Thus, what the obscurantists reproach Rushdie for is not so much for being a "blasphemer" — there are as many blasphemers of Islam as of any religion, whether they be atheists or fanatics belonging to rival religions. What they do reproach him for is for being an "apostate", as was recently highlighted in the compromise April 3, 1989 • #159 International Viewpoint
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Rushdie caught in tide of censorship organization] have been running around posing as
Such confusion has been typical of the whole affair, defenders of "free speech". Needless to say, this is not helped by local and national newspapers that not because they support the vigorous anti-racism seem to have deliberately avoided clarifying the that runs through Rushdie's book. Their claim that issues. Some leading figures in the Labour Party they are trying to "relax racial tensions" is belied by have identified themselves with the Muslim cam- their leaflets and letters to the press. These include paign, if not with every detail or tactic. The local Euro- such traditional ingredients as an end to immigration
MP, Barry Seal, who is leader of the Labour Group in from "the hinterland of the Indian sub-continent".
Strasbourg, spoke at the rally where the book was What is needed in Bradford, as elsewhere, is a burnt. MP Max Madden signed a motion in parliament labour movement response that concedes nothing to supporting the extension of the blasphemy laws and, clerical reaction and censorship, but which also takes more recently, has called for a Muslim "right of reply" up the Muslim campaign in the wider context of a
INTERNATIONAL Iran-Saudi communiqué from the recent Islamic conference held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The message to the West is clear: we have no intention of stepping on your toes; we want Rushdie's head because he is a product of the Muslim world. We respect your "values", but they cannot be applied to our peoples. This is a message that has already been received by certain God-
NO BOOK in recent times has caused such literary and fearing types in the imperialist, Christian political uproar as Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.
West: after all, the Rushdie affair is only a
"Muslim quarrel"...
It has been banned in most of the Islamic world as well as
For their part, the obscurantists of other
"secular" India and South Africa. In France and Italy, religions have not missed the opportunity publishers have "delayed" its appearance; but in the to form a united front to make it known that they cannot allow Rushdies in their countries where it is available, despite (or because of) the own communities - Christians, Jews or campaign for it to be banned or boycotted, its sales are others, by expressing their comprehension feelings of their Muslim counterparts' when confronted by the "intolerable blas-
Now the European Community has withdrawn its phemy" of the writer, have demonstrated diplomats from Iran because of the call from spiritual their own fears that the Rushdie affair will become an incitement to free thinking.
leader Ayatollah Khomeini and other Iranian leaders for
As opposed to these obscurantists of all
Muslims to slay Salman Rushdie.
kinds, "against fanaticism and intolerance"
as a petition of intellectuals from the Muslim countries that was published in Paris put it, "we are all Salman Rushdies". The affair of The Satanic Verses must be not only the occasion for a campaign in defence of freedom of expression in the
West, but also and above all for a campaign for democratic freedoms in those countries that do not enjoy them — to the extent where their governments even want to limit them abroad.
The Rushdies who live in these countries must also be able to express themselves freely, because so long as a large section of humanity remains in chains no freedom can be irreversibly won. The defence of
Salman Rushdie is not one of "Western values" against "Eastern culture"; it is one of the right of all to free expression, including those in the East. * soaring. AHMAD SHUJA
F OR THE LAST couple of months,
almost every weekend in one town or another in Britain there have been organized demonstrations against the supposedly "blasphemous" Satanic Verses. In Bolton and Bradford [towns with large Muslim populations in north of England] the book was publicly burned, "to attract public attention", according to one of the organizers. This served to horrify millions of people in Britain and non-Islamic countries, recalling the book-burning of Nazi Germany.
On February 12, five demonstrators were shot dead by police in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, when a huge demonstration led by mullahs tried to attack the American Centre in protest against the planned publication of The Satanic Verses in the USA. Not one of the demonstrators had seen, never mind read, the book: indeed ordinary Muslims are not allowed to read any book that has been declared blasphemous — only religious scholars have this privilege.
However, the Islamic world is divided on its response. Hashem El Essay, chair of the Islamic Society for the Promotion of Religious Tolerance (the organization that started and has led the campaign against
Leaving the field to the right wing
Madden claims he has been misrepresented by the news media, and both he and Seal have said that they
ONE of the most striking images conjured up by the oppose the banning of the book. However, they have campaign against Rushdie's book is that of Muslim failed to make clear public statements of this princileaders in Bradford burning a copy of the book outpled position - presumably for electoral reasons.
side the City Hall. Two leaders of the Bradford Coun-
The local council's Labour group, some of whose cil of Mosques apparently supported the call for
Asian members have called for a ban, has decided
Rushdie's death. Subsequently, they claimed to have not to take any position!
been misquoted. The Council excused itself, saying
Such caution has left the field open to others. Mem-
"We are not politicians". The officials concerned were bers of the Monday Club [an extreme right-wing Tory only speaking in religious terms; they say they only support legal, peaceful action.
to be inserted in the book.
