Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is famous for his forthright statements to other world leaders. In March 1989, Mahathir wrote a letter to then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that was blunt even by his standards. Unlike a lot of his angry letters, this one wasn’t published.

Mahathir’s letter was about Salman Rushdie’s controversial book, The Satanic Verses. He wrote:

I do not think I am a Muslim fanatic. Yet I find I cannot condone the writings of Salman Rushdie in his book […] And I find the attitude of the “Western Democracies” most patronising, arrogant and insensitive.

In 2019, the UK government declassified many of its Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) files on the diplomatic upheaval over the novel. Mahathir’s letter to Thatcher is one of hundreds of unpublished diplomatic documents I have seen in visits to the UK National Archives since then.

My full analysis of this letter, and Thatcher’s response to it, has just been published in the Review of International Studies. It is part of a larger project I am working on about The Satanic Verses crisis and what it tells us about the place of religion in international relations.

Interested in understandings of religion in global order?

David T Smith has a new article in @RISjnl ‘Religion and responsibility in international relations: Thatcher, Mahathir, and The Satanic Verses’

Watch a video summary and read the article here: https://t.co/ZuIVlBEyA6 pic.twitter.com/wK0MJ0ciNV

— BISA – British International Studies Association (@MYBISA) October 31, 2024

‘The strangest and rarest crisis in history’

The Satanic Verses, published in late 1988, was met with protests throughout the Muslim world, beginning in South Asian communities in Britain. Many Muslims felt Rushdie had insulted the Prophet Muhammad for the entertainment of Western audiences.

In early 1989, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued an extraordinary fatwa (or religious edict) calling for the death of Rushdie, a British citizen living in London. This led to a diplomatic standoff that the speaker of Iran’s legislature called “the strangest and rarest crisis in history”.

Khomeini, who was seeking to strengthen Islamic hardliners in Iran, urged “all zealous Muslims” to carry out his fatwa.

No other leader of a majority Muslim country supported the death sentence, which blatantly violated Britain’s sovereignty and international law. But Mahathir and others felt Western powers should ban The Satanic Verses to maintain good relations with the Muslim world.

The British government saw no reason to ban it. Rushdie and his publishers had broken no British law, as the country’s centuries-old blasphemy laws applied only to the defamation of Christianity.

Defending Rushdie’s life was, as Thatcher put it, “a simple matter”. Her government would not tolerate an Iranian incitement to murder a British citizen on British soil.

Defending his book, however, was more complicated. The British government would not ban it, but also wanted nothing to do with it.

An unusually strong and personal letter

On March 15 1989, Thatcher and Mahathir met in London to discuss matters such as arms deals and airport privatisation. The Satanic Verses issue came up only briefly, when Thatcher thanked Mahathir for his government’s “moderate” stance on the book. She explained that while she could understand the offence the book had caused, the “great religions” could withstand such attacks.

Mahathir reassured Thatcher his government would take no action beyond banning the book. He said he had set out his personal views on the affair in a letter, which he handed to Thatcher.

When her private secretary opened the letter later that day, he found it was “cast in exceptionally strong language that was not reflected in Dr Mahathir’s demeanour at the meeting itself”, according to another archival letter.

Mahathir was having none of the argument that Muslims should behave more like Christians when it came to tolerating insults to their faith. He wrote:

It is well to remember that Islam has been around only 1,400 years. The faith and fervour of the Muslims are as strong as the faith and fanaticism of the Christians of the 15th century.

Of course, our behaviour is also influenced by the mores of the time. We are more tolerant than the 15th century Christians. We do not have inquisitions, we do not burn heretics at the stake, we do not torture those who blaspheme, we do not hound the new Muslim sects as you did the Protestants, and we do not indulge in pogroms. Our behaviour is more civilised than Christians when Christianity was 1,400 years old.

Mahathir’s letter was very unusual for a diplomatic correspondence in that it did not mention either Malaysia or Britain. The “we” of his letter referred to Muslims, while the “you” referred to the West.

And the West, for Mahathir, was a Christian world, though he believed Christianity was enfeebled and decaying within it. He did not want Islam to suffer the same fate.

The West controls the world media and denies others access to it. The power is, of course, abused. […] The Muslims are a particular target. They are made out to be cruel brutes given to all kinds of savagery.

While the West claimed to believe in freedom of expression, according to Mahathir, it did not allow Muslims to defend themselves against what they considered “scurrilous misrepresentation”. Rushdie’s book was the final straw.

Your belief in this so-called ‘freedom of expression’ for one disillusioned and misguided man is stronger than your belief in the value of good relations with 1 billion souls.

In that case, he reasoned, the West could hardly blame Muslims for defending their own principles.

“Prime Minister,” he concluded, “I am much saddened.”

A disconnect between two world views

In another archival letter, Thatcher’s private secretary noted that British officials were “rather rocked by the severity” of Mahathir’s letter.

Thatcher instructed FCO officers to draft a “reasoned response” on her behalf. David Gillmore, former high commissioner to Malaysia, warned they must try to address Mahathir’s points or the reply would sound “condescending and supercilious”.

