Salman Rushdie got knighted over the weekend: he’s now Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie.
Predictably, government officials in Pakistan and Iran have come out against honouring the “blaspheming” “apostate” Rushdie. It’s a brand of foaming at the mouth that we’re all too familiar with at this point; in a sense, the hostile fundamentalist reaction validates the strong secularist stance that Rushdie has taken since his reemergence from Fatwa-induced semi-seclusion in 1998. (If these people are burning your effigy, you must be doing something right.)
But actually, there’s another issue I wanted to mention that isn’t getting talked about much in the coverage of Rushdie’s knighthood, which is the fact that Rushdie wasn’t always a “safe” figure for British government officials. In the early 1980s in particular, and throughout the Margaret Thatcher era, Rushdie was known mainly as a critic of the British establishment, not a member. The main issue for Rushdie then was British racism, and he did not mince words in condemning it as well as the people who tolerated it.
This morning I was briefly looking over some of Rushdie’s essays from the 1980s. Some of the strongest work exoriated the policies of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and indicted the pervasiveness of “institutionalized racism” in British society. Two essays in particular stand out, “The New Empire Within Britain,” and “Home Front.” Both are published in Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991. (Another great essay from that collection is “Outside the Whale” — required reading, though on a slightly different topic. And see this NYT review of the collection as a whole from 1991.)Here is a long quote from “The New Empire Within Britain” (1982):
[L]et me quote from Margaret Thatcher’s speech at Cheltneham on the third of July, her famous victory address: ‘We have learned something about ourselves, a lesson we desperately need to learn. When we started out, there were the waverers and the fainthears . . . The people who thought we could no longer do the great things which we once did . . . that we could never again be what we were. Ther were those who would not admit it . . . but–in their heart of hearts–they too had their secret fears that it was true: that Britain was no longer the nation that had built an Empire and ruled a quarter of the world. Well, they were wrong.’
There are several interesting aspects to this speech. Remember that it was made by a triumphant Prime Minister at the peak of her popuolarity; a Prime Minister who could claim with complete credibility to be speaking for an overwhelming majority of the elctorate, and who, as even her detractors must admit, has a considerable gift for assessing the national mood. Now if such a leader at such a time felt able to invoke the spirit of imperialism, it was because she knew how central that spirit is to the self-image of white Britons of all classes. I say white Britons because it’s clear that Mrs Thatcher wasn’t addressing the two million or so blacks, who don’t feel quite like that about the Empire. So even her use of the word ‘we’ was an act of racial exclusion, like her other well-known speech about the fear of being ‘swamped’ by immigrants. With such leaders, it’s not surprising that the British are slow to learn the real lessons of their past.
Let me repeat what I said at the beginning: Britain isn’t Nazi Germany. The British Empire isn’t the Third Reich. But in Germany, after the fall of Hitler, heroic attempts were made by many people to purify German though and the German language of the pollution of Nazism. Such acts of cleansing are occasionally necessary in every society. But British thought, British society, has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism. It’s still there, breeding lice and vermin, waiting for unscrupulous people to exploit it for their own ends. (Read the whole thing)
That was Rushdie in 1982: “British society has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism.” And it’s by no means the only strong statement he makes about racism and imperialism in “The New Empire Within Britain”; he also goes after the legal system, the police, and the clearly racist quotas the British had enacted in the immigration policy to reduce the number of black and brown immigrants coming to Britain from former colonies.
If we compare Rushdie in 1982 to Rushdie today, it’s clear that the man has changed quite a bit — but it also has to be acknowledged that British society has itself been transformed, perhaps even more radically. Organizations like the National Front are nowhere near as influential as they were in the early 1980s, and a decade of the Labour Party and Tony Blair have changed the political picture for good. But more than anything, what seems different is the way racialized difference (Blacks and Asians vs. the white majority) has been displaced by the religious difference as the most contentious issue of the day. One you move the debate from race to religion, the parameters for who gets seen as an “outsider” and who becomes an “insider” look quite different.
Rezia,
You seem to underestimate the effect of the Iranian fatwa. There were quite a few more fatwas issued in support this Iranian fatwa in India and Pakistan (which got the book banned in India). I suspect similar fatwas were issued in other Muslim countries also after the Iranian fatwa.
Your question seems to be that how can free speech venerating Amardeep & others admire Rushdie?
One should be able to voice their opinions as long as there is no physical harm and others can criticize person right back. But no one should have the right to impose ones opinions on others through violence. And that is what Muslims (or most visible of them) are trying to do. And Rushdie was a highly visible symbol of those who stood against this physical intimidation (regardless of whether his opinions are respected or correct or his motives about writing offensive work). So that is why I admire Rushdie (apart from his literary work).
