Blasphemous act free#

The Catholic couple sat on death row for seven years, away from their four children - all on account of an allegedly ‘blasphemous’ text that they claim they never even sent. So if, in the name of underprivileged minorities, you wish to endorse a suppression of wrongthink, it’s a slippery slope.” Death row Rushdie himself once said: “Wherever there has been censorship, the first people to suffer from it are underprivileged minorities. There are people throughout Asia and the Middle East who live in daily fear for their lives because of what they say about faith, what they choose to believe or not believe. Crackdowns on alleged blasphemy are as rife in 2022 as they ever were. Rushdie’s ‘crime’ (and subsequent ‘punishment’) are not just a hangover from a tense situation in the Iranian 80s. The West can’t wag its finger at the East while convicting perpetrators of “wrongthink” over hereīut the violent public stabbing of Rushdie should jolt us from our comfortable trance.

We lack the experience to know why a society that silences speech and thought is the poison pill to the democracy which we depend upon.

Blasphemous act free#

Concerns about free speech have been dismissed as the war cry of the radical right. Censoring contrary ideas has become our coping mechanism. Universities slap trigger-warnings on texts before we even reach the classroom. Our social media overlords tear anyone who might offend us from sight. The police are our helicopter parents, pacifying rising distress against online insults that bruise our sensibilities. It’s cliché these days to state the obvious: that my generation, here in the West, has had a relatively gentle ride. In 1993, its Turkish translator narrowly escaped an arson attack which claimed the lives of 37 others. In 1991, the book’s Japanese translator was stabbed to death. On 14 February 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Rushdie, and anyone involved in publishing his (supposedly blasphemous) fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, which mocks and challenges central tenets of Islam. And until this month, I’d never heard about what has been happening to Salman Rushdie for the past 40 years. I’m a mid-20s millennial with a keen eye on current affairs.

Both figures have been the victims of violence after making outspoken comments about Islam Hatun Tash holds aloft a photo of Salman Rushdie.

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