Written in Thatcher’s voice, the letter said she was “well aware of the distress” the book had caused Mahathir and many in the Islamic world. The reply avoided creating a perception the government was responsible for it.

I must emphasise that the British Government do not in any way condone or endorse Mr Rushdie or the content of this book.

Although freedom of speech was a principle of major importance, Thatcher insisted Britain was not seeking to impose its values on the Muslim world. The issue had “nothing to do with relations between Christians and Muslims”. Rather, it was one of national sovereignty and international law.

When it came to the heart of Mahathir’s complaint, Thatcher’s response resorted to language that was polite, firm and vague:

I was especially saddened to hear you suggest that the Western-controlled media made a particular target of the Muslim world. I cannot agree that this is the case. I believe that this century has seen a growing understanding between the nations, cultures and religions of the world. We must continue to work to improve that understanding.

The British government’s view was that states in the modern age could overcome differences once caused by religion. As such, Thatcher’s response would only represent Britain, not Christendom, despite the many symbolic and even legal ways the British state was still tied to Christianity.

This was one of the reasons Thatcher and Mahathir were doomed to talk past each other. For Western leaders, political authority had superseded religious authority in the 17th century. In diplomacy today, the things that mattered were sovereign states.

The leaders of Muslim countries also viewed sovereign states as important –they were the basis of their own legitimacy. And they had to defend the state against religious radicals who wanted to remake the world along classical Islamic lines.

But for leaders like Mahathir, who grew up in a British colony, religion was still a vital force in diplomatic relations. He viewed the Western insistence on a secular world order as a continuation of colonial dominance over the Muslim world.

The legacy of The Satanic Verses

We can see from this exchange how the British government wanted to distance itself from The Satanic Verses, even as it sought to protect Rushdie.

While many fellow writers, including Muslims like Naguib Mahfouz, leapt to the defence of Rushdie and The Satanic Verses, the book had few defenders in the British government. (One exception was Rushdie’s local MP, the future Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.)

In his recent memoir, Knife, Rushdie notes that he got a far more sympathetic response when he was nearly murdered in 2022 than when the fatwa was issued in 1989.

Despite the British government’s notable lack of support for Rushdie’s book, Muslims in Britain and around the world felt the political and cultural power of the West was aligned against them.

This continues to be important for understanding controversies around derogatory images of the Prophet Muhammad in the West. They are never just about the images. They are also about a global imbalance of power that goes back to colonialism.

Mahathir and Thatcher were mutual admirers of each other – and both can claim to have been their countries’ most transformative leaders of the past 50 years. Mahathir, now 99, is still active in Malaysian politics despite recurring health issues.

Mahathir’s anger in this letter did not reflect personal animus against Thatcher. It foreshadowed his future emergence as a global advocate of Islamist causes. His modernist brand of Islamism may well outlast Khomeini’s, despite the violent legacy of Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie.

David Smith, Associate Professor in American Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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We, the undersigned, are deeply saddened and shocked by the brutal attempt to assassinate acclaimed writer Salman Rushdie, during a literary event in Chautauqua, western New York. We strongly condemn this heinous act and express our solidarity with the writer.

Salman Rushdie has been under the shadow of death threats for decades for what he once wrote. The call to kill him was, by itself, a condemnable move against freedom of expression. The fact that Rushdie was spending many years of his life in hiding, unable to experience even the simple comforts of life, yet was active in writing, reveals his passion for creativity. The present incident was intended to completely silence the writer, and to punish him for what he wrote. This despicable act, we see, as a great crisis faced by creative pursuits in recent times.

The attack on Salman Rushdie, who is a man of peace, and dealing only in words, is yet another example of the violent intolerance of dissent that is dangerously gaining momentum. We think, it is the need of the hour for writers, artists, art-lovers and readers to protest against this dastardly act and its dangerous implications.

Wishing Salman Rushdie a speedy recovery and a quick return to writing.

Statement issued by the Chinta Ravindran Foundation.

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The IMSD condemns the murderous attack on Salman Rushdie in the strongest possible terms. There cannot be any doubt that the assault on the world-renowned writer is due to the Iranian fatwa in 1989 which pronounced that Rushdie should be killed for blaspheming against the prophet of Islam. Despite the apology tendered by Rushdie for ‘hurting the sentiments of Muslims’, the fatwa against him remained in force; the bounty on his head was doubled. In Islamic theology, an apostate can be forgiven if he apologizes but the blasphemer against the prophet is not to be given any such quarter; he has to be summarily executed. That a young Muslim man, Hadi Madar, who was not even born when Satanic Verses was published, willed to execute the fatwa, only goes on to prove the extraordinary sway of such a theology.

Any such attack is designed to create a regime of fear. Translators of Satanic Verses were killed, discussions on the book were violently repressed and bookstores were forced to take the novel off their shelves. The regime of fear made sure that very few stood with Salman Rushdie, except for those Islamophobes who delighted in telling the world that this thuggery was ‘real Islam’. Thirty-three years later, we hear the same loud silence from Muslim countries and organizations. None of the prominent Indian Muslim organizations have condemned this barbarous attack on a prominent writer. It is this silence that emboldens the Islamophobes to paint the religion as a creed of violence and terror.

