Salman Rushdie attacked and hospitalised ( updated )

[Konrad von Carstein]

33 minutes ago, jonesy said:

I'm not registered. Fancy a copy and paste?

Salman Rushdie was stabbed on stage at the Chautauqua Institution in New York state on Friday just as he was about to give a lecture. The attack comes 33 years after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued the first formal fatwa against Rushdie over the 1988 book The Satanic Verses – a satirical take on religion, culture, and identity in the Indian subcontinent that followed up on Rushdie’s magical realism allegory of the region in Midnight’s Children and Shame – putting a bounty of $3 million on the author’s head for blaspheming against Islam’s prophet Muhammad.

Over the past three decades, many translators and publishers affiliated with The Satanic Verses have been killed or injured, including those in Japan, Italy, Norway, and Turkey. In all these years, Rushdie has continued to feature prominently in the hit lists of jihadist groups, from Hezbollah to al-Qaeda.

Fatwas calling for his head have been omnipresent in the Muslim world, even in the officially secular Bangladesh and the ‘moderate’ Malaysia since the publishing of The Satanic Verses. A 1990 Pakistani film International Gorillay was based on the lead actors plotting the killing of Rushdie, who is eventually struck down by flying Qurans, as the female protagonist exclaims: “Today your death will be a warning to the rejectors of the prophet”. Pakistan’s recently ousted prime minister Imran Khan continues to cite Rushdie in his recent bid to export Islamic blasphemy laws to the West expressing a similar desire to instill global fear over sacrilege against Islam.

This quest of Khan, and his Islamist friends like Recep Erdogan and Mahathir Mohamad, to prevent Islam from being treated as other religions, is already in vogue in the west. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that mocking Muhammad is a hate crime, even as cartoonists and satirists exercising their freedom of expression against Islam have been attacked in Denmark, Sweden and other parts of the continent. Journalists affiliated with satirical publication Charlie Hebdo were massacred for caricaturing Muhammad in 2015. Samuel Paty, a French teacher who showed the Charlie Hebdo cartoons to his class, was beheaded in 2020

While the UK has stood by Rushdie all these years, even as his knighthood in 2007 invited backlash from many Muslim countries, Britain has seemingly given up on the free speech ideals that the author has stood for. In June, screenings of the film The Lady Of Heaven were cancelled in the UK after protests over alleged blasphemy. Last year, a Batley Grammar School teacher lost his job and had to go in hiding over threats for showing Charlie Hebdo caricatures in a class on blasphemy. And the British press customarily joins the vast majority of their Western colleagues in refusing to print any pictorial depiction of Islam’s prophet even when reporting on the killings over those very images.

This has come amid prevalence of gory blasphemy laws in the Muslim world, with 12 Muslim-majority countries punishing the victimless crime with death and 20 others with harsh prison sentences. In addition to antediluvian codes in these countries continuing, mobs continue to target individuals by torching them in schools, hanging bodies to trees, or beheadings in shops over blasphemy against Islam. Just as the Muslim-majority countries enacting Islamic sharia obviously do not uphold identical punishments over blasphemy against other religions, many well-meaning progressives in the west forego the founding principle of free speech to shield Islam alone from critique.

The idea that Islam deserves special protection against offensive expression is relentlessly encouraging blasphemy violence. And it is this continued global privileging of Islam that has led to the murder attempt against Salman Rushdie.

For far too long the Islamist thuggery over blasphemy has been allowed to prevail over reason and rationality by us in Muslim countries and communities. While Islamists benefit from silencing any challenge to their ideological puritanism, it is the failure of moderate Muslims to stand by freedom of religion, conscience, and speech opposing Islam that is upholding this Islamist inertia on blasphemy. Many of the progressive voices are either silenced by murderous blasphemy codes and the veritable threat of mob violence, or prefer to partake in the perilous conflation of Islam and Muslims, ostensibly to defend the Muslim minorities against bigotry.

We need to muster the common sense that freedom of speech is designed to protect precisely what is deemed “unacceptable”, including unabashed disrespect of the holiest of ideas, regardless of the demographic that adheres to them. It shouldn’t need any form of courage to exclaim that absolutely no one deserves to be killed for disparaging any text or personality, including those affiliated with Islam, regardless of any scriptural claims. Following the ghastly attack on the most prominent Muslim-heritage dissenter of recent times, it is time we finally stood by the dissidents and not their attackers

[Cade]

the Independent piece makes good points, but it does make a fatal error in assuming that the authorities are only cancelling things and acting to protect the interests and complaints of Islamic protestors.

This is not the case.

Free speech (and wider individual freedoms) are under attack from all directions at the moment.