Rushdie is of Kashmiri descent. He says as much somewhere, perhaps in Imaginary Homelands And Amardeep, having read the book, I understand that Rushdie is attempting to tackle the grand narrative of islam; however, at times what comes through is a prejudice in favor of the Orientalist’s narrative of Islam, rather than a thorough going deconstruction that is both anti-racist in regards to the Western characterizations of Islam and its prophet and opening up of different possibilities of Islamic interpretation. One of the obvious strategies that Rushdie uses both to situate his novel within the context of the West and to parody its tropes is to refer to Muhammad as Mahound. This has parallels of course to homosexuals referring to themselves as “queers” as a way of appropriating the negative and both mocking the power structure that marginalizes such minorities and celebrating the radical alterity of this outside position. Similarly African-Americans have been referring to themselves as “niggah” as a way of demarcating their outsider status while affixing its positionality (whereas in the mouths of Southern Whites it was a means of disappearance and dehumanization) though a signification of recognition. However, just as when a white man occasionally refers to a black person as a “niggah” and a sense of its usage from the the Old South comes through, so too does Rushdie’s appellation of Muhammad as Mahound in the novel comes through as less as an act of love (perhaps one does not need to love one’s characters in one’s novels) than an act of sneering condescension in the Old European sense. It is apropos that Rushdie was knighted; he has (in interviews) spoken with reverence and an inkling of mysticism of cathedrals; I don’t recall having him, either in interviews, or his narrator in the Satanic Verses speak of the desolation of the desert or the spaces of a mosque as suggestive of the sublime. I believe in “Imaginary Homelands” Rushdie writes of V. S. Naipaul who wrote the “The Enigma of Arrival” and disapprovingly. I suppose too now that Rushdie has resolved the riddle that Naipaul spoke of in his novel. Bravo, Salman, you’ve made it. Congrats!
BTW, guys a lot of anti-Islamic/ anti muslim sentiments here. Whatever happened to that good old political correctness? I am nostalgic.
ak, I think this is easier to say when there are not physical repercussions for that ignorance. I also find that sometimes people are disrespectful because they are ignorant. (again, broadly, not Rushdie-specific) All that said, I can understand the frustration over the promotion of anti-Islam writings, etc. I think the difficulty is that there is not a market or distribution for a lot of alternative views that would be considered more “moderate” or “pro-Islam” (but not necessarily extreme). Given that anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic sentiment (or fundamental misunderstandings of the teachings of Islam or politics of specific regions) underlies a lot of hate violence in the West and foreign policy, I think it is fair to question and challenge these misconceptions or misrepresentations.
Camille:
Do you think it possible that one can legitimately be anti-Vaisnava or anti-Shaiva? Anti-Christianity? Do you think there is any purpose to ‘anti-X’ polemics? I can only speak about the traditions I know best–the various Hindu ones–but inter-tradition polemics, employing both reason and ridicule (sometimes more of one than the other, of course) were key to the development of those traditions.
And not just the ‘religious’ darshanas, but philosophy in the ‘technical’ sense: The ever-increasing sophistication of Indian epistemology, for example, is owed in no small measure to vigorous intra- and inter-tradition polemics. I would argue that free speech doctrine is valuable precisely for ensuring the possibility of vigorous, polemical debate. I very much regret the ever-increasing competitive intolerance (a phrase Nitin Pai of The Acorn blog coined) in both India and elsewhere.
Btw, for those who are interested, Mr. Rushdie’s maternal grandparents were Kashmiri.
Regards, Kumar
Yes, Rushdie is Kashmiri.
He was on NPR a year or so ago, and he talked of Kashmir at great length.
camille,
i really don’t get what you are saying. i have no problem with people denouncing or yelling at me. i certainly don’t send a lawyer to sue all the people who have accused me of being a racist, a sand nigger, islamist or an islamophobe (the last i glory in, i don’t like islam and most muslims). people can say what they want. who is disagreeing with this? muslims seem to think their silly superstition should be protected from insult. why? in much of the world silly superstitions, whether muslim, christian, hindu, jewish, etc. are protected from blasphemy (on occasion on pain of death). how about a little space for those of us who get tired of the supernatural idolatry and want to air our opinion? does our existence and our opinion constitute a violation against the sensitivities of our fellow citizens?
