The Daily Telegraph - Features
The more we self-censor, the more Islamists continue to win
The man who tried to murder Salman Rushdie and left him severely injured and blinded in one eye had not read The Satanic Verses, which was published in 1988. He had “read, like, two pages” of it and watched some videos of Rushdie online. Most of those who burnt the book hadn’t read it either. It was, after all, banned in 13 countries. The fatwa was issued in 1989 by Ayatollah Khomeini, who called it blasphemous and ordered Rushdie’s execution. A bounty was put on his head.
I was recently trying to explain all this to my twentysomething daughter when I realised how much everything had changed. My disgust that someone should want to burn a book they had not read is now old-fashioned and literal. This was pre-internet. Nowadays, many live in a permanent outrage about things they are told are wrong even though they have no evidence of this for themselves.
Rushdie, whose bravery really cannot be overstated, is a hugely significant figure. On a personal level, I read Midnight’s Children and was so consumed with the idea of India that I went as soon as I could and have had a love affair with the country ever since.
But, on a much more important level, the Rushdie affair was the Big Bang of what we might call cultural relativism. Up until that point, many had preached an idea of tolerance, a live-and-let-live view of how we must respect each other’s faiths. I was one such person. But the respect could no longer be considered mutual. Rushdie had to go into hiding while some associated with him were, in fact, murdered.
Some notable people said he had it coming. They were not prepared to defend free speech, instead siding with those they saw as oppressed and marginalised. Rushdie’s love of life itself – of parties, food, women – was seen as arrogant rather than defiant.
The extent to which that side won out is evident today. When Rushdie talks now of the attack in which he was brutally stabbed, of the “murderous shape” that rushed towards him, it is remarkable to think he had chosen to live as a free man, even though he would imagine an assassin rising up. It was only ever going to take one.
The fact that Rushdie shrugged off the danger to his life is lost on younger generations. This man was not “cancelled” or “noplatformed”; he was given police protection and has lived with the inevitability of attack since 1989.
We have seen such attacks from others who are deemed to have blasphemed against the Prophet Mohammed. The horrific killings of staff at Charlie Hebdo, the decapitation of a French school teacher, Samuel Paty, for showing cartoons of Mohammed and the killing of Salman Tasser, a politician in Pakistan who wanted to reform blasphemy law.
This reminds us that the idea that we may have the freedom to criticise or even question a faith is not one that certain parts of the Islamic world will tolerate. To deny that this threat exists is insulting to those who have fought for freedom of expression.
In poll after poll, young people are much more concerned about hate speech and giving offence than older liberals. Maybe their desire for safe spaces is understandable as they have grown up in the untrammelled world of online cacophony.
Yet their pronouncements that no speech should be consequencefree soon becomes stifling. Can there be no challenge to ideas? How can lobby groups like Stonewall issue soft fatwas such as “no debate”?
As Rushdie himself said, calls for censorship are now coming from progressive voices “saying that certain kinds of speech should be not permitted because it offends against this or that vulnerable group”. We are on a slippery slope. “Offence has become an aspect of identity politics,” says Rushdie.
This is the crux of the matter and as heroic as Rushdie has been, those who threatened him continue to win because we live with increasing self-censorship. It is just easier not to say certain things. It is easier when confronted with strands of fundamentalist Islam – which we have been on our streets – to turn a blind eye. Maybe we should listen to the man with the blind eye. Such people cannot be appeased. Ever.
Free speech remains an abstract concept for many as we take it for granted in a secular democracy. It is something deeply precious. We pass our values down to our young, but I fear we have not passed this one down. Perhaps we too were frightened by what happened to Rushdie. Perhaps now, though, we should look at him, unbowed, unafraid, and grasp what he is saying. Who would dare publish The Satanic Verses now?
As he says “My view is it’s very easy for a book to stop offending you. You just shut it.”