The recent murder of Kanhaiya Lal for another case of Blasphemy by two Muslim fanatics, is another case in point of the intolerance within sections of the Indian Muslim community. Though all major Muslim organizations condemned the murder, but did do so under the pretext of a hate-crime, but refused to acknowledge the fact that it was a murder for blasphemy. Such is the blatant hypocrisy, which only serves to weaken and further isolate the Muslim community due to it’s dual standards.

It is rather rich on the part of Muslim organizations that they only remember human rights when they are being attacked but do not extend the same rights and dignity to others, Muslims or not, who differ from them on matters of religion. This is plain hypocrisy which does not help the Muslim cause. Being a minority, Indian Muslims should be championing a rights-based discourse on the importance of free speech and dissent. It is unfortunate that despite living in a political democracy for 75 years, Muslim organizations today are demanding a national blasphemy law. Muslims do not need the Hindu right wing to argue that Islam and human rights are incompatible; they themselves have been advertising this position for long.

Satanic Verses was one of the first novels to inquire into the nature of Muslim immigration into Europe. And yet the irony is that Muslims burnt it to proclaim a politics of distinction and separateness. The IMSD firmly states that without free speech, freedom to read, write and dissent, we cannot uphold the freedoms enshrined in our constitution. And we believe that only by investing in these freedoms can we uphold the values of our republic. In this hour of grave crisis, we stand firmly with Salman Rushdie and wish him speedy recovery. We once again appeal to all Muslim organizations to rethink their position on blasphemy; a form of politics which is doing Muslims more harm than good.

Endorsed by:

1. Prof. Ram Puniyani, Author, Mumbai

2. Medha Patkar, NAPM, Mumbai

3. Sultan Shahin, Editor, New Age Islam, Delhi

4. Prof. Zeenat Shaukat Ali, Islamic Scholar, IMSD, Mumbai

5. Yogendra Yadav, Swaraj Abhiyaan, Delhi

6. Anand Patwardhan, Documentary Filmmaker

7. Dr. Sunilam, Farmer’s Leader, Indore

8. Prof. Shamshul Islam, Delhi

9. Zakia Soman, BMMA, Ahmedabad

10. Irfan Engineer, CSSS, Mumbai

11. Anjum Rajabali, IMSD, Film Scriptwriter, Mumbai

12. Sandeep Pandey, Magsaysay Award, Lucknow

13. Justice Kolse Patil (Retd), Pune

14. Ghulam Rasool Delhvi, Classical Islamic Scholar, IMSD, Delhi

15. Adv. A J Jawwad, IMSD, Chennai

16. Amir Rizvi, Designer, IMSD, Mumbai

17. Faisal Khan, Khudai Khidmatgar, Delhi

18. Bilal Khan, IMSD, Mumbai

19. Shabana Dean, IMSD, Mumbai

20. Ali Bhojani, IMSD, Mumbai

21. Sheeba Aslam Ferhi, Researcher, Delhi

22. Aziz Lokhandwala, IMSD, Mumbai

23. Salim Sabuwala, IMSD, Mumbai

24. Saleem Yusuf, IMSD, Mumbai

25. Askari Zaidi, IMSD, Mumbai

26. Masooma Ranalvi, IMSD, Mumbai

27. Muniza Khan, IMSD, Mumbai

28. Hasina Khan, Bebaak Collective, Mumbai

29. Taizoon Khorakiwala, IMSD, Mumbai

30. Akbar Sheikh, IMSD, Sangli

31. Muhammad Imran, USA

32. Sadique Basha, IMSD, Mumbai

33. Mansoor Sardar, Bhiwandi

34. Nuruddin Naik, IMSD, Mumbai

35. Kasim Saif, Chennai

36. Prof. Qamarjahan

37. Lata P. M., Researcher, Bahujan Feminist, Mumbai

38. Prof. Rooprekha Verma, Lucknow

39. Prof. Rakesh Rafique, Moradabad

40. Prof. Rajiv, Lucknow

41. Jagriti Rahi, Gandhian, Varanasi

42. Prof. Ajit Jha, Swaraj Abhiyan, Delhi

43. Geeta Sheshu, Journalist, Free Speech Collective, Mumbai

44. Thomas Matthew, Delhi

45. Adv. Arun Maji, Dalit Human Rights Defender, Kolkatta

46. Shekhar Sonalkar, Writer, Sholapur

47. Adv. Lara Jesani, IMSD, Mumbai

48. Putul, Sarvodaya, Varanasi

49. Varsha Vidya Vilas, Social Activist, Mumbai

50. Guddi S L, Social Activist, Mumbai

51. Jyoti Badekar, Social Activist, Mumbai

52. Ravi Bhilane, Ex-Editor, Journalist, Mumbai

53. Vishal Hiwale, Save Constitution Movement, Mumbai

54. Prof. Om Damani, Mumbai

55. Prof. Vasantha Raman

56. Prof. Dipak Malik

57. Prof. Cyrus Gonda

58. Yashodhan Paranjpe, IMSD, Mumbai

59. Shalini Dhawan, Designer, Mumbai

60. Neelima Sharma

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The Chautauqua Institution, southwest of Buffalo in New York State, is known for its summer lectures – and as a place where people come seeking peace and serenity. Salman Rushdie, the great writer and influential public intellectual, had spoken at the centre before.

