Afterword: The Rushdie Affair's Legacy

In the thirteen years since the publication of The Rushdie Affair, Salman Rushdie's name has become a byword for the persecution of free speech by the forces of militant Islam. Ironically, although Rushdie himself  is very much alive � writing well-received books, popping up among the literary jet-set, and even acquiring a new girlfriend � the same cannot be said of many other critics of Islam, both Muslim and not. 

In retrospect, the lasting importance of the edict by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sentencing Rushdie to death was to open the door for Islamist terror against Muslim freethinkers and non-Muslim critics of Islam - what Daniel Pipes has dubbed the �Rushdie rules.� Given how much the frequency of attacks has increased on them since 1989, it seems fair to conclude that this edict served as a catalyst. The assault on September 11, 2001, made this taboo on criticism of Islam all the more apparent and public, even as it broke it down in select ways. At the same time, there are some grounds for optimism that the killings and persecution are growing less common.

 The following essay updates The Rushdie Affair; written by Koenraad Elst, it has benefited from input and review by Daniel Pipes.

Muslim-Majority Countries

Rushdie-related Violence

Tehran has steadily upheld the Islamic correctness and permanent validity of Ayatollah Khomeini�s edict, even as it declared its lack of intention in sending out its own hit men to prosecute the death sentence. Sayyed Husayn Musavian, an Iranian envoy who downplayed the whole controversy in his talks with Western leaders in the hopes of renormalizing Euro-Iranian relations, made this point explicitly: �The fatwa was merely a statement of something that has been part of Islamic law for 1,400 years.�[1] Though some elements in the government profess no longer to back these efforts, Ayatollah Hasan Sanei�i�s Khordad Foundation still has a standing offer of $2.8 million for anyone who slays Salman Rushdie and many mullahs have pledged a month�s salary as contribution to the award.

The Iranian regime gave added credibility to its continued threat against Rushdie by executing dissidents within the country and assassinating dozens of Iranians living in exile, such as the musician Fereydun Farokhzad in Bonn[2] and the columnist Mustafa Jehan in the Christian sector of Beirut.[3] One count, by the exiled former prime minister Abol Hassan Bani Sadr, has the regime killing thirty-three exiled opponents between 1980 and 1996.[4]

Violence most directly related to Rushdie several attacks on his translators. Two of them, the Italian Ettore Capriolo and the Norwegian William Nygaard, were seriously wounded in knife assaults. (In defiance, Nygaard declared at the 1994 Book Fair in Frankfurt that the only correct reply to the terrorists was to stand firm for freedom, and that his way to do this was to translate and publish yet another blasphemer�s book, Taslima Nasrin�s Shame.)[5] More alarming yet was the lethal attack on Hitoshi Igarashi, a Japanese professor of literature and translator of The Satanic Verses, right on the campus of Tsukuba University in 1991.[6] To the indignation of the Japanese public, Japanese Muslims applauded this killing and declared that �even if the murder was not committed by a Muslim, God made sure that Igarashi got what he deserved.�[7]

But the most murderous consequence by far took place in July 1993 in the town of Sivas, Turkey, at a cultural conference commemorating Pir Sultan Abdal (ca. 1480 � 1550 [MEF1]), a poet sometimes called �Turkey�s first socialist.�[8] Participants included Aziz Nesin, the translator of The Satanic Verses into Turkish and a Marxist author in his own right who had declared that �an end should be put to the millennial tyranny of the Qur�an� and that Muslims �should not be guided by such an antiquated book.�[9] Most conference participants were Alevis, members of a Shi�i sect widely seen by Sunni Muslims as beyond the pale of Islam. To protest the meeting, a mob destroyed a statue of Abdal and demanded Nesin be handed over for summary execution. Failing this, the crowd stormed the conference hotel, set the building on fire, and prevented firefighters from extinguishing the blaze. As a result, thirty-seven conference participants died. Although Nesin himself escaped death, state attorney Nusrat Demiral accused him of behaving �provocatively,� and thereby being the prime culprit for the deadly riots.[10]

In 1996, a Pakistani Christian named Ayub Masih was accused by his Muslim neighbor of encouraging him to read The Satanic Verses. Under Pakistani law, the testimony of a single Muslim suffices in blasphemy cases, and Masih was sentenced to death on April 28, 1998. When the Court failed to order his immediate execution, he was attacked in the courthouse itself but was saved. In a subsequent Christian protest march, attacked with stones by Muslim bystanders, Bishop John Joseph shot himself in a spectacular act of desperation (some Christians allege he was murdered). In Masih�s village, all the Christians fled and their houses were occupied by Muslims.[11]

One prominent Muslim who suffered for The Satanic Verses, notably for protesting against the ban, was Mushir-ul-Hasan, pro-vice-chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, the Muslim university of Delhi. He told an interviewer: �I think the ban should be lifted. I think every person has a right to be heard and to be read.�[12] In his view, the ban �qualifies as an indefensible move,� though he took care to deny any sympathy for the book�s contents. Overnight, he became the object of a vicious campaign by most students and some professors at Jamia Millia. Though he buckled, apologizing and saying he never meant to demand the lifting of the ban, he had to stay away from his own university. The day he showed up again, he was severely beaten up and had to be hospitalized.

The result of this terror is clear: critics of Islam feel constrained to apply self-censorship or accept a life of living in fear.