look, i think it should be legal for you to accuse anyone’s mother of being a whore. that’s free speech. if someone beats the crap out of you, that should be illegal, though in common law i assume there will be mitigating circumstances. that’s free speech, and consequences. you call a person’s mother a whore, expect the consequences. take the law into your account, expect the consequences. that being said, even if a man or woman’s mother is a whore it is often polite not to bring this up, that’s human decency. if this thread were about the fact that muslims in rwanda often sheltered tutsis and refused to participate in the genocide and were not suborned like the catholic church in what happened in that nation (see here), i certainly wouldn’t be vocal in my anti-islamic opinions. there’s a time and place for everything. there’s the good and the bad in everything. in this case we are discussing the knighthood of man who was threatened with death by believers in the muslim religion for insulting their religion. in this case the context justifies calling a whore a whore. that’s free speech.
(though this is private property, so deletion of this comment wouldn’t constitute censorship in my books)
Nice post, Amardeep. I had no idea about Rushdie’s position on racism, etc. But he still was always my hero for putting an end to Mulk Raj Anand/Anita Desai’s dead-serious-now-we-are-talking-third-world style of writing. His inventiveness in Midnight’s Children is truly breathtaking, and I can only imagine what it must have felt like in 1981 to the first readers of the book.
I believe Rushdie commented once that only after conquering the english language can we truly claim our freedom. I am not sure what to make of his comment: but the OBE title certainly makes it ironic. In any case, anti-colonial protests suddenly seem so 20th century. Indian writing in english has surely taken off, though a tad overhyped, but the future looks good. And midnight’s children is certainly a book, to use Rushdie’s own phrase, to start a dynasty on. 🙂
p.s. and just for the record, salman rushdie isn’t david duke. most muslims who i’ve talked to who actually read the satanic verses weren’t deathly offended (though some complained of his prose style).
Was fatwa limited to Iran, and their lackeys or a cultural phenomena? The answer is No. There was related violence in more than dozen countries.
Here is the timeline:
kush,
fatwa shatwa. who cares? the big issue isn’t that a man was threatened with death and that a price was put on his head and a major nation had to provide him with bodyguards. he was insensitive to the superstitions of 1 billion people. let’s keep our perspective, shall we?
Do you see David Duke or Mel Gibson’s father being given a knighthood though?
I can’t believe you are comparing Rushdie to Duke or Gibson. It makes no sense in my book.
One should be able to voice their opinions as long as there is no physical harm and others can criticize person right back. But no one should have the right to impose ones opinions on others through violence. And that is what Muslims (or most visible of them) are trying to do. And Rushdie was a highly visible symbol of those who stood against this physical intimidation (regardless of whether his opinions are respected or correct or his motives about writing offensive work). So that is why I admire Rushdie (apart from his literary work).
Well said; And Midnight’s Children is amazing.
BTW, I just happened to read “Midnight’s Children” and “Satanic verses”. I don’t like his style. I liked the novel in parts and somehow it did not compel me to lose sleep and continue reading. And people who know nothing about Islam (history and how it got started) would not find anything wrong with “Satanic Verses”. And even for Muslims I’m surprised by the violent reactions, it is not a direct attack on their religion, he uses the fictional characters to insinuate, not like Ambedkar’s “Riddles of Hinduism” / the various DK folks’ works that directly attack and ridicule Hindu Gods/Goddesses.
But he still was always my hero for putting an end to Mulk Raj Anand/Anita Desai’s dead-serious-now-we-are-talking-third-world style of writing. His inventiveness in Midnight’s Children is truly breathtaking, and I can only imagine what it must have felt like in 1981 to the first readers of the book.
Midnight’s Children was confirmation that it was normal to be an Indian and think in English. I wasn’t fluent in any language but English. I was the kid that moved from one city to the next every two years. I grew weary of re-reading existing Indian-English authors, like R.K.Narayan, by the time I hit high-school. Hindi authors were called Hindi authors, so too with the Tamil authors. To me the prefix Indian-English was almost as if they were not good enough. By the time I finished high school I realised they really were not good enough. Reading Midnight’s Children in college made me feel liberated. He described the environment we lived directly, well and without guilt.
Midnight’s Children was confirmation that it was normal to be an Indian and think in English. I wasn’t fluent in any language but English.
That’s an interesting, unique viewpoint for me – never thought about it from that perspective, having grown up in the US
Rezib,
Most Christians I know of are fully in favor of liberty. Baptists had a lot to do with probably the First Amendment, and definitely with the non-establishment of national churches in America. Part of this is a very strong committment to soul liberty, to democracy, to populism, and part of it is that Baptists break up churches over the color of the new carpet for the church so planning a nice efficient pogrom is just too hard for us.
