Salman Rushdie's stabbing rekindles free speech debate

After the attack, writers and world leaders hailed Rushdie as a symbol of free speech. But the battle lines around his novel "The Satanic Verses" have never been clearly drawn.

Two years ago, Salman Rushdie joined cultural figures leader by signing an open letter denouncing an increasingly "intolerant" population. climate" and warning that "the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is becoming more restricted every day". It was a statement of principles that Mr Rushdie had embodied since 1989, when a fatwa by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's Supreme Leader, calling for his assassination made him a reluctant symbol of freedom of expression.

The letter, published by Harper's Magazine in June 2020 after racial justice protests swept across the United States, sparked a backlash, some denouncing it as a reactionary display of thin skin and privilege — signed, as one critic put it, by "rich fools."

The backlash appalled Mr. Rushdie, but did not surprise him. "Put it like this: the kind of people who stood up for me in bad years might not now," he told The Guardian in 2021. "The idea that being offended is criticism gained a lot of ground.”

Last Friday, after Mr Rushdie was stabbed around 10 times on stage at a literary event in western New York many have wondered if the fatwa issued over three decades ago in response to his novel "The Satanic Verses" had reached its gruesome and belated conclusion in the States. But almost as quickly, the attack became the latest flashpoint in the heated 21st century debate over freedom of speech, liberal values ​​and "cancel culture".

Speaking on BBC Newsnight On Friday, British columnist Kenan Malik suggested that while Rushdie's critics had "lost the battle" they had "won the war". Verses' continues to be published,” he said. But "the argument at the heart of their claim, that it is wrong to offend certain people, certain groups, certain religions, etc., has become much more mainstream".

"To some degree", he said, "you could say that many societies have internalized the fatwa and introduced a form of self-censorship in the way we talk about each other."

American writer David Rieff suggested on Twitter that "The Satanic Verses" would go against "sensitive readers" if submitted to editors today today. "The author looks like the words are violence, as the fatwa says," he wrote.

ImageM. Rushdie, who has become a champion of free speech, at a gathering of international writers at the United Nations, sponsored by PEN America Credit...Beowulf Sheehan