran is suspected of leading a series of attacks and threats against the literary figures who were involved in the publication of the novel and its translation.

In addition to the fact that the novel was banned in many Muslim countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan - in the riots that developed against it in February 1989 in Mumbai, India, 12 people were killed.

It was in the same month that Khomeini's fatwa was published.

Girls with a Khomeini poster and signs for Rushdie, photo: Archive, AFP

Hitoshi Igrashi was a scholar of Arabic and Islamic literature.

He served as a professor in Japan and on his face went on the king's road.

In 1991 he was brutally murdered because he dared to translate "The Devil's Verses".

Hitoshi was stabbed in the face and his body was found in his office at Tsukuba University in Japan.

To this day, no one knows who killed him.

In 2006, the case was closed, but since then there have been allegations that it was a deliberate assassination by the Revolutionary Guards.

William Nygrad was the head of the Norwegian publishing house "Ashhog".

As part of his position, he was in charge of translating "The Satanic Verses" into Norwegian.

Four years after Khomeini's fatwa, William returned to his home in Oslo from a book fair in Germany - and was shot by a squad of assassins.

William was more fortunate than his Japanese counterpart.

His neighbors who heard his cries called for help.

His life was saved.

Rushdi with behind him the book cover of "The Satan's Verses", photo: Dan Keenan

In the same year, the Turkish writer Aziz Nisin, a critic of Islam, was also the victim of an assassination attempt after he began translating the book.

When he participated in a literary festival in the town of Sivas in Anatolia - an angry mob organized by Islamists surrounded the hotel where the event took place.

At the end of hours of siege, the mob began to set fire to the lower floors of the hotel and many of its guests escaped.

37 people were killed in the incident.

Rushdie's assassination attempt was a reminder that the heat of revenge still burns in Iran.

But it is precisely the rampant violence over the years that is the greatest reinforcement of Rushdie's central message in "The Satanic Verses": ardent faith, without doubt and tolerance, in exclusive justice, is the surest path to destruction.

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Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2022-08-20

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