But before you blame ‘supernatural idolators’ for all the evil in the world, just say this tongue twister a few dozen times about atheists—Mao Might Murder Megamillions, Stalin Slaughters,Slays,Starves, Kymer Color Red Kills Casually.
But before you blame ‘supernatural idolators’ for all the evil in the world
oh, i didn’t blame supernatural idolators for all the evil in the world. most evil is committed by supernatural idolators, but that’s because most people are supernatural idolaters.
in any case, don’t juke & jive with that baptist crap with me. yes, the baptist churches of the united states have a long history of defending separation of church & state going back to the days of thomas jefferson, but that was when they were a powerless evangelical sect on the margins of an anglican dominated colonial establishment. times change, the largest baptist denomination are the southern baptists and over the last generation they’ve turned away from their historic acceptance of the wall of separation (yes, i know the name richard land, don’t front) and some groups have even flirted with nasty dominionists. yes, christians are on average far friendlier to religious liberty than muslims, but that is a REALLY low standard. you’re basically asserting here that you’re smarter than the special ed kids, good for you!
now, speaking of data, from the future of religion by rodney stark & william bainbridge (1984):
the respondent feels “we should not allow missionaries from non-christian religions to spread their teachings in a christian community.”
41% of southern baptists said “yes” to this assertion in the early 1980s (see page 59, or look it up on amazon or google books). wow, that’s a lot of baptists in the early 80s giving muslims a run for their $. let’s hope things have changed.
Rezia: So what is the point of it? “Free speech is free speech”? How enlightening! I’m sure it took a great of brilliance to come with that.
It didn’t take much brilliance to come up with that, but apparently it takes a lot of brilliance to understand a fairly simple concept.
Perhaps you also think Aristotle wasn’t that “articulate” when he said “A is A”, after all how “enlightening” can that simple statement be.
Rezia:What is the purpose of free speech when you really think about it? What makes it worth having? To say “Yep it’s there and we like it and we MUST have it even, and especially if it is offensive” does not address anything at all
I have a right to do anything I please as long as it doesn’t infringe on someone else’s rights. My right to swing my fist stops where your nose begins, not anywhere else.
My right to free speech isn’t limited by a hypersensitive 19 year old’s ability to take offense to anything I have to say.
I would be like “meh…he looks like satan, would you want to look like satan?” I would ask. That always got them. It got them. They loved it.
But now! I can visit my homepage (BBC) because his face leers at me. Those eyebrows…he’s only missing a pitchfork and tail, I can’t bear it!
But whatever though…I think the queen totally has a face like a toad. The entire royal family is just unforgivably ugly, I think.
Rezia you seem consumed by everyone’s looks; anyways glad you can state what you want and not have to hideaway b/c of the danger of violence. I’m not Muslim, and to me Rushdie is brilliant and it’s great he’s got this honor. I can’t believe the suffering he must have gone through having to hide, just because some idiots are offended. I feel the same way about any fundamentalists who go about physically abusing or threatening abuse to others just because what they personally hold sacred isn’t something the rest of the world holds sacred.
having read some freedom of speech cases in the US law, I realize that freedom of speech can be restricted if it can cause immediate, physical violence….Rushdie writing a book is not that case – he isn’t in any holy site “leering” at the muslim imans. Thank god he can exercise his freedom and write his opinions and as many literary critiques find his work brilliant it is quite likely that he would win this award. I really don’t think the British govt is in anyway trying to taunt the Islamic beliefs – I’m sure the govt has better things to do want to try to do.
It’s unfortunate that these fundamentalists who got all in a huff b/c of Rushdie’s book, couldn’t get more pissed about the abject conditions that so many people live in in the Middle East and focus on that.
Let me revise your understanding of colonial America. Baptists got offered by the three dominant religious groups of the day “Hey, we three, and you Baptists as the still hefty but a lot smaller than us, will band together to make America a Four Established Church for the Nation society.” That doesn’t sound like a powerless group to me.
Baptists said ‘No.’ Soul liberty. Democratic voting in independent churches. Each believer is a priest who can go to God personally without a hierarchy, and can read the Bible himself and be guided by the Holy Spirit. A devotion to personal righteousness. Listen to those religious ideas, and you’ll, if you pay attention, hear an echo of the secular ideas that came from them that made America great.
To repeat, ‘most Christians are fully in favor of liberty.’ Let me add that Baptists seem to be at the head of the tolerance and liberty class. Its true that in that class the Islamofascists are the Special Ed children.
