The Daily Telegraph - Features
‘Britain is less safe and tolerant than when Salman Rushdie left’
The author has said he may return to the UK, but the threat of jihadistinspired extremism is greater than ever, writes Rosa Silverman
Sir Salman Rushdie has weathered some wild storms in his time. When Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran, issued a fatwa against him in 1989, following the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, Rushdie went into hiding in Britain for more than nine years. That threat to his life never disappeared, as brutally illustrated when he survived being stabbed in New York in 2022.
But there’s one threat Rushdie may not be able to stomach. In an interview with The Telegraph this week, the 76-year-old revealed that a Donald Trump victory in this year’s US presidential elections could prompt him to leave the country he made his home in 2000. A Trump comeback was “unthinkable”, he said. Asked if he would come back to Britain, where his children live, Rushdie told The Telegraph: “I might do.”
But would it be safe for him here? That Iran means business currently seems beyond doubt. On Monday, following the country’s drone and missile attack on Israel, the Policy Exchange think tank published a new report, which concluded that Iran posed a “unique challenge to the security and social cohesion of the UK”.
The report states that, 36 years after the publication of a book considered blasphemous by some Muslims, “opposition to Rushdie never quite faded within some part of Britain’s Muslim communities; nor did the Iranian presence in these debates”.
The current threat to Iranian dissidents in the UK has also been emphasised, with counter-terror police reportedly warning of an increased risk of violence and kidnap. Last month, a prominent British-based Iranian journalist was stabbed multiple times outside his London home.
“Iranians are willing to act against individuals,” says Dr Dan Lomas, an assistant professor of international relations at the University of Nottingham. “They have mostly targeted their activities against individual dissidents… They’re fully aware of who they are potentially going for and have the willingness to act.”
This threat coexists with the potential home-grown one from “jihadist-inspired extremism”, says Dr Lomas: “Individuals willing to act on extremist beliefs… who can be self-motivated and inspired by online extremist material.”
Rushdie’s knighthood in 2007 was condemned by the leaders of 12 British Muslim groups as a “deliberate provocation and insult to the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world”. The vast majority of those offended will, of course, pose no physical threat to the writer’s safety. But, says Dr Paul Stott, the head of security and extremism at Policy Exchange and author of the new report, there is no doubt individuals exist who are capable of attacks in the name of their beliefs. The threat of Islamism has escalated since 2000, he says, with the London bombings on July 7 2005 the deadliest carried out on British soil. This has been accompanied by targeted attacks, such as the murder of Sir David Amess MP by an Islamic State (IS) fanatic in 2021.
“The physical threat to Rushdie would be greater today,” says Dr Stott. “Iran remains a threat. The fatwa was never formally rescinded. Then there’s been the rise of international jihadist groups and radicalised individuals.”
There is also the question of free speech. Rushdie, who grew up in a hillside villa in Bombay, in a secular Muslim family, began his writing career in London after studying at Cambridge. The Satanic Verses was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1988. But the critical praise it received was overshadowed by protests, not only in Kashmir and Islamabad, where riots broke out, but in Bolton, Bradford, Oldham and London, where marches and book burnings were held. Neither Rushdie nor his publisher, Viking Penguin, anticipated the furore. “I expected a few mullahs would be offended,” he said later.
Dr Stott believes things would be different now. “The Satanic Verses today would really struggle to get a publisher,” he says. “I think publishers would be scared.”
In 2008, the headquarters of the London publisher Gibson Square was firebombed after it announced it was to publish The Jewel of Medina, by Sherry Jones. It gives a fictionalised account of the life of Aisha, one of the Prophet Mohammed’s wives. But the threat to free speech extends beyond the literary world, Dr Stott notes, pointing to the case of the teacher at Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire who received death threats after showing students a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed in 2021. He was put into police protection after days of demonstrations, and has been in hiding ever since.
“With freedom of speech in the UK, I’d argue things have got worse,” says Dr Stott. “But there has also been a bit of a fightback. Free speech as an issue is more high profile.”
Rushdie’s police protection would be a matter for the Royal and VIP Executive Committee to decide. The independently chaired committee, which includes representatives of the Home Office, Foreign Office and Metropolitan Police, acts as an authority on security for individuals deemed to be at risk.
Rushdie’s 2012 autobiographical book Joseph Anton offers a glimpse of what life was like under police
protection. Back then, he was on “level two”, considered to be in more danger than anyone in the UK except Queen Elizabeth II. He was assigned two plain-clothes protection officers, armed with handguns, two drivers and two armoured cars.
On Monday, Prince Harry, contesting a decision to change the level of his own personal security when he visits the UK, lost his first bid to appeal against a High Court ruling rejecting his case. It does not follow that Rushdie would be similarly out of luck. But given his admission to The Telegraph that “the issue of security would be very important before I would say yes [to doing public events]”, it’s fair to assume he would want to know in advance just how secure he would be were he to return, once again, to these shores.
‘The Satanic Verses would struggle to get a publisher today’