The attack on Rushdie is an attack on those who speak out against all forms of extremism
The attack on Rushdie is an attack on those who speak out against all forms of extremism
Salman Rushdie has lived in the shadows After his fourth novel, Death Threat from 1989, The Satanic Verses (1988) led Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa against the author for insulting Islam, the Prophet and the Qur’an. The supernatural order multiplied the danger for the author, and although the motive is still unknown, last Friday, 75-year-old Rushdie was stabbed multiple times At a literary festival in New York. He is off the ventilator, but, according to his son, his condition remains critical. Over the years, other people have also faced violence over the novel. People have been killed in riots, blasts, firing against the book; Their Japanese, Norwegian and Italian translators were targeted; A bomb killed the person who was trying to set it off. Rushdie went into hiding for nine years, where he burned his weapon of choice – words. He has spoken of the language of truth, upholding the freedom of art and intellect and asserting ideals of democracy such as the right to dissent in his 14 novels and several scathing essays. In fact, under the covers, assuming the nom de guerre Joseph Anton (inspired by the wanderer in Conrad, and Chekov’s sadness, the title of his 2012 memoir), he wrote Aaron and the Sea of StoriesA book she had promised to write for her nine-year-old son.
for their Booker Prize winner midnight kids (1981), which reimagined India’s independence, had left the same safety nets as its literary inspirations, Gabriel García Márquez, Günter Grass and Nadine Gordimer. Rushdie found a new language for writing about India “hot and crowded and vulgar and loud”, shining a light for future writers like Arundhati Roy. The attack on Rushdie is also an attack against voices who speak out against extremism. Many writers, from MM Kalburgi, Gauri Lankesh to Anna Politkovskaya, have faced violence, some having paid with their lives to agitate people in a “culture of easy humiliation”. On the front lines, Rushdie has lived fully to the growing threat. “This new idea,” he writes in an essay entitled ‘Courage’ (Languages of Truth), “puts writers, scholars and artists who stand against conservatism or bigotry to be blamed for harassing people, even that is spreading rapidly even in countries like India. Once itself was proud of its independence.” Speak, he says, every little thing counts. Rushdie’s next novel, victory city, a translation of an epic, and a book about “the power and pride of those in power” is coming next February. But before a long recovery, a place of joy from the hospital: His son says that Rushdie has his usual spirited and defiant nature, and his sense of humor remains intact.