On Friday August 12, he was invited to speak on a subject very close to his heart: the plight of writers in Ukraine and the ethical responsibility of liberal nation-states towards them. Rushdie has been an outspoken defender of writers’ freedom of expression throughout his career.

In the audience of around 2,500 at Chautauqua was Hadi Matar, 24, of New Jersey, who jumped on stage and stabbed Rushdie in the neck and the abdomen.

The fatwa and the spectre of death

It was more than 30 years ago – February 14, 1989 (Valentine’s Day) – when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, 88, the then spiritual ruler of Iran, condemned Rushdie to death via a fatwa, a legal ruling under Sharia Law. His crime was blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad in his novel The Satanic Verses, on a number of levels.

The most serious was the suggestion that Muhammad didn’t solely edit the message of Angel Gibreel (Gabriel) – that Satan himself had a hand in occasionally distorting that message. These, of course, are presented as hallucinatory recollections by the novel’s seemingly deranged character, Gibreel Farishta. But because of a common belief in the shared identity of author and narrator, the author is deemed to be responsible for a character’s words and actions. And so the author stood condemned.

Blasphemy against Muhammad is an unpardonable crime in Islam: a kind of divine sanctity surrounds the Prophet of Islam. The latter is captured in the well-known Farsi saying, Ba khuda diwana basho; ba muhammad hoshiyar (Take liberties with Allah as you wish; but be careful with Muhammad).

Since the fatwa, the spectre of death has followed Rushdie – and he knew it, even when the Iranian government ostensibly withdrew its support for the fatwa. (But without the important step of conceding that a fatwa by a qualified scholar of Islam – which Khomeini was – could be revoked.) Rushdie himself had not taken the occasional threats to his life seriously. He had lived more freely in recent years, often dispensing with security guards for protection.

Although Rushdie is now off a ventilator, his wounds remain serious. As his agent Andrew Wylie has said, he may lose an eye and perhaps even the use of an arm. He will recover, but it seems unlikely he’ll return as the raconteur of old (as I knew him during my visits to Emory University, Georgia, where for five years during 2006-2011 he was a short-term writer-in-residence, and where his archive had been installed).

Exposing fault lines between East and West

We do not know what motivated Hadi Matar to act in the manner in which he did, but his action cannot be de-linked from the 1989 fatwa, reported by Time magazine in a lead essay titled “Hunted by An Angry Faith: Salman Rushdie’s novel cracks open a fault line between East and West”.

Rushdie made it to the cover of Time on September 15, 2017, when the magazine profiled him, and praised his new novel, The Golden House. In the profile, Rushdie reflected on the effect of the fatwa and the controversy around The Satanic Verses on people’s perceptions of his writing. The humour in his books was overlooked, he said, and his later works began to acquire the “shadow of the attack” on The Satanic Verses.

The Satanic Verses was published more than 30 years ago – some years before Rushdie’s attacker, Hadi Matar, was born. But the insult to Islam felt by Rushdie’s detractors seems to have endured regardless of the decades that have passed.

The ongoing debate over Rushdie (as the 1989 Time essay on the fatwa implied) has exposed fault lines between the West and Islam that had once remained hidden. These fault lines insinuated, the argument went, a radical difference between what constitutes artistic responsibility in the West and in the East (the latter narrowly defined as the Islamic Orient and what V.S. Naipaul called the nations of Islamic “converts”).

This discourse of radical difference had already entered European humanist scholarship, as Edward Said recorded in his magisterial 1979 book, Orientalism. Many have argued Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses gave the debate a focus – and a tangible object that could be pointed to as a definitive example of the West’s antagonism towards Islam.

To most readers who value the relative autonomy of the novel as a work of art, this is a false, even misleading reading of the mediated nature of the relationship between art and history. But as Rushdie’s recent stabbing shows, the reading is still potent.

Sadly, Rushdie is overwhelmingly identified (by some) with anti-Islamic sentiments. This has distracted from his achievement as a writer of some of the finest novels written in the long 20th century – a great writer whose name is regularly put forward as a likely recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

More than a writer

Salman Rushdie, an Indian Muslim, was born into a secular Muslim household, and grew up with books and cinema. The long-held wish of his father, Ahmed Rushdie, was to reorganise the Qur’an chronologically.

Rushdie was born a few months before India gained its independence. The India he experienced before he left for prestigious English boarding school, Rugby, in 1961 was the unquestionably secular India of Nehru. That Nehruvian liberal vision, which India seems to have now lost, guided his writing and was the inspiration behind the spectacular success of his Booker prize-winning second novel, Midnight’s Children (1981) – and the critical acclaim that followed his more creative novels, namely, Shame (1983), The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995), The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) and The Enchantress of Florence (2008).

Like another writer of the global Indian diaspora, V.S. Naipaul, Rushdie had come to the West with the express purpose of becoming a novelist. The fatwa dramatically turned him into something more than a writer: in fact, into a cultural icon representing the importance of a writer’s freedom of expression.