Or as Jerry Pournelle, hard SF author, and winner of some heavy duty awards, put it–
Christians are the most tolerant people in the current three way war. They are commanded to proslytize to all people, but its up to the person what he does with the Truth.
Islamists want you to pay jizya, take second-class status, and submit to their overlordship.
Its only the atheists who don’t have any real tolerance for any other point of view.
Now, Rezib, this is not directed directly at you. There are obviously people in all the groups who are tolerant and reasonable just as there are those who are tyrants. But I do think Pournelle is probably right. In a Christian world, Islamists and Atheists get along, and have the horror of seeing a Nativity scene. In an Islamic world, Christians have to pay extra taxes, get beaten, abused in court as their testimony is legally less valuable, etc.. and Atheists…well, they make fine target practise. In an Atheist world, Christians and Islamics get strapped down to ‘adjustment devices’ and brainwashed with drugs and pain because they are obviously insane and need to be ‘treated’, or just have really large bombs dropped on their cities until they float away on the morning breeze.
Its interesting that you see atheists saying ‘teach your child creationism is child abuse’, and one of the most famed people who thought bombing the Palestinians into a genocide was a good idea was an atheist.
I’m pretty sure most Baptists would hate having foreign missionaries come to historic Christian nations, and try to win them over to Hinduism or something, but y’know Jehovah’s Witnesses bike around the nation all the time spreading what Baptists would classify as a heresy, and yet, I don’t read many, well none, actually, of Mad Baptist Busdrivers and Soccer Moms out running down Jehovah’s Witnesses with their SUV’s of Doom. Must be that I’m not reading enough news….I’m sure its happening somewhere.
What? Haven’t they read Beyond Belief? Never heard of a Muslim complaining about Naipaul. But then having a select audience does have some pros 😉
TennWriter, I don’t think it is part of the commandments of the Atheist Bible to convert everybody in the world to their point of view. Be it by sweet-talking, persuasion, coercion, or threat.
How did you come to that conclusion? Atheists argue that religion shouldn’t have any more or less say than any other organization or belief or idea in a secular society such as America.
Yes a person can have liberty as long as people accept Jesus as their savior and lord.
I meant “Yes a person can have liberty as long as he accepts Jesus as the savior and lord.”
In an Islamic world, Christians have to pay extra taxes, get beaten, abused in court as their testimony is legally less valuable, etc
In how many Muslim majority nations do Christians have to pay extra taxes?
Muslims did tax Christians for being Christans. It was one reason for the famous “tolerance” they exhibited–non-Muslims were taxed for being non-Muslim. Christians did something similar to Jews in some countries, which James Michener describes in The Source, in the chapter focussing on the Italian ghetto. I did a bit of googling about Muslims and taxation and found http://www.jrnyquist.com/may14/balkan_boys.htm. It is about Balkan boys who becamse soldiers in the Ottoman empire, not a career trajectory they chose willingly but which often brought considerable rewards. It is not a pedophile site, so don’t worry. Muslims had a presence in the southwest of Europe and also the southeast. Muslim ruling presence in the southwest ended with Ferdinand and Isabella, who expelled them along with the Jewish population that refused to convert. On the Southeastern European, Muslim domination did not end till the 20th century, but there was little conflict between them and christians. After all, Indias own Mother Theresa came from Albania and recalled the commingling of Muslim and Christian in her village.
Rahul,
Soul Liberty. My Bible does not command conversion by sword, not that I’m aware of anyways.
I believe the rationalization for atheists goes like this–these religious people are dangerous, actually obviously insane,
and likely to cause troublethe source of most evil in the world by their insanity, and they need to be dealt with. Its us or them (which is how I hear the whole Bosnia complete mess got started.)I think Richard Dawkins said that teaching creationism was child abuse. And you know what you do about child abuse…call the police, arrest the parents, take the kid…
It might have been in Eon by one of the Killer B’s (Benford??, Bear…) Hard SF writers that had his heroes drop a virus on the planet Earth that cured everyone of insanity–aka religiousness. Another major SF novel, the name escapes me, had an Enlightenment Point where Humanity finally understood the Universe and realized God did not exist, and created itself (nice burst of total illogic at the end there). Nine million or so humans could not accept this revelation which was forced on them, and committed suicide. The rest became atheists.
Yup, those sure are tolerant people.
I think the real reason is the will to power, and the hatred of God. Or as Huxley author of Brave New World explained that he became an atheist not out of reason, but as part of a program of personal and political liberation.
Circus, Um, what does Henry Ford, an admittedly fascinating if very flawed individual have to do with this arguement?
Chutiya, Its called jizya.
