‘You could not write Satanic Verses today, censorship is too rife’
THE fight for freedom of expression has been “lost”, according to Sir Salman Rushdie’s friends and supporters, with censorship now so rife that the author would struggle to publish The Satanic Verses today.
Sir Salman’s determination to keep voicing his vision free of dogmatic strictures has been severely undermined by extremist religious leaders and society’s willingness to accommodate them, people close to him say.
Baroness D’Souza, former Speaker of the House of Lords, said: “No one anywhere should ever, ever, be threatened with death for writing a novel, yet we seem to be living in a world, despite Salman’s fight, where that could be a possibility. There are other instances around the world – especially say, in India – where people are threatened with death because they have written something.
“It is a very sad end to this that we have it almost as a norm that if you offend a certain sector of a religious minority or majority then your life is in danger.”
She added: “Even though Rushdie made a strong stance for free speech I’m not sure it has worked, because I think that anyone who would wish to publish something even vaguely anti-Islamic would not be touched by any publisher for a start, but would also subject him or herself to enormous danger.
“It [the fatwa against Rushdie] was the beginning of something really evil in our society and censorship is very much on the agenda these days.”
Lisa Appignanesi, former president of the writers’ organisation English PEN, said: “The Satanic Verses certainly wouldn’t be [published]. There are a lot of fanatical religions in the world at the moment and no one knows where the greatest terror will come from next.”
Ms Appignanesi said it was ironic that the book had been seized on by hardline Islamists. “The Satanic Verses is a satire of Thatcher’s Britain, not of Islam,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today. “A lot of things he describes are very much still with us, such as the tragedy of migrants and the extraordinary racism that still exists.”
Kenan Malik, author of From Fatwa to Jihad: How the World Changed From The Satanic Verses to Charlie Hebdo, said: “The boundaries of free speech, the boundaries of restrictions on offence, on blasphemy, have got much tighter over the past 30 to 35 years.
“In some ways the critics of Rushdie lost the battle, but they won the war.
“They lost the battle because The Satanic Verses continues to be published, but they won the war in the sense that the argument at the heart of that claim, that it is wrong to give offence to certain people, certain groups and religions and so on, has become much more mainstream.”