From the book: Islamophobia and the threat to free speech by Robert Spencer
The campaign to compel the West to abandon the freedom of speech began in earnest on February 14, 1989, when Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued this fatwa against novelist Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses, which Khomeini believed insulted Islam and Muhammad: In the name of Him, the Highest.
There is only one God, to whom we shall all return. I inform all zealous Muslims of the world that the author of the book entitled The Satanic Verses—which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran—and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content are sentenced to death. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they may be found, so that no one else will dare to insult the Muslim sanctities. God willing, whoever is killed on this path is a martyr.
In addition, everyone who has access to the author of this book, but does not possess the power to execute him, should report him to the people so that he may be punished for his actions. May peace and the mercy of God and his blessings be with you.
Ruhollah al-Musavi al-Khomeini, 25 Bahman 1367.[12] Khomeini’s fatwa followed the banning of The Satanic Verses in India upon its publication in September 1988 and the burning of the book by Muslims in two English cities. When the U.S. edition was published in February, international protests began. On February 12, 1989, protesters stormed the American cultural center in Islamabad, Pakistan; five people were killed when police opened fire on the demonstrators.[13] The American embassy in Islamabad immediately abandoned the United States’ fundamental founding principle, assuring protesters that “the U.S. government in no way supports or associates itself with any activity that is in any way offensive or insulting to Islam or any other religion.”[14] It said nothing about the First Amendment or the freedom of speech. The next day, February 13, the day before Khomeini’s fatwa, there were anti-Rushdie riots in Srinagar, India; three people were killed and 60 wounded.[15] Rushdie was prepared at least to some degree for what might happen.
Not long before Khomeini’s fatwa was published, the novelist wrote, “A powerful tribe of clerics has taken over Islam. These are the contemporary Thought Police.”[16] On the day the fatwa was issued, Rushdie made his last public appearance for many years at a memorial service for the British writer Bruce Chatwin. Word of the death sentence spread quickly among the mourners, and travel writer Paul Theroux whispered to Rushdie, “Your turn next. I suppose we’ll be back here for you next week. Keep your head down, Salman.”[17] A state-funded Iranian charity offered $3 million to Iranians or $1 million to foreigners who murdered Rushdie.[18] The writer quickly went into hiding, his protection paid for by the British government at a cost approaching £1 million a year.[19] Soon thereafter, Rushdie offered an apology of sorts, along with a sly appeal to the Muslims calling for his head to respect the realities of a world in which people disagreed on fundamental issues of conscience: As author of The Satanic Verses, I recognize that Muslims in many parts of the world are genuinely distressed by the publication of my novel. I profoundly regret the distress that the publication had occasioned to sincere followers of Islam. Living as we do in a world of many faiths, this experience has served to remind us that we all must be conscious of the sensibilities of others.[20] Khomeini was neither mollified nor inclined to pay his respects to pluralism. In response to rumors that the death sentence would be lifted if Rushdie apologized, Khomeini’s office issued a statement: The imperialist foreign media falsely allege that the officials of the Islamic Republic have said that the sentence of death on the author of The Satanic Verses will be retracted if he repents. His Excellency, Imam Khomeini, long may he live, has said: “This is denied 100 percent. Even if Salman Rushdie repents and becomes the most pious man of all time, it is incumbent on every Muslim to employ everything he has, his life and wealth, to send him to Hell.” His Excellency the Imam added: “If a non-Muslim becomes aware of Rushdie’s whereabouts and has the ability to execute him quicker than Muslims, it is incumbent on Muslims to pay a reward or fee in return for this action.”[21] This invitation to non-Muslims to murder Rushdie was significant: Khomeini was inviting non-Muslims to share Muslim sensibilities regarding Rushdie’s alleged offense and trying to induce them to do so by the prospect of financial reward.
It would take years for this invitation to foreigners and non-Muslims to kill Rushdie to evolve into the “shaming,” as Hillary Clinton would put it, of those who dared to decline to participate in the de facto implementation of Islamic blasphemy laws. Clinton’s “peer pressure and shaming” imperative demonstrated that, in the two decades between the Rushdie fatwa and her endorsement of U.N. Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18, non-Muslims had become the principal enforcers of Sharia blasphemy laws in the West. “I realised that my only survival mechanism was my own integrity” Not so much shamed as terrified and demoralized, Rushdie kept seeking a way out. On December 24, 1990, he made his most imaginative attempt to quash the fatwa: He converted to Islam, issuing a statement saying that any character in The Satanic Verses who “casts aspersions … upon the authenticity of the holy Qur’an, or who rejects the divinity of Allah” did not have his support.[22] Muslim leaders dismissed his conversion because he did not withdraw The Satanic Verses from publication.[23]
Later Rushdie recanted, explaining, “It was deranged thinking. I was more off-balance than I ever had been, but you can’t imagine the pressure I was under. I simply thought I was making a statement of fellowship. As soon as I said it I felt as if I had ripped my own tongue out. I realised that my only survival mechanism was my own integrity. People, my friends, were angry with me, and that was the reaction I cared about.”[24]
As the jihad against free speech gathered steam, integrity would be in increasingly short supply. Jihadists never did kill Rushdie (at least not as of this writing), although they tried on several occasions. Once a Muslim blew himself up in a British hotel room with a bomb that was meant for Rushdie. Jihadists did manage to murder Hitoshi Igarashi, who had translated The Satanic Verses into Japanese. Two other translators of the book, Ettore Capriolo (Italian) and Aziz Nesin (Turkish), and its Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, were seriously injured in attacks. The attempt on Nesin’s life left 37 others dead. Many bookstores that dared to carry the book were firebombed.[25] These attacks had their intended effect: fear and silence.
