Salman Rushdie and Fatwa on Freedom of Speech

On August 12, as Rushdie was about to begin a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution, a man rushed to the stage and stabbed him repeatedly. The 75-year-old writer was severely injured but is expected to survive. But the billion dollar question remains- Will the freedom of speech survive anymore? It is high time to rethink the security procedures for the crusaders of freedom of speech. Since the 1980s, Rushdie's writing has led to death threats from Iran, which has offered a USD 3 million reward for anyone who kills him. India, under the Rajiv Gandhi-led Government, had banned the book. The Booker Prize-winning Rushdie is a Mumbai-born controversial author, who faced Islamist death threats for years after writing 'The Satanic Verses'.

In 1989, in an interview following the fatwa, Salman Rushdie who won the Booker Prize in 1981 for his second novel 'Midnight's Children' stated that in a sense he was a lapsed Muslim; though 'shaped by Muslim culture more than any other,' and a student of Islam.

In another interview the same year, he had stated, "My point of view is that of a secular human being. I do not believe in supernatural entities, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Hindu." In 1990, in the 'hope that it would reduce the threat of Muslims acting on the fatwa to kill him', he issued a statement claiming he had renewed his Muslim faith; had repudiated the attacks on Islam made by characters in his novel and that he was committed to working for better understanding of the religion across the world. Rushdie later said that he was only 'pretending'.

Rushdie called for a reform in Islam. He wanted to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, essentially a 'Muslim Reformation' to combat not only the jihadist ideologies but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists thereby throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air. Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace. For the dissident writers fleeing persecution overseas, the United States has long been a safe haven, a place where freedom of expression is highly rated and valued. So we could not at first believe that he could be stabbed in public and especially in New York. The India-born writer became the target of a Fatwa by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini in the late 1980s, over his depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in his book 'The Satanic Verses' and was forced into hiding. He ultimately emerged and moved to New York. Over time, he began making personal appearances and in the process turned into an eloquent proponent of the right to free speech. Rushdie himself said, "When I was in Syria I used to say that I'm worried about freedom of speech in Syria. Now I'm worried about that even here in America".

Over the decades, he has been this candid defender of free expression. On August 12, as Rushdie was about to begin a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution, a man rushed to the stage and stabbed him repeatedly. The 75-year-old writer was severely injured but is expected to survive. But the billion dollar question remains- Will the freedom of speech survive anymore? It is high time to rethink the security procedures for the crusaders of freedom of speech. Since the 1980s, Rushdie's writing has led to death threats from Iran, which has offered a USD 3 million reward for anyone who kills him. India, under the Rajiv Gandhi-led Government, had banned the book. The Booker Prize-winning Rushdie is a Mumbai-born controversial author, who faced Islamist death threats for years after writing 'The Satanic Verses'.

Geetanjali Shree, who recently joined the esteemed club of International Booker-winning authors, described the attack on Rushdie as an 'inexcusable and inhuman' act. "Where is humanity going? A day of such distress, such shame. We pray for the fast recovery of this votary of democracy and freedom of speech. Violence must not be allowed to become the way of dealing with difference of opinion," Shree had told PTI.

'The Satanic Verses' is the fourth novel of American-British-Indian Salman Rushdie. First published in September 1988, the book was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism and and relied on contemporary events and people to create his characters. The title refers to the 'Satanic Verses', a group of Quranic verses. The book received wide critical acclaim; and was a 1988 Booker Prize finalist losing to Peter Carey's 'Oscar and Lucinda'.

The book and its perceived blasphemy motivated Islamic extremist bombings, killings and riots and sparked a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. Fearing unrest, the Rajiv Gandhi Government had banned the importation of the book into India. In 1989, Supreme leader of Iran Ruhollah Khomeini called for Rushdie's death, resulting in several failed assassination attempts on the author ( who was granted police protection by the UK Government) and attacks on connected individuals, including the Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarshi, who was stabbed to death in 1991. Assassination attempts against Rushdie continued.

The two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, are both actors of Indian Muslim background. Farishta is a Bollywood superstar who specialises in playing Hindu deities (the character is partly based on Indian film stars Amitabh Bachchan and N. T. Rama Rao). Chamcha is an emigrant who has broken up with his Indian identity and works as a voiceover artist in England. In the beginning of the novel, both are trapped in a hijacked plane flying from India to Britain. The plane explodes over the English Channel, but the two are magically saved. In a miraculous transformation, Farishta takes on the personality of the archangel Gabriel and Chamcha takes on the personality of a devil. Chamcha is arrested and passes through an ordeal of police abuse as a suspected illegal immigrant. Farishta's transformation can partly be comprehended on a realistic level (as the symptomatic development of schizophrenia). Embedded in this story is a series of half-magic 'dream vision' narratives, ascribed to the mind of Farishta. One of the sequences is a fictionalized narration of the life of Muhammad called Mahound in the novel. The second sequence tells the story of Ayesha, an Indian peasant girl who claims to be receiving revelations from the Archangel Gabriel. She entices all her village community to embark on a foot pilgrimage to Mecca, claiming that they will be able to walk across the Arabic Sea. The pilgrimage ends in a catastrophic climax as the believers all walk into the water and disappear, amid disturbingly conflicting testimonies from observers about whether they simply drowned. A third dream sequence presents the figure of a fanatic expatriate religious leader, the 'Imam', in a late-20th-century setting (satirizing Khomeini himself).

The influential critic Harold Bloom named 'The Satanic Verses' 'Rushdie's largest aesthetic achievement'. Timothy Brennan called the work 'the most ambitious novel yet published to deal with the immigrant experience in Britain' that captures the immigrants' dream-like disorientation and their process of 'union-by-hybridization'. The book is fundamentally seen as a study in alienation. Srinivas Aravamujdan's analysis of 'The Satanic Verses' stressed the satiric nature of the work. He held that while this book and Midnight's Children appear (on the surface) to be more 'comic epic'; clearly the works are actually highly satirical. 'The Satanic Verses' continued to exhibit Rushdie's penchant for organising his work in terms of parallel stories. Journalist Christopher Hitchens staunchly defended Rushdie and urged critics to condemn the violence of the fatwa instead of blaming the novel or the author. Hitoshi Igarshi Rushdie's Japanese translator, was found by a cleaning lady, stabbed to death on 13 July 1991 on the college campus where he taught near Tokyo.

Ten days prior to Igarashi's killing, Rushdie's Italian translator Ettore Capriolo was seriously injured by an attacker in his home in Milan. In September 2012, Rushdie expressed doubt that 'The Satanic Verses' would be published today because of a climate of 'fear and nervousness'. In March 2016, the bounty for the Rushdie fatwa was raised by $600,000 (£430,000). Top Iranian media contributed this sum, adding to the existing $2.8 million already offered. In response, the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize for Literature, denounced the death sentence and called it 'a serious violation of free speech'.

By Dr. Ratan Bhattacharjee

The writer is a senior academician and tri-lingual writer. He may be reached at profratanbhattacharjee@gmail.com

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