Christians are having drag queens shut down (council claim they're cancelling shows so they can do risk assessments but that's a cop-out, they've caved into the mob).

They're also picketing abortion clinics (not a free speech issue but a religious bigotry one)

The Conservative Government is criminalising peaceful protest.

Bigotry, intolerance and hatred are running rife across the UK and authorities are far too fast to give into the mobs and cancel/shut down the targets of protest as that's the easy option, rather than telling the protestors to GTF and having them arrested and slapped with restraining orders.

[Weakened Offender]

16 hours ago, Seymour M Hersh said:

 

Of course there are violent bigots everywhere but I doubt the ones you refer to issued a world wide fatwah to kill the drag queen and certainly not 33 years ago. I also doubt they tell everyone their religion (which is totally absent in your analogy) is one of peace to all men (obviously women need not apply in this case). 

 

And according to the BBC, never one to miss out attacking the right, said it was a protest that passed off peacefully. Their (the protesters who in Wales are not the most obvious far right nutters) protest was against the sexualising of young children which they felt having a drag queen reading the story (I don't even know what the story was) was the issue. Again according to the BBC nobody was physically attacked. 

 

Are you seriously suggesting that the BBC isn't right wing? 

[Doctor FinnBarr]

10 hours ago, ri Alban said:

How's those Christmas holidays?

 

Well, considering it was a Pagan festival robbed by christians...........

[BlueRiver]

1 hour ago, Cade said:

the Independent piece makes good points, but it does make a fatal error in assuming that the authorities are only cancelling things and acting to protect the interests and complaints of Islamic protestors.

This is not the case.

Free speech (and wider individual freedoms) are under attack from all directions at the moment.

Christians are having drag queens shut down (council claim they're cancelling shows so they can do risk assessments but that's a cop-out, they've caved into the mob).

They're also picketing abortion clinics (not a free speech issue but a religious bigotry one)

The Conservative Government is criminalising peaceful protest.

Bigotry, intolerance and hatred are running rife across the UK and authorities are far too fast to give into the mobs and cancel/shut down the targets of protest as that's the easy option, rather than telling the protestors to GTF and having them arrested and slapped with restraining orders.

The Independent piece was making specific points about the allowances made for Islam and their archaic blasphemy practices. 

I don’t agree with picketing abortion clinics however equating it with seriously violent attacks and murders is a bit off. 

[Cade]

Never said they were the same.

Bible bashers shouting things and this arsehole in NY trying to kill someone are not equivalent acts.

 

The point is that mob mentality, intimidation and violence are on the rise and authorities are doing nothing about it, in fact they're making it worse by closing down the subject of the protests.

[BlueRiver]

I just don’t really understand the need to shoehorn it into a topic where a man has been violently attacked with the likely reason a long standing state sanctioned bounty on his head purely due to the words he wrote about a religion. 
 

To me it just seemed like trying to deflect and minimise the reasons underlying it because some people shouted down a drag queen. 
 

If this topic was about an abortion doctor and clinic being blown to pieces by Christian extremists in the States, I wouldn’t be sitting criticising articles considering the issue of Christian extremism because it ignored Charlie Hebdo attacks. 

[GBJambo]

6 minutes ago, BlueRiver said:

I just don’t really understand the need to shoehorn it into a topic where a man has been violently attacked with the likely reason a long standing state sanctioned bounty on his head purely due to the words he wrote about a religion. 
 

To me it just seemed like trying to deflect and minimise the reasons underlying it because some people shouted down a drag queen. 
 

If this topic was about an abortion doctor and clinic being blown to pieces by Christian extremists in the States, I wouldn’t be sitting criticising articles considering the issue of Christian extremism because it ignored Charlie Hebdo attacks. 

Exactly it’s bizarre behaviour 

[Cade]

Bag searches and metal detectors were not in place at the venue.

They had been asked to provide these services but refused.

Mind boggling.

 

[Cade]

Nobody is making excuses for anything.

 

Iran is a backwards shitehole.

The fatwa is a crime against humanity.

The attacker is a prick who should serve the rest of his life in jail. Wasn't even born when the book came out FFS.

 

The Independent is making out that this attack is the fault of complacent authorities, which in general is correct, as various protest groups are being emboldened as authorities bend to their stupid demands.

 

[Watt-Zeefuik]

18 hours ago, Seymour M Hersh said:

 

Of course there are violent bigots everywhere but I doubt the ones you refer to issued a world wide fatwah to kill the drag queen and certainly not 33 years ago. I also doubt they tell everyone their religion (which is totally absent in your analogy) is one of peace to all men (obviously women need not apply in this case). 