This claim to freedom is different from the general freedom of speech enjoyed by all in liberal democracies. A writer’s freedom is of a different order. It is a freedom earned through labour and artistic excellence. This freedom is conditional: it is not available to any writer. It has to be earned, by entering the canon of world literature – though not necessarily in terms of a European definition of literariness. Rushdie’s body of work indicates that he has earned it.

But we cannot leave it at that. The Rushdie experience also presents the challenge of how to negotiate that freedom across cultures – especially with cultures governed by carefully defined moral and religious absolutes.

The violent hysteria engendered by Rushdie’s magical treatment of Muhammad in The Satanic Verses was ultimately limited to a small minority. But it is often this small minority that fails to read absolutes allegorically, as intended.

The Chautauqua incident should not have happened, but it did. It is a price that art periodically pays, especially when it is taken as an easy scapegoat for more complex historical differences.

Vijay Mishra, Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Murdoch University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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New York: Salman Rushdie was on a ventilator with a damaged liver and may lose one of his eyes after the Mumbai-born controversial author was stabbed in the neck and abdomen by a man on stage at a literary event in upstate New York.

Rushdie, who faced Islamist death threats for years after writing The Satanic Verses, was stabbed by a 24-year-old New Jersey resident identified as Hadi Matar on stage on Friday while he was being introduced at the event of the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York.

A bloodied Rushdie was airlifted from a field adjacent to the venue to a hospital in northwestern Pennsylvania where the 75-year-old writer underwent surgery.

Rushdie, who won the Booker Prize for his novel “Midnight’s Children”, was unable to speak.

Rushdie “will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged,” the writer’s agent Andrew Wylie told The New York Times.

 “The news is not good,” Wylie said.

The suspect was from Fairview, New Jersey, State Police Troop Commander Major Eugene J Staniszewski said in a Friday evening news conference.

Police are working with the FBI and local authorities to determine the motive.

Authorities are also working to obtain search warrants for several items found at the scene, including a backpack and electronic devices, Staniszewski said.

Authorities believe the suspect was alone but are investigating “to make sure that was the case,” Staniszewski added.

Rushdie was stabbed in the neck as he was on the stage at the Chautauqua Institution, a not-for-profit community on Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York State, where approximately 7,500 people are in residence on any day during a nine-week season.

Staniszewski said Rushdie was provided medical treatment by a doctor who was in the audience until emergency medical personnel arrived on the scene.

Replying to a question about Matar’s nationality, Staniszewski said, “I don’t know yet.”

Asked how he would describe Rushdie’s condition, Staniszewski said, “We are trying to get an update and it is something that we are watching closely.” 

Staniszewski said the authorities do not have any indication of a motive “at this time. But we are working with the FBI, the Sheriff’s Office and we will determine what the cause of this was and what the motive for this attack was”.

Rushdie was about to speak at the special Chautauqua Lecture Series event exploring the theme of “More than Shelter” for a “discussion on the United States as an asylum for writers and other artists in exile and as a home for freedom of creative expression”.

He was joined by Henry Reese, co-founder of the Pittsburgh non-profit City of Asylum, the largest residency programme in the world for writers living in exile under the threat of persecution.

Staniszewski said at approximately 10:47 am local time, Rushdie and Reese (73) had just arrived on stage at the Chautauqua Institution for the event. “Shortly thereafter, the suspect jumped onto the stage and attacked Rushdie, stabbing him at least once in the neck and at least once in the abdomen.”

Staniszewski said several members of the staff at the institution and audience members rushed the suspect and took him to the ground. A trooper with the New York State Police, who was at the institution, took the suspect into custody with the assistance of a Chautauqua County Sheriff’s deputy.

Reese was transported via ambulance to a local hospital, treated for facial injuries and subsequently released, authorities said.

The State Police are being assisted by the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI in the investigation. Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt will determine “appropriate charges as the investigation continues,” authorities said.

A preliminary review of Matar’s social media accounts by law enforcement showed him to be sympathetic to Shia extremism and the causes of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a law enforcement person with direct knowledge of the investigation told NBC News.

Chautauqua Institution president Michael Hill said the organisation is holding Rushdie and Reese as well as their families “close in prayer at this hour”.

“What we experienced at Chautauqua today is an incident unlike anything in our nearly 150-year history. We were founded to bring people together in community, to learn and in doing so, create solutions through action, to develop empathy and to take on intractable problems. Today, we are called to take on fear and the worst of all human traits. Hate,” Hill said.

The leadership at the Chautauqua Institution rejected past recommendations to increase security at events, two sources told CNN.

The recommendations for basic security measures, such as bag checks and metal detectors, were rejected because the leadership feared it would create a divide between speakers and the audience, and would change the culture at Chautauqua, the report said.

Counter Extremism Project (CEP) CEO Ambassador Mark Wallace said his thoughts and prayers go out to Rushdie and his family after he suffered the “senseless” attack on his life.

“Rushdie is a champion of free speech who has lived under the threat of assassination since the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa against him in 1989. Despite the continuous calls for his execution by the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, Rushdie has refused to be intimidated. His bravery and commitment to his values should be celebrated in this difficult moment.”