The British government, while showing an admirable commitment to the freedom of speech by paying for Rushdie’s protection, told him not to say anything that might anger the Islamic jihadis who were holding British hostages. British Airways banned him from its airplanes, afraid his presence would endanger airline employees.[26] French and Israeli publishing houses dropped their plans for translations of the book.[27] Meanwhile, many hastened to demonstrate their willingness to accept Islamic blasphemy laws or, at best, their dispiriting failure to grasp what was at stake. The Catholic Church seemed more upset with the blasphemy against Islam than with the death fatwa: The Vatican’s semi-official L’Osservatore Romano harshly denounced Rushdie, and Cardinal Albert Decourtray of Lyons called The Satanic Verses an “insult to religion.”[28] U.S. President George H. W. Bush temporized, “However offensive that book may be, inciting murder and offering rewards for its perpetration are deeply offensive to the norms of civilized behavior.”[29] The Japanese government offered a stunningly weak observation: “Encouraging murder is not something to be praised.”[30] “It is our duty to form ranks behind him, and our duty to state to the world that if he is ever assassinated, it will become our obligation to stand in his place” Some were robust in their defense of the freedom of speech. In many circles Rushdie was hailed as a hero, a living martyr for the freedom of speech. Writer Christopher Hitchens noted, “We risk a great deal by ceding even an inch of ground to the book-burners and murderers.”[31] Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz denounced Khomeini’s fatwa as “intellectual terrorism”—although several years later, under pressure himself from Islamic hardliners (who ultimately stabbed and seriously injured him), he denounced Rushdie’s book as “insulting” to Islam, but he still condemned the death sentence.[32]
Novelist Norman Mailer was more bombastic, declaring his willingness to die for the freedom of speech, saying of Rushdie: It is our duty to form ranks behind him, and our duty to state to the world that if he is ever assassinated, it will become our obligation to stand in his place. If he is ever killed for a folly, we must be killed for the same folly.… For if one writer can be killed on a hit contract, and all concerned get away with it, then we may be better off being hit each of us, one by one, in future contracts, until our chiefs in the Western world may be finally aroused by the shocking spectacle of our willingness, even though we are selfish creative artists, to be nonetheless martyred in a cause.[33] Some thought Mailer’s words rang hollow. Andy Ross, whose Berkeley, California, bookstore was bombed, denounced Mailer for “spouting off right and left every time you turned on the TV. I mean, there he was probably sitting in a fancy penthouse somewhere, telling those of us who were actually out there on the front lines about how it’s our moral responsibility to sell the book and if we don’t, we are a bunch of cowards.”[34] But the fact that Mailer was willing to stand publicly with Rushdie was a good thing: Not all members of the Western intelligentsia did so, and even in 1989, some in the West thought Rushdie deserved everything he got. When asked if the Iranians were within their rights to kill Rushdie, UCLA professor Georges Sabbagh, director of the university’s Near East Studies Center, said simply, “Why not?”[35] Pop star Cat Stevens, who had recently converted to Islam and taken the name Yusuf Islam, went even farther, saying of a burning effigy of Rushdie, “I would have hoped that it’d be the real thing.”[36] He added: “I might ring somebody who might do more damage to him than he would like. I’d try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is.”[37] Natalie Merchant of the alternative rock band 10,000 Maniacs, which had had a hit with a version of Stevens’s “Peace Train” in 1987, refused to play the song after Yusuf Islam expressed his support for the death sentence on Rushdie and even had it removed from U.S. copies of the group’s album In My Tribe.[38] When I saw 10,000 Maniacs in concert in 1989, Merchant told the crowd that she knew they wanted the group to play “Peace Train” but that they were no longer going to do so, as “Cat Stevens has gone insane.” The audience applauded wildly. It may have been the high-water mark of pop culture support for the freedom of speech.
Meanwhile Kalim Siddiqui, director of the Muslim Institute in London, appearing with Yusuf Islam on a British television discussion of the Rushdie fatwa, expressed sentiments that would become increasingly common in the West. “I wouldn’t kill him,” he said of Rushdie, “but I’m sure that there are very many people in this country prepared at the moment. If they could lay their hands on Rushdie, he would be dead. As a British citizen, I have a duty, if you like, a social contract with the British state, not to break British law. We are not a pacifist religion. We don’t turn the other cheek. We hit back.”[39] Siddiqui did not explain how a book that contained material that he disliked constituted a “hit” severe enough to warrant “hit[ting] back” with violence. He took that for granted, and so did more and more people in the West in the decades following the Rushdie fatwa. Nonetheless, over the years Rushdie was laden with honors.
In June 2007, he was knighted for “service to literature.” Amid worldwide Muslim protest, British Home Secretary John Reid defended the honor—and the principle of free speech: “We have a right to express opinions and a tolerance of other people’s point of view, and we don’t apologise for that.”[40] But there were already many people in the West apologizing for exactly that.
