When attempts to appease the regime with an apology were rejected, Rushdie retreated into hiding and was forced to spend the second half of his adult life under threat of assassination. As part of an effort to restore diplomatic relations with Britain in 1998, the Iranian government of Mohammad Khatami indicated that it would no longer support Rushdie’s assassination. Three years later, Khatami declared the matter “closed”. Iran’s religious leaders, however, are far less concerned with the demands of international diplomacy, and they are telling this with great frankness to anyone who will listen. Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly stated that the fatwa will not – indeed, cannot – be lifted, even if Rushdie “repents and becomes the most pious Muslim on Earth.” Just three years ago, the Supreme Leader’s Twitter account was briefly locked after he posted the following tweet: Although significant details have yet to emerge, reports of this type almost certainly explain why a 24-year-old man named Hadi Matar attacked Rushdie at a literary festival in Chautauqua, New York, on Friday, August 12. Matar rushed to the stage where Rushdie was sitting and stabbed the author repeatedly in the neck and abdomen until the assailant was physically restrained by bystanders. A grim irony: Rushdie reportedly expected to give a lecture in which he would describe the United States as a safe haven for exiled writers and artists. Rushdie’s attacker was taken into custody and charged with attempted murder, but his victim was seriously injured during the frenzied attack. Later that evening, Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Whaley, broke the sad news that “Salman will probably lose one eye. the nerves in his hand were severed. and his liver was stabbed and destroyed.” The Satanic Verses was published in 1988. The following year, it was banned in India and copies were burned during street protests in Bradford, UK. An American Cultural Center in Islamabad was attacked after the book was published in the United States. Khomeini’s fatwa was broadcast on Iranian radio on February 14, 1989: We are from Allah and to Allah we shall return. I inform all brave Muslims of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses, a text written, edited and published against Islam, the Prophet of Islam and the Qur’an, together with all publishers and editors who know its contents, are condemned in death. I call upon all brave Muslims wherever they are in the world to kill them without delay so that no one dares to insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims hereafter. And whoever is killed for this purpose will become a martyr, Allah willing. Meanwhile, if someone has access to the author of the book but is unable to perform the execution, they should let the world know so that [Rushdie] is punished for his actions. A wave of bloodshed ensued. Rushdie’s Japanese translator was murdered, his Italian translator was stabbed, and 37 people died in a fire that targeted the book’s Turkish translator. While the level of violence and threat seemed to diminish over time, allowing Rushdie to come out of hiding and re-engage in public life, his growing sense of security proved illusory. Indeed, the intervening years have taught the most troubling lesson of all—that no one labeled death can ever afford to let his guard down or return to what Rushdie called “a normal life.” Rushdie is not the only person who sought to terrorize Iran. And the murderous fanaticism of its leaders remains in evidence, even as it tries to renegotiate a deal with the West over its nuclear program. US law enforcement officials recently revealed assassination plots by agents linked to the Iranian regime against Donald Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton, dissident Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad and Iranian-American poet (and Quillette collaborator) Roya Hakakian. Writing in The New York Review of Books a year ago, Hakakian relayed the story of her 13-year-old opening the door to FBI agents, who then informed Hakakian that Iranian agents had hatched a plan to kill her. In a timely essay on Quillette, published in May, Paul Berman observed: Roya Hakakian and Masih Alinejad are friends, as Hakakian noted in the New York Review, and the combined threats against them suggest a broader policy of violence and intimidation by the Islamic Republic and its operatives in the United States. This is a policy aimed not just at a few awkwardly worded immigrants, but at the larger circles of Iranian immigration in America and elsewhere, whose members are sure to pause for an extra reflective moment before speaking publicly about life and oppression. home in distant Iran. Politics is a show of force. It terrifies. It manages to do this even if any given plot is thwarted, or suspended, or simply updated. Roya Hakakian and How to Talk About What No One Wants to Hear I. Roya Hakakian is an American writer from Iran who has a characteristic ability to talk about big and horrible events in a more horrible tone that seems to undermine the horrible quality and, apparently underlining, ends up subtly underlining. It’s an artful tone. It’s cagey, charming, frustrating… We do not yet know the nature of the relationship—if any—between the Iranian government and Rushdie’s assailant. Early news reports that, “Matar has posted on social media in support of Iran and its Revolutionary Guards and in support of Shiites [Islamist] extremism more broadly’, which could indicate Iranian inspiration rather than direction. Either way, the attempt on Rushdie’s life illustrates the devotion with which fanatics pursue the objects of their hatred, even those who produce merely works of fiction. Rushdie understands, as everyone does, that this threat is by no means unique to the Islamic Republic of Iran. It characterizes followers of all kinds of radical Islamic movements. In 2005, during the controversy that followed the publication of 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Rushdie was one of 12 signatories to a defiant manifesto entitled “Together Against a New Totalitarianism”, the full text of which appears below: Having overcome fascism, Nazism and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism. We writers, journalists and intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunities and secular values for all. Recent events, caused by the publication of Muhammad’s designs in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This fight will not be won with guns, but in the ideological arena. We are not witnessing a clash of civilizations or a competition between West and East, but a global struggle between democrats and theocrats. Like all totalitarian ideologies, Islamism feeds on fear and frustration. The preachers of hate play on these emotions to build the forces with which they can impose a world where freedom is crushed and inequality reigns supreme. But we say this, loud and clear: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology that kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it exists. Its victory cannot but lead to a world of injustice and domination: men against women, fundamentalists against others. To address this, we must ensure access to universal rights for the oppressed or those who are discriminated against. We reject “cultural relativism” which entails accepting that men and women of Muslim culture are denied the right to equality, freedom and secularism in the name of respecting certain cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit for fear of being accused of “Islamophobia,” a vile concept that conflates criticism of Islam as a religion and stigmatization of those who believe in it. We defend the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit can be exercised on every continent, in relation to every abuse and doctrine. We appeal to democrats and independent spirits in every country that our century may be a century of enlightenment and not of darkness. Signed by: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Chahla Chafiq, Caroline Fourest, Bernard-Henri Levy, Irshad Manji, Mehdi Mozaffari, Maryam Namazie, Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie, Antoine Sfeir, Philippe Val, Ibn Warraq. Salman Rushdie has risked everything for his art. Like the editor of Jyllands-Posten Flemming Rose, the murdered cartoonists and satirists at Charlie Hebdo and many other courageous writers, thinkers, artists and intellectuals hunted around the world for violating ancient taboos against blasphemy, he has defended free thought and expression . just as others have been shamed into offering excuses on behalf of those who commit deadly violence in the name of religion. Rushdie’s steadfast courage and reliable willingness to defend individual liberty have secured his status as one of the great moral heroes of our time. “A poet’s work,” observes one of his characters in The Satanic Verses, “is to name the nameless, to show frauds, to take sides, to start arguments, to shape the world and keep it from sleeping.” Rushdie has…