Courtesy: Newsclick

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Congressman and Rajya Sabha member of parliament (MP), PC Chidambaram raised the issue of the ban on Satanic Verses  imposed by the then Congress government under prime minister Rajiv Gandhi on the first day of the Times Literary festival in New Delhi, being held in November 2015. Chidambaram was, in 1989, the minister of state for home and coming from him, albeit 27 years later, marks an interesting re-think. Looking at the issue of this ban in 1994 when Bangladeshi writer, Taslima Nasreen faced similar targeting in neighbouring Bangladesh, Communalism Combati in its tabloid edition of June 1994 had carried this cover story. We bring it to our viewers to better and completely understand the issue.

 
In any secular democracy, the right to equality, the freedom to practice one’s faith and the right to life with dignity go hand in hand with the freedom of expression which includes the right to dissent. If minority rights are inconceivable except in a democracy, democracy itself is unimaginable without the freedom of expression. The freedom of expression in turn is meaningless without the right to dissent. Both as a matter of principle and from the very practical question of co-existence in multi-cultural, multi-religious societies like India, there is little to choose between the frenzy of the kar sevaks in Ayodhya and the murderous fatwas of mullahs or Ayatollahs for the head of Salman Rushdie or Taslima. No one can deny to Muslims, or any other group for that matter, the right to peaceful, non-violent protest against whatever, or whoever, offends their religious or other sensibilities. But if democracy is to survive, the call to kill Rushdie or Taslima must be unequivocally condemned.
 
“Mujh ko to sikhadi hai afran ne zandaqi
Is daur ke mulla hain kyun nang-e-mussalmani?
(The West may have taught me faithlessness, But why are the mullahs of this age a disgrace to Islam?)
— Mohammed Iqbal, renowned poet.
 
“No matter how much offence Rushdie’s book might have caused, to condemn him to death for what he wrote is intolerable, inadmissible, and has nothing to do with the tolerant Islam that I was taught.”
—Tahar ben Jalloun, a prominent Moroccan literary personality in Pour Rushdie, (For Rushdie) a compilation of 150 Muslim intellectuals’ support for Salman Rushdie.
 
It was the apprehension of inflamed passions, uncontrolled anger and mindless violence that impelled many Indian secular-democrats to support, however uncomfortably, the ban on Salman Rushdie’s book, The Satanic Verses in 1989. India, a democracy, became the first country in the world to impose the ban with implicit or explicit endorsement from even proclaimed champions of freedom. Despite this, we watched aghast as violence broke out anyway. A 17-year-old Muslim youth, misled by inflammatory slogans during a procession protesting against the book in Bombay, fell victim to police bullets.
 
We appear to be in the same sorry state today. This time the problem is closer home. The target: 31-year-old, outspoken novelist from Bangladesh, Taslima Nasreen. Nasreen was, last fortnight, forced to go into hiding after the Bangladesh police ordered her arrest for alleged blasphemy. With a fatwa of 50, 000 takes on her head announced by a local mullah and with no state protection, she is in grave danger of losing her life.
 
The first fatwa against Nasreen was announced at a rally in Sylhet last September after the publication of her novel Lajja – a story on the plight of a persecuted Hindu family in Bangladesh following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992—and her bold remarks against the oppression of women under all organised religions. Her attack was not limited to the clerics alone; holy texts, including the Koran, were also the targets of her critical scrutiny.
 
Her unorthodox views on sexual relations earned her the charge of “instituting sex and sin in society” and the label of a murtad (one hostile to religion). Allegations of blasphemy were even then hurled at her and her passport impounded by the Bangladeshi government.
 
Today, the threat to her life is far graver after an interview given to the Statesman, Calcutta, last month where she reportedly urged a revamping of all religious texts since, in her opinion, within them lies the root of women's oppression. (The author has since claimed that she had only demanded a revision in the Shariat law, not in the Koran, but the reporter who interviewed her still stands by the published version).
 
Women's organizations, students, trade unionists and some sections of the Bangladeshi academia have strongly condemned this “fundamentalist attack on an individual's freedom of expression”. Internationally, hundreds of renowned writers led by the post-war novelist, Gunter Grass, have risen to Nasreen's defence and have launched strong protests with the Bangladesh government.
 
But in New Delhi, Muslim activists of the Samajwadi Janata Party have already held angry demonstrations demanding that the author be hung. Even some Muslim liberals have gone on record asserting that the statement attributed to Nasreen in Calcutta is the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back.
 
Why? Simply because, as they see it, even if earlier writings and statements of Nasreen that conjured up visions of an unfettered play of feminist sexuality could be somehow swallowed, or ignored, the Holy Koran itself is now under attack.
 
But the question is — Even if Nasreen’s views cannot be condoned, are the violent threats to her life justified? By shifting attention from the extreme intolerance evident in the fatwa for her head to the blasphemy apparently committed by the writer, do they not endorse the view that violence is the best way to settle all differences?
 
