The Satanic Verses was, Salman Rushdie said in an interview beforepublication, a novel about 'migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love,death'. It was also a satire on Islam, 'a serious attempt', in his words, 'towrite about religion and revelation from the point of view of a secular person'.For some that was unacceptable, turning the novel into 'an inferior piece ofhate literature' as the British Muslim philosopher Shabbir Akhtar put it.
Within a month The Satanic Verses had been banned in Rushdie's nativeIndia, after protests from Islamic radicals. By the end of the year, protestorshad burnt a copy of the novel on the streets of Bolton, in northern England. Andthen on 14 February 1989 came the event that transformed the Rushdie affair -the Ayatollah Khomeini, issued his fatwa. 'I inform all zealous Muslims of theworld', proclaimed Iran's spiritual leader, 'that the author of the bookentitled The Satanic Verses - which has been compiled, printed andpublished in opposition to Islam, the Prophet and the Qur'an - and all thoseinvolved in its publication who were aware of its contents are sentenced todeath.'
Thanks to the fatwa, the Rushdie affair became the most important free speechcontroversy of modern times. It also became a watershed in our attitudes tofreedom of expression. Rushdie's critics lost the battle - The SatanicVerses continues to be published. But they won the war. The argument at theheart of the anti-Rushdie case - that it is morally unacceptable to causeoffence to other cultures - is now widely accepted.
In 1989 even a fatwa could not stop the continued publication of The SatanicVerses. Salman Rushdie was forced into hiding for almost a decade.Translators and publishers were assaulted and even murdered. In July 1991,Hitoshi Igarashi, a Japanese professor of literature and translator of TheSatanic Verses, was knifed to death on the campus of Tsukuba University.That same month another translator of Rushdie's novel, the Italian EttoreCapriolo, was beaten up and stabbed in his Milan apartment. In October 1993William Nygaard, the Norwegian publisher of The Satanic Verses, wasshot three times and left for dead outside his home in Oslo. None of theassailants were ever caught. Bookshops in America and elsewhere were firebombedfor stocking the novel. It was rumoured that staff at the Viking Penguinheadquarters in New York were forced to wear bomb-proof vests. Yet Penguin neverwavered in its commitment to Rushdie's novel.
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Today, all it takes is a letter from an outraged academic to make publishers runfor cover. In July, Random House torpedoed the publication of a novel that ithad bought for $100,000 for fear of setting off another Rushdie affair. Writtenby the American journalist Sherry Jones, The Jewel of Medina is ahistorical romance about Aisha, Muhammad's youngest wife. In April 2008 RandomHouse sent galley proofs to writers and scholars, hoping for cover endorsements.One of those on the list was Denise Spellberg, an associate professor of IslamicHistory at University of Texas. Jones had used Spellberg's work as a source forher novel. Spellberg, however, condemned the book as 'offensive'. She phoned aneditor at Random House, Jane Garrett, to tell her that the book was 'adeclaration of war' and 'a national security issue'. Spellberg apparentlyclaimed that The Jewel of Medina was 'far more controversial than TheSatanic Verses or the Danish cartoons', that there was 'a very realpossibility' of 'widespread violence' and that 'the book should be withdrawnASAP'. It was. Random House immediately pulled the novel.
The American academic Stanley Fish, writing in the New York Times,rejected the idea the Random House decision amounted to censorship. It is onlycensorship, he suggested, when 'it is the government that is criminalizingexpression' and when 'the restrictions are blanket ones'. Random House wassimply making a 'judgment call'.
There is indeed a difference between a government silencing a writer with thethreat of legal sanction or imprisonment and a publisher pulling out of a bookdeal. It is also true that other publishers picked up Jones' novel, includingBeaufort in America, and Gibson Square in Britain. But Fish misses the pointabout the changing character of censorship. The Random House decision is not aclassical example of state censorship. It is, however, an example of the waythat free speech is becoming more restricted - without the need for such overtcensorship. The directors of Random House had every right to take the decisionthey did. But the fact that they took that decision, and the reasons for whichthey did, says much about how attitudes to free speech has changed over the pasttwenty years. In the two decades between the publication of The SatanicVerses and the pulling of The Jewel of Medina the fatwa haseffectively been internalised.
After Random House dropped The Jewel of Medina, Sherry Jones' agenttried other publishers. No major house was willing to take the risk. Not is itjust publishers that worry about causing offence. These days theatres savageplays, opera houses cut productions, art galleries censor shows, all in the nameof cultural sensitivity.
