Author: Salman Rushdie
Publication: The New York Times
Date: November 27, 2002
It's been quite a week in the wonderful
world of Islam.
Nigerian Islam's encounter with
that powerhouse of subversion, the Miss World contest, has been unedifying,
to put it mildly. First some of the contestants had the nerve to object
to a Shariah court's sentence that a Nigerian woman convicted of adultery
be stoned to death and threatened to boycott the contest - which forced
the Nigerian authorities to promise that the woman in question would not
be subjected to the lethal hail of rocks. And then Isioma Daniel, a Christian
Nigerian journalist, had the effrontery to suggest that if the prophet
Muhammad were around today, he might have wanted to marry one of these
swimsuit hussies himself.
Well, obviously, that was going
too far. True-believing Nigerian Muslims then set about the holy task of
killing, looting and burning while calling for Ms. Daniel to be beheaded,
and who could blame them? Not the president of Nigeria, who put the blame
squarely on the shoulders of the hapless journalist. (Germaine Greer and
other British-based feminists, unhappy about Miss World's decision to move
the event to London, preferred to grouse about the beauty contest. The
notion that the killers, looters and burners should be held accountable
seems to have escaped notice.)
Meanwhile, in the Islamic Republic
of Iran, Hashem Aghajari, a person with impeccable Islamist credentials
- a leg lost in battle and a résumé that includes being part
of the occupying force that seized the Great Satan's Tehran embassy back
in the revolution's salad days - languishes under a sentence of death imposed
because he criticized the mullahs who run the country. In Iran, you don't
even have to have cheeky thoughts about the prophet to be worthy of being
killed. The hearts of true believers are maddened a lot more easily than
that. Thousands of young people across the country were immature enough
to protest against Mr. Aghajari's sentence, for which the Supreme Leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, duly rebuked them. (More than 10,000 true believers
marched through Tehran in support of hard- line Islam.)
Meanwhile, in Egypt, a hit television
series, "Horseman Without a Horse," has been offering up anti-Semitic programming
to a huge, eager audience. That old forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion" - a document purporting to prove that there really is a secret
Jewish plot to take over the world, and which was proved long ago to have
been faked by Czar Nicholas II's secret police - is treated in this drama
series as historical fact.
Yes, this is the same Egypt in which
the media are rigorously censored to prevent anything that offends the
authorities from seeing the light of day. But hold on just a moment. Here's
the series' star and co-writer, Mohammed Sobhi, telling us that what is
at stake is nothing less than free speech itself, and if his lying show
"terrified Zionists," well, tough. He'll make more programs in the same
vein. Now there's a gutsy guy.
Finally, let's not forget the horrifying
story of the Dutch Muslim woman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has had to flee the
Netherlands because she said that Muslim men oppressed Muslim women, a
vile idea that so outraged Muslim men that they issued death threats against
her.
Is it unfair to bunch all these
different uglinesses together? Perhaps. But they do have something in common.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was accused of being "the Dutch Salman Rushdie," Mr. Aghajari
of being the Iranian version, Isioma Daniel of being the Nigerian incarnation
of the same demon.
A couple of months ago I said that
I detested the sloganization of my name by Islamists around the world.
I'm beginning to rethink that position. Maybe it's not so bad to be a Rushdie
among other "Rushdies." For the most part I'm comfortable with, and often
even proud of, the company I'm in.
Where, after all, is the Muslim
outrage at these events? As their ancient, deeply civilized culture of
love, art and philosophical reflection is hijacked by paranoiacs, racists,
liars, male supremacists, tyrants, fanatics and violence junkies, why are
they not screaming?
At least in Iran the students are
demonstrating. But where else in the Muslim world can one hear the voices
of the fair-minded, tolerant Muslim majority deploring what Nigerian, Egyptian,
Arab and Dutch Muslims are doing? Muslims in the West, too, seem unnaturally
silent on these topics. If you're yelling, we can't hear you.
If the moderate voices of Islam
cannot or will not insist on the modernization of their culture - and of
their faith as well - then it may be these so-called "Rushdies" who have
to do it for them. For every such individual who is vilified and oppressed,
two more, ten more, a thousand more will spring up. They will spring up
because you can't keep people's minds, feelings and needs in jail forever,
no matter how brutal your inquisitions. The Islamic world today is being
held prisoner, not by Western but by Islamic captors, who are fighting
to keep closed a world that a badly outnumbered few are trying to open.
As long as the majority remains silent, this will be a tough war to win.
But in the end, or so we must hope, someone will kick down that prison
door.
(Salman Rushdie is author, most
recently, of "Step Across This Line.")