By supporting the politics of fighting words with swords (isn't that what the Shiv Sena leader, Bal Thackeray, also believes in?), aren’t Indian Muslims, wittingly or unwittingly, contributing to the growing climate of intolerance within our multi-cultural, multi-religious milieu?
 
No democratic-minded person would deny to Muslims, or to any group for that matter, their right to peaceful, non-violent forms of protest against whatever or whoever wounds their religious or other sensibilities. But if dissent is going to be countered with fatwas for violence, if that is how the Muslim community chooses to deal with a minority within it, what moral and political message is it sending to the forces of Hindutva who have very similar views on how to deal with minorities in their midst?
 

"Sab khuda ke vakil hain lekin
Aadmi ka koi vakil nahin.”
(Everyone claims to speak for God But no one speaks for the human being.)
–John Ellia, Pakistani poet

 
Is it not obvious that a vibrant, secular, democracy is the only guarantee for the security and the protection of the identity of all Indian citizens, including Muslims? Is democracy conceivable without freedom of expression? And are not the freedom of expression and the freedom to follow one's faith totally meaningless in a democracy without the equal freedom of individuals and groups to dissent?
 
In the past decade, we have experienced frequent incidents of violent responses to the written or the spoken word: 

• Three years after a murderous attack on his life by students of the Jamia Milia university — for defending Rushdie's right to the freedom of expression – Professor Mushirul Hasan, its Pro-Vice Chancellor, cannot step into the premises. A month ago, some students have threatened again to “cut him to pieces” if he were to resume duty on the Jamia campus. He has no adequate security. Hasan, a liberal in an avowedly secular state has, in a nutshell, been held to ransom by fanatics threatening violence. *Frenzied kar sevaks in Ayodhya brutally assaulted press people, including a woman journalist obviously critical of the happenings while the Babri Masjid was being torn down. This was followed by a vicious campaign of threatening hate-mail and abusive phone calls against journalists, historians and other intellectuals in New Delhi and elsewhere, forcing one senior journalist to move to Kerala. Needless to add, from Hindutva's point of view, all pseudo-secularists' are enemies of Hinduism'.
• The prestigious Times of India group in Bombay succumbed to Shiv Sena-BJP pressure and apologised for an article on Shivaji, the Maratha ruler and the Rani of Jhansi after copies of the Illustrated Weekly of India were burnt in July 1993.
• The uncrowned king of Bombay's streets, SS chief Bal Thackeray periodically dictates his disapproval of personalities and happenings: a number of films (including Dharavi starring Shabana Azmi and Sholay, with veteran actor, A.K. Hangal) were ordered to be pulled out of theatres in the country's commercial capital last year.

For a secular-democrat, the issue of freedom of expression including the right to dissent is a basic principle. But even from an entirely pragmatic point of view, there is no real option in pluralistic societies like India. Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and Parsis not only need to learn to peacefully co-exist with each other but also with agnostics and athiests who whatever their birth, have opted for independent value-systems. If we are unable to accept varied and dissenting opinions and world-views from within our own or other communities, intolerance and violence can be the only result. And, since we do not live on isolated islands, this bigotry, fanaticism and extremism must inevitably flow across the borders of faith.
 
The practice of “majoritarianism” by the self-appointed custodians of Islam, that is, the resort to violence to settle any difference over views or issues can only contribute to the growth of majoritarian tendencies in society as a whole. Both hate ridden majoritarian politics and the violent and intolerant reactions of the members of a minority towards a dissenting voice from within are flip sides of the same coin. Both deny the principle of equal treatment for all, both reject through word and deed the principle of the right to dissent.
 
Dialogue, debate, peaceful forms of protest by aggrieved individuals or groups are the very essence of democracy, fatwas and dictats its very anti-thesis. In a democratic society such as India, any religious community can have only as much right to its freedom of faith as any another community or individual. To deny the basic principle of equality of all before law or to assert a group’s right to take the law into its own hand is to undermine the very foundation of democracy. If democracy loses ground in India, or anywhere else, who gains?
 
When intolerance of individual dissent takes an extreme and violent turn — such as threats to the life of Nasreen, Hasan, and Rushdie –Muslims not merely sacrifice abstract principles of freedom and democracy; they help the growth of majoritarian politics and thus endanger their own security along with that of other minorities and individual dissenters.
 
The right to equality for all religious and other minorities in a democracy presupposes an inherent equality between the various individuals who together constitute the community. The preparedness to accept divergent opinions, beliefs and traditions within and outside both majority and minority frameworks is the only practical way through which citizens can bring abstract principles of secularism and democracy to life and only thus ensure the flourishing of a diverse, multi-cultural, multi-religious society.
 
The socio-political tremors which the kar sevaks triggered in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, did not merely reduce the Babri Masjid to rubble. The ensuing violence claimed over 3.000 lives and property worth crores was looted or destroyed. Muslims were the major victims in this holocaust engineered by the saffron brigade. The demolition did something more. It rudely jolted the very foundations of India's secular democracy and, 18 months later, the cracks are still visible.
 