'You would think twice, if you were honest', said Ramin Gray, the AssociateDirector at London's Royal Court Theatre when asked he would put on a playcritical of Islam. 'You'd have to take the play on its individual merits, butgiven the time we're in, it's very hard, because you'd worry that if you causeoffence then the whole enterprise would become buried in a sea of controversy.It does make you tread carefully.' In June 2007, the theatre cancelled a newadaptation of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, set in Muslim heaven, for fearof causing offence. Another London theatre, the Barbican, carved chunks out ofits production of Tamburlaine the Great for the same reason, while Berlin'sDeutsche Oper cancelled a production of Mozart's Idomeneo in 2006because of its depiction of Mohammed. That same year, London's Whitechapel ArtGallery removed life-size nude dolls by surrealist artist Hans Bellmer from a2006 exhibit just before its opening, ostensibly for 'space constraints', thoughthe true reason appeared to be fear that the nudity might offend the gallery'sMuslim neighbours. Tim Marlow of London's White Cube art gallery suggested thatsuch self-censorship by artists and museums was now common, though 'very fewpeople have explicitly admitted' it.
Islam has not been alone in generating such censorship. In 2005 Britain'sBirmingham Repertory Theatre cancelled a production of Bezhti, a playby the young Sikh writer Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, that depicted sexual abuse andmurder in a gurdwara. There had been protests from community activists who hadorganized demonstrations outside the theatre. In the wake of those protests IanJack, the then editor of the literary magazine Granta, nailed hiscolours to the cause of artistic self-censorship, a necessity, he believed, in aplural society. 'The state has no law forbidding a pictorial representation ofthe Prophet', he wrote. 'But I never expect to see such a picture.' Anindividual might have the abstract right to depict Mohammed, but the price ofsuch freedom was too high when compared to the 'immeasurable insult' that theexercise of such a right could cause - even though 'we, the faithless, don'tunderstand the offence.' And that, a year before the cartoon controversy.
All this reveals how successful the fatwa had been, not in burying TheSatanic Verses, but in transforming the landscape of free speech. From theEnlightenment onwards, freedom of expression had come to be seen as not just asan important liberty, but as the very foundation of liberty. 'Give me theliberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, aboveall liberties', wrote John Milton in Areopagitica, his famous 'speechfor the liberty of unlicenc'd printing', adding that 'He who destroys a goodbook destroys reason itself'. All progressive political strands that grew out ofthe Enlightenment were wedded to the principle of free speech.
Of course, few liberals advocated absolute freedom of expression. Most acceptedthat in certain circumstances speech could cause harm and so had to berestricted. The most celebrated expression of such a view came in a judgementgiven by the American Supreme Court judge Oliver Wendell Holmes who in 1919pointed out that 'The most stringent protection of free speech would not protecta man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic'. What actuallyconstitutes the political and social equivalent of yelling fire in a crowdedtheatre has been the matter of fierce debate. Politicians and policy makershave, over the years, cited a whole host of harms as reasons to curtail speech -threat to national security, incitement to violence, promotion of blasphemy, theundermining of morality or the spread of slander or libel. Milton himselfopposed the extension of free speech to Catholics on the grounds that theCatholic Church was the biggest obstacle to the extension of freedom andliberty.
Yet, however hypocritical liberal arguments may sometimes have seemed, andnotwithstanding the fact that most free speech advocates accepted that the linehad to be drawn somewhere, there was nevertheless an acceptance that speech wasan inherent good, the fullest extension of which was a necessary condition forthe elucidation of truth, the expression of moral autonomy, the maintenance ofsocial progress and the development of other liberties. Restrictions on freespeech were seen as the exception rather than the norm.
It is this idea of speech as intrinsically good that has been transformed.Today, in liberal eyes, free speech is as likely to be seen as a threat toliberty as its shield. 'Speech is not free', as the lawyer Simon Lee put it inhis book The Cost of Free Speech, written in the wake of the Rushdieaffair. 'It is costly.' By its very nature, many argue, speech damages basicfreedoms. Hate speech undermines the freedom to live free from fear. The givingof offence diminishes the freedom to have one’s beliefs and values recognizedand respected. In the post-Rushdie world speech has come to be seen not asintrinsically good but as inherently a problem, because it can offend as well asharm, and speech that offends can be as socially damaging as speech that harms.Speech, therefore, has to be restrained by custom, especially in a diversesociety with a variety of deeply held views and beliefs, and censorship (andself-censorship) has to become the norm. 'Self-censorship', as the ShabbirAkhtar put it at the height of the Rushdie affair, 'is a meaningful demand in aworld of varied and passionately held convictions. What Rushdie publishes aboutIslam is not just his business. It is everyone's - not least every Muslim's -business.'
Increasingly Western liberals have come to agree. Whatever may be right inprinciple, many now argue, in practice one must appease religious and culturalsensibilities because such sensibilities are so deeply felt. We live in a world,so the argument runs, in which there are deep-seated conflicts between culturesembodying different values, many of which are incommensurate but all of whichare valid in their own context. The controversy over The Satanic Verseswas one such conflict. For such diverse societies to function and to be fair, weneed to show respect for other peoples, cultures, and viewpoints. Social justicerequires not just that individuals are treated as political equals, but alsothat their cultural beliefs are given equal recognition and respect. Theavoidance of cultural pain has therefore come to be regarded as more importantthan what is often seen as an abstract right to freedom of expression. As theBritish sociologist Tariq Modood has put it, 'If people are to occupy the samepolitical space without conflict, they mutually have to limit the extent towhich they subject each others' fundamental beliefs to criticism.'
In fact the lesson that we should draw from the Rushdie affair is the veryopposite. Critics of Rushdie no more spoke for the Muslim community than Rushdiehimself did. Both represented different strands of opinion within Muslimcommunities. These days the radical, secular clamour, which found an echo in TheSatanic Verses, has been reduced to a whisper. In the 1980s, however, itbeat out a loud and distinctive rhythm within the Babel of British Islam.Rushdie's critics spoke for some of the most conservative strands. The campaignagainst The Satanic Verses was not to protect the Muslim communitiesfrom unconscionable attack from anti-Muslim bigots but to protect their ownprivileged position within those communities from political attack from radicalcritics, to assert their right to be the true voice of Islam by denyinglegitimacy to such critics. They succeeded at least in part because secularliberals embraced them as the authentic voice of the Muslim community.
Far from mutually limiting the extent to which we subject each others' beliefsto criticism, we have to recognize that in a plural society it is bothinevitable and important that people offend others. Inevitable, because wheredifferent beliefs are deeply held, clashes are unavoidable. And we should dealwith those clashes in the open rather than suppress them. Important because anykind of social progress requires one to offend some deeply held sensibilities.'If liberty means anything', as George Orwell once put it, 'it means the rightto tell people what they do not want to hear'.
The trouble with multicultural censorship, and self-censorship, is not just thatit silences dissenting voices. It is also that it often creates the veryproblems to which it is supposedly a response. Take the furore over TheJewel of Medina. Not a single Muslim had objected before Random Housepulled the book. It is quite possible that none would have had the publishersgone ahead as planned. But once Random House had made an issue of the book'soffensiveness, then it was inevitable that some Muslims at least would feeloffended.
The problem was exacerbated by the actions of Denise Spellberg. Not only did shedescribe the novel as a 'very ugly stupid piece of work' that amounted to 'softcorepornography', she also went out of her way to draw attention to the book amongsections of the Muslim community. In April she informed Shahed Amanullah, aguest lecturer on one of her courses and an editor of a popular Muslim website,about a new book that 'made fun of Muslims and the their history'. Amanullahsent emails to various student forums claiming that he had 'just got a franticcall from a professor who got an advanced copy of the forthcoming novel Jewelof Medina - she said she found it incredibly offensive'. It was almost asif Spellberg was trying to incite a controversy.
Amanullah himself has insisted that The Jewel of Medina should not bewithdrawn and has pointed out that 'no one has the absolute right not to beoffended, nor does anyone have the right to live without the uncomfortableopinions of others'. 'We all need to develop thicker skins, more open minds, anda common understanding of the principles of free speech', he suggested. But bythen the damage had already been done.
'I am disgusted by the inflammatory language Denise Spellberg used' to describethe book, Sherry Jones told me. 'If Random House had simply published my book',she added, 'I don't think there would have been any trouble. The real problem isnot that Muslims are offended but that people think they will be. It is a veiledform of racism to assume that all Muslims would be offended and that an offendedMuslim would be a violent Muslim.'
On Friday 26 September, just weeks before Gibson Square was due to publish TheJewel of Medina in Britain, the publishers’ London headquarters werefirebombed. By an eerie coincidence the attack took place 20 years to the dayafter The Satanic Verses had originally been published. Whether theperpetrators knew the significance of the date no one knows. Nor is it possibleto know whether such an attack would have happened had Random House simply goneahead with publication without any fuss. There will always be extremists whorespond as the Gibson Square firebombers did. There is little we can do aboutthem. The real problem is that their actions are given a spurious legitimacy byliberals who proclaim it morally unacceptable to give offence and are terrifiedat the thought of doing so.
Shabbir Akhtar was right: what Salman Rushdie or Sherry Jones says iseverybody's business. It is everybody's business to ensure that no one isdeprived of their right to say what they wish, even if it is deemed by some tobe offensive. If we want the pleasures of pluralism, we have to accept the painof being offended. Twenty years on from the Rushdie affair, it is time we learntthis lesson.
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Kenan Malik is aFellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Department ofPolitical, International and Policy Studies at the University of Surrey, apanellist on the BBC's Moral Maze and presenter of Analysis, BBCRadio 4's current affairs strand. His next book, From Fatwa to Jihad: TheRushdie Affair and its Legacy, is due to be published by Atlantic books inApril.