If you like freedom, thank a Baptist or a soldier. To make it extra easy, they are frequently the same person.
TennWriter, I did not say conversion by sword. I said Be it by sweet-talking, persuasion, coercion, or threat. And I am quoting you directly when I say: They are commanded to proslytize to all people. And way to throw some Bosnia canard in there! Should I mention how Bush called the war in Iraq a crusade? Surely, he didn’t mean it just as a word?
Listen, I don’t care if other people are religious. I also don’t care (mostly) if religious people think I am a bad person/evil/will go to some imaginary hot place, as long as they do not let their thoughts affect the rules or actions in the public sphere. I do care when religious people get in my face, and keep asking me to change my ways instead of just minding their own goddamned business. This is a fundamental difference between atheists and religious people. I believe this is where a lot of Razib’s ire comes from (but can’t vouch for it), and I fully sympathize with it, having been on the receiving end of this kind of bigotry/idiocy myself.
I didn’t realize that the supreme leader for atheists were hard SF writers. Or Richard Dawkins. Moreover, any dogma they preach is not a binding call to action or behavior by all atheists. If you are going to judge the tolerance of atheism by some hard SF writers, I can play the same game with religious people. Whom do you want me to pick? Fred Phelps? James Dobson? William Donohue? Those Southern Baptists who said it’s a wife’s duty to obey her husband? Pick any one and we can go. That gets us nowhere quite fast.
As for the arguments for the existence of God, I haven’t met one that I’d trust as far as I could throw it. I’m not going to go there though, if you really care enough to inform yourself of those arguments, you can read a thoughtful book like “The Miracle of Theism” by Mackie.
So, what’s wrong with personal and political liberation again?
No relation except for the quote “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black”
Hi razib and Kumar,
I was not arguing against free speech. I was just validating a portion of Rezia’s argument re: whether or not it seems logical to take offense to Rushdie’s being knighted, and whether such offense is a critique of “free speech” or a critique of Rushdie’s work. I would say the latter for those middle-of-the-road folks who don’t fall in Kush’s 8-mile long list but who take issue with TSV. I’m too tired to write up something more sophisticated or cogent. The point behind all my free speech babbling was that I think there are a lot of legit questions different people can ask of this knighthood, and many of the questions I find interesting I’ve already written.
i understand that this is popular but who really wants to read Asimov when they’ve got much more interesting selections, like China Mieville, on the wall or even a somewhat apocalyptic writer like Herbert (the senior) who characterizes religion in a bit more believable way?
how even can any exchange be between someone living in desperate poverty and a missionary visiting from the developed world? Even with the best of intentions and no observable Kipling complex any conversation between a material have-not and a missionary who’s grown up with those material goods will mask the have-not’s true ambition–to leave poverty and find financial security (as a Christian, Muslim, Hindu etc. although not all of those are missionistic religions and do not proselytize in equal numbers)
even the brown missionary, perhaps visiting an area that he/she’s known about intllectually for a long time, is capable of running the same bait-and-switch with no visible mental turmoil/conflict. It’s as if class is magically sublimated from the poverty matrix–then the missionary can feel truly altruistic and shed the inconvenient baggage of colonial master.
Muslims did tax Christians for being Christans. Chutiya, Its called jizya.
Yes, I am aware of that and my question to you is that is there any Muslim majority nation which imposes jizya on its Christian minorities? The operative word of course being is there and not was there.
Right, it was in the past..
From wiki,
But thinking about it the countries that now call itself as “Islamic” (with significant minority non-Muslims, like Malaysia (40% non-Muslims), Bangladesh (10% ??) ) participating in OIC( Organization of Islamic Countries) and spending tax money on pan Islamic activities that has no bearing on its non-Muslim minorities could be called as “indirect jaziya” ?? ..
A group of clerics, the Pakistan Ulema Council, has given bin Laden the title ‘Saifullah’, or sword of Allah, in response to the honour for Rushdie, the council’s chairman said on Thursday. “If a blasphemer can be given the title ‘Sir’ by the West despite the fact he’s hurt the feelings of Muslims, then a mujahid who has been fighting for Islam against the Russians, Americans and British must be given the lofty title of Islam, Saifullah,” the chairman, Tahir Ashrafi, told Reuters. Bin Laden was one of many Arabs who helped Afghan guerrillas battle Soviet invaders in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2007-06-21T185558Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_India-304169-2.xml
Reacting to free speech without violence, doesn’t come naturally to people. A well traveled, and well educated person might not react to a verbal insult with physical violence, but the not so-sophisticated types, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, might easily take that to heart and is more prone to react to that with physical violence.. especially so when there is a pervasive feeling that they are being slighted at every opportunity!