The Hindutavaadis’ hatred for what they term as ‘pseudo-secularist’ has been more than matched by the intolerent Muslim’s cry for the head of a Salman Rushdie, Mushir-ul-Hasan or Taslima Nasreen. People whom the saffron brigade calls ‘pseudo-secularist’ are those who have systematically questioned the Hindutvavaadis’ monopoly over Hinduism and resisted distortions of history aimed at promoting the exclusivist, hate ridden politics of the sangh parivar.
 
If, today, Hindutva seeks ideological hegemony over all of Indian society, Islamic extremists are similarly trying to assume the role of the thought police in Bangladesh. Both are identical as both threaten the freedom and equal rights of all those other Indians or Bangladeshis who by birth and descent are non-Hindu or non-Muslim (the minorities) respectively. Not to oppose the fatwa of the Bangladeshi mullahs is one way of supporting the growth of an identical tendency in India — Hindutva.
 
Any commitment to a genuine secular, democratic ethos (read mutual co-existence in a pluralistic society) must therefore necessarily affirm the link between the principles of the right to freedom to life with dignity and the freedom to dissent.
 
The principle of mutual coexistence based on equality and tolerance, the only guarantee for the continuance of a democratic order must, in honesty, be equally extended to the free, non-violent expression by individuals of even such thoughts and beliefs which fall outside the pale of accepted norms, customs and tradition.
 
Any denial on this freedom, whether by the majority or the minority needs to be unequivocally condemned. This may often lead to painful situations when individuals, in disagreement with popularly accepted religious or political beliefs, feel compelled to speak out against them, and thus commit ‘blasphemy’ or ‘treason’. However difficult, however hurtful the voice of dissent, peaceful, non-violent forms of protest are the only option. Otherwise, the very existence of a secular democratic order and the security of minorities (whether in India or in Bangladesh), will be in serious jeopardy.
 
Any fatwa for the killing of any individual however serious the provocation, oversteps the acceptable norms of democratic protest. That is why the hysteria and the outrage whether against Salman Rushdie, or Taslima Nasreen or Mushirul Hasan must be publicly and unequivocally condemned. If unchallenged, only intolerance and violence can grow.
 
Between the frenzy of Hindutva and the murderous fatwas of the mullahs there is, really speaking, nothing to choose. Support to Taslima Nasreen, then, is both an urgent pragmatic need and a question of an essential democratic principle.
 

• Aubrey Menon's O Rama is targeted for fundamentalist attack by Hindu chauvinist sections in India (1950s)
• The Last Temptation of Christ, a fictionalised critique of the Biblical version is the target of fury by the Christian orthodoxy, many western countries forced to ban/restrict viewing; in India too, there are protests demanding a ban. (1960s).
• Jesus Christ Superstar, another fictionalised biography of Jesus, on the stage and films is similarly targeted. (1970s).
• Shakepeare ki Ramayana, a play scripted by Iqbal Khwaja and staged in Bombay is disrupted by Vikram Savarkar of the Hindu Mahasabha, the playwright forced to touch Savarkar's feet in forgiveness; the play is never performed again. (1987).
• Mohammed, the Idiot, the title given to a short story in the Deccan Chronicle generates such rage from Muslims in Hyderabad that offices of the newspaper are attacked and set ablaze. (1987)
• Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's Riddles of Hinduism on Ram and Krishna generated violent objections from the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra which were silenced only after a massive show of strength from Dalits in support of the book. (1988)
• Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses generates worldwide furore, a price is put on Rushdie’s head; the author has been forced into a life in hiding ever since. (l989).
• Public showings of Ram Ke Naam, a documentary film by Anand Patwardhan that severely critiques the Ramjanmabhoomi movement have often been marred by violence and the filmmaker subjected to violent threats from various wings of the Hindutva brigade. (l990 onwards)
• Nikhil Wagle, the outspoken editor of the Marathi eveninger, Mahanagar has thrice been roughed up, and copies of Mahanagar burnt by Sainiks for his courageous criticism of the Sena (first in 1991).
• Professor Mushirul Hasan survives a murderous attack on his life by Jamia Milia students after he defends Rushdie's right to freedom of expression. (1992).
• Dr. Abid Raza Bedar, Director of Patna's Khuda Baksh Oriental Library faced a violent witch-hunt from Muslim students and other fundamentalists when he made bold to say that the word kafir meant someone who rejects faith; hence Hindus should not be called kafirs but mushrik, someone who has more than one God. (1992).
• The Rape of Sita, a critique of the anti-feminist perspective of the Ramayana is banned in Indonesia (1992).
• Hum Sab Ayodhya, an exhibition put together by the Sahmat group Delhi faced violent objections since among many other panels, it displayed the Dasaratha Jataka that depicts Ram and Sita as siblings. (1993).
• Activists and MLAs of the Jharkand Mukti Morcha threaten Sunil Gangopadhyay for his book, Prothom Aalo for “uncondonable derrogatory references to Goddess Kali”. (1993).
• Taslima Nasreen faces the wrath of the Bangladeshi clergy for her book Lajja and outspoken remarks against organised religion. (1993).
• Schindler's List, the award-winning film by Stephen Spielberg is banned by many Muslim countries because it “portrays Jews as a persecuted minority and encourages racism!” (1994)

Archived from Communalism Combat, June 1994

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