The Ayatullah Orders A Hit
Hunted by An Angry Faith
Salman Rushdie's novel cracks open a fault line between East and West
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The conflict cut to the heart of Muslim and Judeo-Christian values, with centuries of cultural misunderstanding and mistrust finding a flash point in Rushdie's novel. After Khomeini's call to murder, many Muslim leaders worldwide disagreed with the ferocity of his action, but none had a friendly word for Rushdie, his literary intentions or his right to free speech. To be sure, few of his prosecutors had read the book, as the author pointed out repeatedly; most seemed to feel they had learned enough from printed excerpts or merely word of mouth to convict the author of blasphemy compounded by apostasy, the crime of renouncing one's religious faith. In the Muslim faith, the traditional punishment for an apostate is death.
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Of the roughly 25,000 Iranians in Britain [vuonna 1989], it is believed there may be as many as 1,000 radical extremists, including students on short-term visas. Tehran-backed groups have a history of violent mischief in London, mostly bombings aimed at Iranian dissidents. Says Ian Geldard, head of research at London's Institute for the Study of Terrorism: "In the Islamic world, a call from the Imam is a full command . . . The worst of it is that this threat could remain in effect for months." Or even years. In a BBC radio interview, an exiled Iranian film director, Reza Fazeli, who himself has been the target of a Khomeini death threat and whose son was killed in a 1986 terrorist attack in London, said Rushdie faced a "living hell." He continued, "I had to learn to look over my shoulder. If they kill you, it's over -- it's finished. But ((this way)) they are killing you a hundred times a day."
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The fate of both book and author poses a dilemma for Western societies that is not easily resolved. Granted there is a need in the West for greater sensitivity to Islamic concerns, so also is there a need to deny trespass to intruding zealots -- one is reminded of Khamenei's remark that "the Imam knows no frontiers" -- determined to inflict intellectual and sometimes physical terrorism on the rest of the world.
For much of the past two months, Salman Rushdie has been defending himself and his book. "The thing that is most disturbing is that they are talking about a book that doesn't exist," he said. "The book that is worth killing people for and burning flags for is not the book I wrote." As Rushdie saw it, his book "isn't actually about Islam, but about migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death, London and Bombay." The sad irony, he said, is "that after working for five years to give voice and fictional flesh to the immigrant culture of which I am myself a member, I should see my book burned, largely unread, by the people it's about -- people who might find some pleasure and much recognition in its pages."
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https://content.time.com/time/subscribe ... 10,00.html (Feb. 27, 1989)
Yhdenkin iskun pitäisi riittää. Tekovälinettä ei jostain kumman syystä ole esitelty mediassa, lieneekö joku muoviveitsi tms..