 

And according to the BBC, never one to miss out attacking the right, said it was a protest that passed off peacefully. Their (the protesters who in Wales are not the most obvious far right nutters) protest was against the sexualising of young children which they felt having a drag queen reading the story (I don't even know what the story was) was the issue. Again according to the BBC nobody was physically attacked. 

 

There are violent bigots everywhere and we have a bumper crop of them in the USA. The judge who issued the warrant to search Mar a Lago is already receiving credible death threats. We've got one dead idiot who stormed the FBI with a gun and plenty more probably thinking about doing it.  In a period only somewhat longer than the duration of Rushdie's fatwah:

 

 

(https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9827886/abortion-clinic-attacks-mapped)

 

And that's not to mention a violent, coordinated insurrection to try to overthrow the most recent Presidential election.

 

There's a very good Christian proverb about not pointing out the mote in someone else's eye before dealing with the log in ones own. We have a veritable timber train in our eyes when it comes to this sort of thing.

 

I am horrified for Rushdie (a mediocre and tone-deaf novelist at best but that's no reason for a man to live under a death sentence), particularly at a place that's near and dear to the hearts of my in-laws, but in terms of ideological violence in this country it's just noise.

[Unknown user]

54 minutes ago, BlueRiver said:

I just don’t really understand the need to shoehorn it into a topic where a man has been violently attacked with the likely reason a long standing state sanctioned bounty on his head purely due to the words he wrote about a religion. 
 

To me it just seemed like trying to deflect and minimise the reasons underlying it because some people shouted down a drag queen. 
 

If this topic was about an abortion doctor and clinic being blown to pieces by Christian extremists in the States, I wouldn’t be sitting criticising articles considering the issue of Christian extremism because it ignored Charlie Hebdo attacks. 

 

I was under the impression that it's not at all state sponsored, is that not right?

[Cade]

Iran's government withdrew official support for the Fatwa against Rushdie.

 

The clerics did not withdraw it, and even upped the bounty in line with inflation.

[BlueRiver]

1 hour ago, Smithee said:

 

I was under the impression that it's not at all state sponsored, is that not right?

Iran’s Supreme Leader continuously defends it. A position described as the highest religious and political authority. 
 

I’d consider that enough to consider it state-sponsored but it may be less clear cut. I’m no expert of on the Iranian political system. 

[BlueRiver]

Has there been any news on charges yet? 
 

Feels quite morbid to say but I’m wondering if the police are biding a bit of time to see if this is a murder charge rather than attempt. Or is it more likely that they’re trying to gather evidence to see if they can apply a terrorism dimension to it? 

[Jambo_jim2001]

6 hours ago, Smithee said:

My car broke down after filling the tank last week, talk about a kick in the stanes and a slap in the face at the same time.

🤔😂 Lucky white heather??

[Watt-Zeefuik]

1 hour ago, jonesy said:

No need, really.

Fair. Apologies.

[milky_26]

1 hour ago, BlueRiver said:

Has there been any news on charges yet? 
 

Feels quite morbid to say but I’m wondering if the police are biding a bit of time to see if this is a murder charge rather than attempt. Or is it more likely that they’re trying to gather evidence to see if they can apply a terrorism dimension to it? 

now charged with attempted murder

[maroongoals]

pleads not guilty,i dont get it as  its on film

[Doctor FinnBarr]

4 hours ago, milky_26 said:

now charged with attempted murder

 

Is there a %age paid out by Iran for a job half done? And where will it get paid, into his Mars bar and toothpaste account?

[Sooperstar]

 

 

 

[Sooperstar]

He is now off the ventilator and speaking again.

[Eldar Hadzimehmedovic]

Kind of on topic but JK Rowling tweets a supportive response and some bam replies "you're next". She's rightly involved the police and his hammering twitter publicly. Been said a million times but twitter and Facebook really are absolute cesspits of the worst kind of humanity. Can't wait until they're broken up - it'll come one day. 

[Ulysses]

On 13/08/2022 at 18:28, Led Tasso said:

Fair. Apologies.

 

Wait what now?

[JFK-1]

JK Rowling now being threatened for supporting Rushdie. Online message saying "you're next"

[Watt-Zeefuik]

1 hour ago, Ulysses said:

 

Wait what now?

I included a comment on the quality of Rushdie's novels. The response was that was uncalled for in the circumstances. I agreed and briefly apologized. Minor thing.

[Jambo 4 Ever]

You Should be allowed to say your opinion - even if it’s unpopular - without the threat of abuse - verbally or physically, online or in person 

As long as it’s not personally abusive 

 

You can’t control how others  react 

[Ulysses]

22 hours ago, Led Tasso said:

I included a comment on the quality of Rushdie's novels. The response was that was uncalled for in the circumstances. I agreed and briefly apologized. Minor thing.

 

I know.  I read it.  I was just trying to figure out why.