On another note, I expected Salman Rushdie to reject an award by a monarch..
Not true in all cases. As an example we have had in Tamilnadu, India a movement called the self-respect movement, whose leader in the 1960s (or 50s) broke the statues of “lord vinayaka” in public, and decorated “lord rama” with a garland of “chappals” etc..etc.. and if you read the DK (Dravidar kazhagam) literature as it is called it is full of “direct and offensive” articles against Hindu gods/goddesses and the literature is well propagated. And this is in a state where more than 90% call themselves some sort of Hindus and in 60s not fully literate / sophisticated. There was literally no violence against the persons concerned and in fact they have been given the power to rule (in one form or another) over the last 40 years and the leader E.V.Ramasamy is praised and decorated as “Periyar”. Even Mayawati who recently won the elections in UP dedicated her victory to various leaders and that included ‘Periyar”.
Ponniyin Selvan:
I think your analogy is not a good one.
The ethos of the 50s was different from now. There was a sincere effort to practice tolerance. Rajaji was still highly regarded. Whenever Periyar raised a controversy, Rajaji helped to bring down the temperature. Moreover Periyar was seen as somebody challenging the brahmins. Even activities like garlanding Lord Vinayaka with slippers was seen as a challenge to the brahmins. Even today, many people ask why the DK never interferes in mosques, churches, gurudwaras, jain temples, Hindu temples with non-brahmin priests.
I don’t think so. It was in response to
race/ethnicity/religion could matter when some behaviors are seen to be more normative within that particular group than others.
Why is it that religion (the thing that millions of people hold so very very dear to thier lives, the thing that allows them spirituality) can be insulted in any way, and when offense is taken by the faithful (as it MUST be) it is characterized as “foaming at the mouth”?
I think it’s the calls for Rushdie’s death and suicide bombings that are (accurately) characterized as “foaming at the mouth”. Noting the Shiv Sena’s reaction to “The Moor’s Last Sigh” and the unofficial ban on the book in India, it’s fair to say that such intolerance of free speech isn’t peculiar to any religion.
Can one not be moderate and still find the beauty of traditional religion moving? Is it required that a moderate person not be offended by attacks on thier religion, by misrepresentations?
It’s required, I think, that a moderate person refrain from responding to another’s stated views with violence and threats of violence.
PS, “Rezia you seem consumed by everyone’s looks; anyways glad you can state what you want and not have to hideaway b/c of the danger of violence“
Whatever, it’s the arrogance of youth and beauty, and I really couldn’t care less to be honest. The queen does look like a great toad.
Vinter and the rest of you A is A people, Maybe it’s a good idea to oversimplify these comlex issues to your cute little buzzwords…it probably is less taxing for your dimunitive IQs than to contemplate complex things.
“I have a right to do anything I please as long as it doesn’t infringe on someone else’s rights. My right to swing my fist stops where your nose begins, not anywhere else.
My right to free speech isn’t limited by a hypersensitive 19 year old’s ability to take offense to anything I have to say.”
Really, Vinter? Does that mean my right to free speech entitles me to tell you to go play with your family jewels? I’m guessing your nose doesn’t begin there… And don’t call me hypersensitive.
PS. Moderators, please don’t delete me…I’m illustrating a point.
The ban (which was temporary) was because of fear of violence due to a caricature of Bal Thackeray in the book, who is not a hindu religious figure by any standards. Similarly, the James Laine issue was a result of a perceived insult to Shivaji, another non-religious figure. Hinduism != hindutva. The latter is a different and surprising secular reading of history which treats hindus as a homogeneous ethnic community with a distinct identity. Its kind of like Hitler’s insistence that jews were a race and not just followers of a certain religion.
I am not saying this just to make the standard argument that apologists for most religions make whenever they see a flaw with their** religion: ‘that is not really what our religion is about. This is a flaw that crept in due to xyz reasons’. There are many problems with hinduism (caste, untouchability), but intolerance is not one of them. And confusing hinduism with hindutva might actually make it one. If we say that hinduism is the same as hindutva, I am afraid the average hindu might actually end up seeing those loons as part of hinduism: just a more hardline part. I do not want hindutva to get that kind of acceptance.
** I am an atheist, but I’d admit I have a certain amount of cultural attachment with hinduism: I don’t believe in the six million gods, but I think they are kind of cute.
Sorry about the threadjack.
