THE INDOMITABILITY OF SALMAN RUSHDIE

Siddhartha Tripathy

According to the Bible, when the Romans crucified Jesus Christ, he had uttered what is inarguably his most well-known statement: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

It must take a truly enlightened saint, one who is spiritually evolved to the highest level possible, to say such an incredible prayer of forgiveness for those inflicting excruciating, life-ending pain on him or her. No ordinary mortal is capable of that.

When initial details about the gut-wrenchingly dreadful August 12 attack on Indian-born British-American writer Salman Rushdie emerged in the media, one of the first things that came to mind – apart from absolute contempt for the perpetrator – was English poet and satirist Alexander Pope’s famous words: “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

The 75-year-old novelist who was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) and has won numerous international awards – most notably the Booker Prize in 1981 for “Midnight’s Children” – was attacked onstage just as he was about to speak to a packed audience at the Chautauqua Institution in New York state. Given that Rushdie’s lecture was going to be about the United States being a safe haven for writers in exile, the irony was not lost on anyone.

However, the bigger irony – the one that was a reminder of the aforementioned proverb by Pope – was something else altogether.

Hadi Matar, the 24-year-old man from New Jersey who stabbed Rushdie a dozen times like a raving maniac, including in the neck, eye and abdomen areas, hates the globally acclaimed writer with a passion but is barely familiar with his vast body of work.

“I don’t like the person. I don’t think he’s a very good person. I don’t like him very much. He’s someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems,” Matar told the New York Post in a video interview from Chautauqua County Jail.

In that interview, Matar admitted that he not read any more than “a couple of pages” of ‘The Satanic Verses’, the famous 1988 novel by Rushdie that was viewed as blasphemous by certain sections of the Muslim world and had infuriated Iran’s then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini so much that he had issued a fatwa (religious edict) on February 14, 1989, demanding death for its author and anyone involved in its publication.

Charged with one count of second-degree attempted murder, which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison, Matar denied that his heinous act was driven by the fatwa but confirmed his reverence for the late Iranian leader.

“I respect the Ayatollah. I think he’s a great person,” he said.

Iran has categorically denied any link with the incident or the alleged perpetrator – but the way the ruling regime and the media of that country have responded to the stabbing incident so far, not to mention Matar’s sympathetic stand for the causes of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (an Iranian military organisation) and Shia extremism on his social media accounts, leave much room for suspicion.

While Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani was quoted by the dpa news agency as saying that Rushdie was “himself … responsible for the attack,” Iranian media have hailed the Chautauqua incident as “divine retribution”. Celebrating the news that he might lose an eye thanks to the deadly attack, the front page of Iranian state newspaper Jaam-e Jam carried a caricature of Rushdie, saying: “The Satan’s eye has been blinded”, as per a BBC report.

Even though the Iranian government under Mohammad Khatami had announced in 1998 that it would neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie, hard-line entities in that country had been raising the bounty on his head every so often. Besides, the fatwa was reaffirmed by none other than Iran’s current spiritual leader Ayahtollah Ali Khamenei in his message to Muslim pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in year 2005, and the bounty on the author was once again renewed together by some 40 Iranian media outlets as recently as the year 2016.

As reprehensible as the stabbing of Rushdie in New York is, it offers some real and timely lessons what with the ground truths and perspectives that it has brought back under the global spotlight.

Just as the chaotic controversy around Rushdie’s 1988 novel saw the start of a never-ending international debate over free speech and the role of religion in modern-day democracies, the Chautauqua incident has reminded the world that the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism are no less – if not more – than other global challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. The attack, perpetrated by a person who was not even born during the publication of “The Satanic Verses”, also showed how the digital era has made it easier for fundamentalist forces to influence others with an omnipresent, ever-growing stash of radicalising material.

As per his own mother’s account, Hadi Matar had shockingly changed – from a regular, outgoing person to a moody, reclusive and nocturnal one – after his return from a visit to his father in Lebanon in the year 2018. Ms Silvana Fardos said he began blaming her for making him focus on education rather than religion and for not introducing him to Islam during his childhood days.

However, the criminal act that he perpetrated in Chautauqua served as a reminder to the world about the invaluable importance of a person – and a writer – like Rushdie and the values he represents.

While the writer, with a punctured liver and an eye all but lost, was fighting for his life at an operation theatre and then on a ventilator in a Pennsylvania hospital, the global media was replete with not only grim reports and speculation surrounding the dreadful attack he suffered, but also glowing op-ed columns and eulogistic essays about his unique life journey, his extraordinary literary accomplishments, his fearlessness as a creative force and his unparalleled stature as an uncompromising champion of free speech.

After facing the 1989 fatwa from Tehran and a failed assassination attempt that year, Rushdie was forced to live in hiding and under police protection for several years. He tried his best to publicly clarify – time and time again – that “The Satanic Verses” was not about or against any religion and essentially dealt with migration, its challenges and consequences (like many of his books do). owever, those explanations fell on deaf ears as most of the offended lot, just like the New Jersey attacker, had drawn their conclusions without ever reading the book or, at best, after reading selected extracts out of context.

However, the one thing Rushdie never did was apologise – neither for “The Satanic Verses” nor for any of his writings that would follow in later years.

Determined not to let the ever-present danger to his life stifle his genius or stop him from leading a near-normal life, Rushdie chose to shine as a leading luminary in the world of literature, as a poster boy of creative liberty, as a supporter of other persecuted authors and artists, and as a secular voice of reason against bigotry, fundamentalism and sectarianism.

If Hadi Matar was “surprised” to hear that Rushdie had survived (as he brazenly admitted in that video interview from jail he gave to NY Post on the very day of the attack), he must be shocked to hear what Rushdie’s son Zafar said three days later: “Though his life-changing injuries are severe, his usual feisty and defiant sense of humour remains intact.”

Just like Hadi Matar, all dangerously ignorant voices and violently intolerant forces of the world must realise that, no matter what they do, they cannot kill the free and indomitable spirit that Rushdie embodies. They should know that neither humanity nor history, let alone the Heavens, will forgive them for the crimes they commit in the name of religion.