T A B L E+T A L K Another fatal schoolyard shooting, brought to you by the gun lobby. Join the discussion about the Kentucky school shooting in Headlines. D A I L Y+Q U O T E Harrison Ford: Oof! Right in the kisser R E C E N T L Y The great Arlington National Cemetery smear By Jonathan Broder When it comes to screwing Bill Clinton, nothing is sacred, not even the dead (12/03/97) A tale of two families By Earl Ofari Hutchinson Why is a white "miracle birth" a major news story and a black "miracle birth" a non-event? (12/02/97) America's Asian "Berlin Wall" has crumbled By Jonathan Broder Thanks to American Cold War politics, Asia has been fed a steady diet of undemocratic regimes and corrupt leaders (12/01/97) All in la familia By Barbara Renoud-Gonzales Drugs -- dealing, using, addiction -- are rampant in America's Latino families (11/26/97) Been there, Dunne that By Karen Grigsby Bates Dominick Dunne's gossipy, glittery O.J. "novel" only tells half the story (11/25/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		The ayatollah who came in from the cold page 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Le Carré returned to the fray, repeating his point about there being no "God-given" right to criticize monotheism free of charge. (Take away the unintentionally funny phrase "God-given" and Le Carré seems to be saying that there is no right to offend the religious at all.) And his old friend, journalist and author William Shawcross, contributed a whole column in which he said that if any book of his had led to such an explosion of violence, he would have asked for the paperback "to be put on hold, in the hope that passions would die before people." I wonder about that last bit. Shawcross wrote a fairly critical book about Henry Kissinger, "Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia," published in 1979. Had Kissinger threatened to have Shawcross killed, would he have felt that the proper response would be to limit the circulation of the offending book? And how would he react if people went around saying that, given Kissinger's murderous record, Shawcross had no right to be surprised at the treatment he was receiving? Shawcross is the chairman of Article 19, a British organization that combats censorship. The officers of its international board wrote a letter effectively disowning him and making the rather obvious point that: "It is not acceptable that Ayatollah Khomeini or his successors in the Iranian government should determine what works of fiction may be written or published internationally, in particular under the threat of extreme violence. To have delayed publication of the paperback would have meant acquiescing in terrorism." Of course, there have been victims. Several people were killed in riots led by supporters of the Ayatollah's line. Hitoshi Igarashi, Japanese translator of "The Satanic Verses," was murdered. Ettore Capriolo, the Italian translator, was severely wounded in another attack, as was William Nygaard, the Norwegian publisher. They all did what they did as volunteers, despite the fatwa. At least they have been spared the sneer that they, too, "knew what they were doing." The idea that these crimes are the responsibility of Salman Rushdie, on the face of it a thought too absurd and disgraceful to merit debate, is the logical inference to be drawn from the view of many supposed "intellectuals." On one level, Rushdie certainly knew what he was doing. There has been, for some time, an argument within Islam about the literal truth of the Koran and the fundamentalist application of its teachings. Men and women in the Islamic world risk their lives every day in the course of this debate. Many of them, including Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz -- himself the victim of a murderous assault by clerical fanatics -- have issued a volume titled "For Rushdie," in which they state that the affair of "The Satanic Verses" is the defining issue separating them from the dogmatists. Signatories include most of the writers worth reading in Iran, Palestine, Lebanon and Algeria. (And le Carré wrote that the friends of Rushdie operated from "armchair" positions of "colonial" safety ...) But, in deciding consciously to employ supposed holy writ for literary purposes, Rushdie could not possibly have predicted the fatwa. Nobody could have. The published view of the mullahs is that his novel is a co-production of international Zionism and various intelligence circles. How can you anticipate the thinking of minds like that? And why should anyone be asked to try to appease the self-evidently unappeasable? Even had he known, I would argue that Rushdie would have had every right to produce a blasphemous provocation if he so chose. I would also note that no other Islamic authority, political or religious, has endorsed the fatwa. To describe the death-threat ravings of a senile cleric as the view of the whole Islamic world is a none-too-subtle denigration of a great religion, offered by those who hypocritically claim to be extra "sensitive" to such insults. Most bizarre of all is the idea, put up by the supposed defenders of those "mailroom girls," that the safest course is to refuse to publish a paperback that mailroom girls could afford to buy. There was a time when the Bible was not supposed to be translated into the vernacular lest the profane rabble get hold of it and review it for themselves. William Tyndale was strangled and burned for his English edition of the holy scripture. Indeed, most landmark struggles for free speech have been against those foes who claim a divine warrant. In our time, "The Satanic Verses" happens to be the test case. It might not be the test case everyone would have picked, but it is the test case nonetheless. I am grateful to le Carré and to others who refuse to see this, for keeping the argument alive and for preventing it from becoming another pious mantra. SALON | Dec. 4, 1997 Christopher Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair.