Comments on: What Do You Do With a Problem Like Salman?

By: Aakaash

Aakaash — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 07:48:22 +0000

Wait, the East-West divide is artificial? There goes my proposed career as a bridge.
Seriously, though, Rushdie has some brilliant stuff and some pretty terrible stuff (Fury, anyone?). What offends can be either one of these. But Rushdie becoming a poster boy for the freedom of speech (although the fatwas make it more like the “freedom to live after having written something down”) chooses to take everything that makes him a novelist and throw that out of the window for the flashier, and as Pulao mentioned, the “talk-show circuit”, cred.
George Orwell discusses, eloquently, the essentially political nature of writing and the censorship that is often imposed on it. What impressed me what the prescience of what he was saying, even if he was talking about the blindness of a left-leaning government (apparently such things existed).
Another novelist, another poster boy. What is the difference between Rushdie and Orwell? Besides the flash and the snazz, Orwell’s essay is far better written than Rushdie’s statements; Midnight’s Children is far better than 1984.
That’s all I got.

By: Pulao

Pulao — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 23:35:54 +0000

I completely agree with your “book-writing being less bad than the terrorist acts,” though I’m always interested in the “English-major” reason. It has always seemed to me intuitive that those who deal with books regularly– as close readers, as writers, as students– would appreciate more the power of books. Wasn’t it Lincoln who credited Harriet Beecher Stowe with starting the Civil War? (Deeply exaggerated credit, I’m sure.)

Also, I like that you point out that the novel is fundamentally about so many things. It’s a point that Rushdie makes, too. And it’s true that fatwa imposers and (excuse the pun) executors have largely ignored those other aspects of the novel. You know who else has decided to concentrate almost entirely on the more controversial aspects of the novel? The talk-show circuit that pays Rushdie tens and tens of thousands of dollars to come talk about what it means to be a symbol of free speech. Somehow, I get the feeling that they’re not really asking him about his decision to portray his own relationship with his father on paper.

That said, obviously Rushdie is nothing like Osama Bin Laden– and the
very few Pakistani clerics who did decide to equate the two have done so to make a strong rhetorical point, and in doing so reinforce some artificial West/East divide, where the West is everyone who believes in Free Speech (which apparently is now the same thing as respecting Rushdie) and the East is a group of deeply religious folk. And as despicable as their acts are, at least they’re not inciting violence. (Unlike,some might argue, Pakistani Religious Affairs Minister Mohammad Ejaz-ul-Haq.)

By: Kris

Kris — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 23:35:59 +0000

Rushdie and Osama . . . peas in a pod!

Well, they’re both the recent recipients of high honors–which was the point of the Pakistani clerics awarding bin Laden the title of Saifullah, I suppose, to bring the two into comparison–and compare their activities.

As a former English-major, I’m gonna have to go with the book-writing as being less bad than the terrorist acts. Not to say that books aren’t powerful, or can’t have far-reaching, lasting effects. The Satanic Verses is blasphemous–on purpose. It tells a story about the life of Muhammad, and what if some of the words of God he received were really the words of Satan? Rushdie didn’t make that part up–it’s an interpretation of the Qur’an others have talked about. But lots of Muslims disagree.

But the book is also the story of a father and a son. And Bollywood actors. And a guy that turns into a goat, among other things.

As Rushdie has said, free speech means nothing if you don’t have the right to offend. But that also means people have the right to be offended . . . And the right to do something offensive in response; like honor a man who plots, and enacts, murder.