International Viewpoint #160 • April 3, 1989 racist society. *
Paul Hubert
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The Satanic Verses in Britain), insists that he is not in favour of burning or banning the book, and considers such actions as un-Islamic. He is also reported to be totally against the death sentence being passed against Rushdie. Scholars from the Al Azhar mosque in Egypt, viewed as the world's leading centre of Islamic teaching for the majority Sunni Muslims, have disputed Khomeini's right to order a death sentence, saying the edict contravenes Islamic law. Why Muslims find the book insulting
The reason for the whole furore is that Muslims believe the book to be an insult to their very religion. Rushdie's novel is named after two verses that the prophet Mohammed removed from the Koran after the capture of Mecca by his followers, believing that the verses had been inspired by Satan masquerading as the Angel
The implication is that Mohammed may have done this to deceive the people of Mecca. Worse, it implies that Mohammed, not God, may be the author of the Koran. For the followers of other religions and non-believers all this may not make much sense; but for Muslims it is an intolerable insult, because for them the Koran, syllable for syllable, word for word, is the word
The loudest objection against Rushdie's novel is to pages 363-4, which describe the prophet's revelations as "sprouting rules about every damn thing from how deeply a believer should sleep to which sexual positions had received divine sanction, so that they learned that sodomy and the missionary position were approved, whereas the forbidden postures included all those in which the woman was on top".
In another sequence, prostitutes in a brothel are given the names of the prophet's nine wives. There is in all a 12-point list of extracts from the novel that the mullahs find objectionable.
But there is no doubt that the campaign against the book is to some extent politically inspired. In India, the elections are due within one year, and Rajiv Gandhi knows the importance of 100 million Muslim votes. In Pakistan, the demonstrations that brought deaths and hundreds of injuries were led by opponents of the new regime of Benazir Bhutto. "Was it a genuine protest?" she asked, "or was it rather a protest by those people who lost the election, or those people [who benefited from martial law], to try to destabilize the process of democracy? The dying order always likes to give a few kicks before it
A political motive is also a factor in the
Iranian stance, not only in Khomeini's bid to take the leadership of the world's 1 billion Muslims, but also in the need for his regime to find a new external enemy on which to focus domestic discontent in the aftermath of the disastrous war with Iraq.
At the same time there should be no doubt that Muslim feelings are genuinely hurt. Islam has not undergone any reformation or experienced any Enlightenment". Doubts about the origin and teachings of the Koran are forbidden. The prophet Mohammed, however disguised with fictional names (as in The Satanic Verses), his family, and his original companions are seen as beyond
Rushdie is not the only victim of censorship
The problem is not restricted to Rushdie's book. The works of one of Egypt's greatest Nobel Prize-winning novelists,. Nequib Mahfouz, are banned in his own country - and Egypt is relatively liberal. Jordanian writer Fadia a Faqir, also banned in Egypt, complained recently in the Times Literary Supplement against the "rising tide of censorship and intimidation in almost all of the Islamic world". On the other side, a Saudi Arabian group has declared a jihad (holy war) against "modemism" itself.
Some moderate Muslims who have no time for mullahs or fundamentalists still feel that Rushdie's novel has produced the opposite of the effect the author desired, and has served instead to strengthen the hand of the fundamentalists among ordinary Muslims. The whole affair has trig gered a wider debate: who defines what is Islamic and what is un-Islamic?
The terms can quickly change. Not long
INTERNATIONAL NU ago, when Pakistan dictator Zia ul-Haq carried out barbaric punishments against hundreds of his countrymen and women — for no greater crime than voicing political opinions or protesting against Zia's new Islamic code — the mullahs applauded him or kept quiet. Where were the protests of the likes of Hashem El Essawy against Zia's barbarism, or against the beatings and torture carried out by fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami louts against their
Only after some artists and writers had the courage to make a film exposing the treatment of women in Zia's Islamic Republic were there belated screams by "sophisticated, enlightened Muslims" in this country claiming that the (now. safely dead) Zia had "only exploited the name of Islam". By then the climate had changed, and any association with Zia's dreadful regime had become a liability. Yesterday's Islam became "un-Islamic" overnight!
Zia's anti-woman Islamic
Code
Under Zia's Islamic Code it was declared that the evidence of two women, even in a rape case, would be equal to that of one man. The religious leaders who formulated this code were quite indifferent to the insult and misery it must have caused millions of Muslim women throughout the world.
Muslim leaders, including the Islamic Society for "Religious Tolerance", who now shed tears for the hurt caused by Rushdie's book would do will ran and the 5 the feelings of the Bahais in Iran and the April 3, 1989 • #159 International Viewpoint
INTERNATIONAL • EL SALVADOR
Ahmadis in Pakistan, who are constant targets of abuse and vilification from the mullahs. The Ahmadis worship the same God as other Muslims, regard the Koran as their holy book, say prayers like other Muslims — but were, under pressure from religious leaders, declared non-Muslim by the regime of Zulfigar Ali Bhutto.
Advocates of "religious tolerance" might be taken more seriously if they campaigned for better treatment of these victims of the mullahs, and for equal rights