Adam Zivo: Praise for Salman Rushdie hollow in our censorship-mad society

Article content

On Friday, renowned author Salman Rushdie was repeatedly stabbed by a lone assailant while he was about to give a lecture in New York. Rushdie has been a beacon of free expression for decades, but, while many have expressed outrage at his assault, too many have abandoned the values he represents.

Rushdie gained global notoriety with the 1988 publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, which many muslims interpreted as blasphemous. The following year, Iran’s then-supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwah ordering the author’s execution.

Rushdie subsequently went into hiding for a decade under British police protection, emerging only when Iran agreed to neither aid nor hinder assassination attempts against him. However, the fatwah was never truly rescinded and a multi-million dollar bounty remains on his head. Meanwhile, several translators and publishers associated with the book were threatened, one was stabbed to death.

The assault on Rushdie was 33 years in the making, and though he may lose an eye, he thankfully survived and is recovering from his injuries. Though no motive has been publicly confirmed, Hadi Matar, the man charged with attempted murder in the attack, changed after a visit to the Middle East in 2018, his mother told the Daily Mail. Several photos of Iranian political leaders were on Matar’s now deleted Facebook page.

Iranian media is, of course, openly celebrating Rushdie’s attack.

But, while world leaders from across the west have expressed support for Rushdie, praising his work and courage, what does this praise mean if the values that Rushdie champions are fading?

In the west, some circles increasingly believe that words are violence and ought to be policed — that curtailing free expression is justifiable to protect from offence. But equating words or ideas to violence, no matter how offensive they are, is intellectually chilling and makes a mockery of actual violence, such as Rushdie’s stabbing.

This group has always existed to some extent — for example, during the initial scandal over Rushdie’s book thirty years ago, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter shamefully published an op-ed condemning the book as an “insult” to Islam. Other public figures, such as British author John le Carré, argued that Rushdie in some sense deserved the death threats against him.

Yet at the time most of the literary world had enough integrity to defend the intellectual freedom of transgressive authors — influential leftist author and philosopher Susan Sontag led this charge, even guilting other authors into publicly supporting Rushdie.

Two decades later, the intellectual landscape had decisively changed. In 2015, two jihadist brothers forced themselves into the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical newspaper known for its provocative content (which included caricatures of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad). The brothers slaughtered 12 staffers and injured 11 more.

Millions of regular French citizens rallied in support of the victims, and, later that year, the PEN American Centre presented the newspaper with a prestigious freedom of expression award.

But the western literati, and the political left more broadly, often apologized for the attack, with 242 writers signing a letter condemning the PEN award. The letter cursorily acknowledged that slaughtering writers is bad, and even recognized that Charlie Hebdo genuinely attacked all organized religion equally, but argued that the newspaper should not be supported because Muslims are a marginalized group and criticism of Islam could cause them harm.

The letter was effectively arguing that freedom of expression should be curtailed if some people believe that said expression has vague connections to possible social harms. However, to set boundaries on freedom of expression on such hazy grounds is to hollow that freedom of any meaning — the letter signalled nothing less than a repudiation of free expression by leading writers from across the world.

Rushdie publicly commented on the shameful response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre the following month. “We are living in the darkest time I have ever known.”

“If the attacks against Satanic Verses had taken place today, these people would not have defended me, and would have used the same arguments against me, accusing me of insulting an ethnic and cultural minority.”

In the ensuing seven years, the sanctity of free expression has only deteriorated — and this has been a problem for both sides of the political spectrum.

The political left grows increasingly censorious in its attempts to coddle marginalized groups. In Canada, libraries have been consistently punished for defending free expression and refusing to deplatform authors some consider transphobic. In 2020, student Jonathan Bradley was subject to a campus witch hunt for tweeting that Catholicism considers LGBTQ people sinful (I disagree with Bradley’s views, but also think they’re a legitimate, and protected, statement of religious belief — in 2021, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario agreed).

In a similar spirit, progressives have argued that Big Tech should not be compelled to protect free expression, and that social media platforms should vigorously police speech to mitigate offence and harm — in effect, that expression on today’s most important public forums should be constrained by unaccountable corporate self-regulation.

In a democratic society, people ought to be able to submit thoughts into the marketplace of ideas and trust others to decide whether said thoughts are persuasive — this trend of paternalistically denying people access to ideas is troubling.

Though attacks on free expression are currently associated with the political left, conservatives have become more censorious in their own ways.

For several years, conservatives have been protesting against ideological content in classrooms (most notably: critical race theory). This is good — education should be about learning, not political indoctrination. But conservatives have sometimes pushed too far, seemingly stifling the free expression and discussion of important ideas about race and gender. In the United States, the push to ban the teaching of “divisive concepts” is unsettling and sets a bad precedent for future censorship.

As the world stands in solidarity with Rushdie in the face of brutal and censorious violence, supporters should take a moment to reflect upon how they can support the ideas he stands for.

National Post