Rezia, if you don’t want to be deleted, quit implying that other people are stupid because they disagree with you (#291), and quit telling people to “go play with their family jewels” (#292). Deleting comments where people engage in name-calling is a no-brainer for us.
Free speech is essential legally. No one should be imprisoned or killed for what they say or write. If you don’t have that freedom, everything else crumbles. (Read Orwell’s “1984” to see what I mean) Here the people who say “free speech = free speech” are absolutely correct.
But obviously, even in a free society particular environments have different norms of acceptability — often dictated by the rules of the free market. News organizations in the U.S., for instance, generally don’t allow people to make bigoted statements because they want the broadest possible viewership. If NBC allows Don Imus to say whatever he wants about black women, they will lose sponsors and possibly viewers. “Private” self-censorship is a way of managing hateful speech in the mainstream arena. For the most part, it works (though it’s true that Fox News gets away with a lot of things that I personally find offensive).
The question with Rushdie shouldn’t be about free speech vs. censorship at the legal level, it should be about whether or not the novel constitutes “hate speech” that a mainstream publisher would not want to be associated with for commercial/reputation reasons. For some readers the novel might reach that point — but for most people, it doesn’t.
The novel really is — and again, I would encourage you to actually read it cover to cover — a critique of fundamentalisms (including Sikh, Hindu, and Christian varieties as well as Muslim), not a manifesto “against Islam.”
I dont think a lot of countries in the ME like Iran and Egypt make such a legal distinction. free speech is not so enshrined out there. say something against !slam, your toast…
not sure about egypt. they r secular. iran though…
Puliogre,
I dont think a lot of countries in the ME like Iran and Egypt make such a legal distinction. free speech is not so enshrined out there. say something against !slam, your toast…
Yes, well Iran at least is not even remotely a free society. Egypt might come a little closer, but they routinely arrest bloggers and journalists even if they make the smallest of criticisms of the government. From what little I know, I would not call it a free society either.
In an ideal world, it would be up to publishers and bookstores to decide whether to sell a possibly controversial or offensive book — in other words, whatever limits on freedom of speech there are should only be private.
>
No one should be imprisoned or killed for what they write? When did I imply that they should be? You’re just taking this fatwa and running with it. The fatwa really was more of a token thing from Iran, where I don’t think Rushdie ever lived. Yes a lot of sheiks, and probably a lot of muslims agreed with the fatwa, but that is something that a non-muslim, or non-religious person would never understand. I’ll try to explain it but it might be a bit beyond you (if you’re non-religious). Rushdie wrote filthy things about the prophet (SAW); now don’t tell me he did not, it is really entirely known that he did. To practising muslims the prophet (SAW) is dearer than one’s own parents. This might be ridiculous to you, but it is the basis of the faith of 1.5 million people and you can’t just dismiss this out of hand. OK, so that is why the offense was taken in the first place: it’s analogous to someone saying filthy things about someone’s parents. You may not see it that way, but that’s the way it is. It need not be a manifesto against Islam for it to be offensive. Don Imus didn’t spew a manifesto against africans.
Now, that was many, many years ago…if you had asked about Rushdie a month ago, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Most people had stopped caring about this issue a long time ago. But this knighthood does rake up the past. It seems to be a move to court diplomatic distress. Rushdie may be persona non grata to most muslims but to honour him in this way rankles. It’s like if Rudyard Kipling or Joseph Conrad were living today and were honoured in this way, I’m sure many Indians and Africans would not be exactly blissfully happy. And please, enough with the “it’s just an arachaic relic of an award”…that is SO irrelevant.
Don’t you mean you think that those people are correct?
Ooooops totally stupid way to post. This is what it SHOULD look like:
“Free speech is essential legally. No one should be imprisoned or killed for what they say or write. If you don’t have that freedom, everything else crumbles. (Read Orwell’s “1984” to see what I mean) Here the people who say “free speech = free speech” are absolutely correct.” “
No one should be imprisoned or killed for what they write? When did I imply that they should be? You’re just taking this fatwa and running with it. The fatwa really was more of a token thing from Iran, where I don’t think Rushdie ever lived. Yes a lot of sheiks, and probably a lot of muslims agreed with the fatwa, but that is something that a non-muslim, or non-religious person would never understand. I’ll try to explain it but it might be a bit beyond you (if you’re non-religious). Rushdie wrote filthy things about the prophet (SAW); now don’t tell me he did not, it is really entirely known that he did. To practising muslims the prophet (SAW) is dearer than one’s own parents. This might be ridiculous to you, but it is the basis of the faith of 1.5 million people and you can’t just dismiss this out of hand. OK, so that is why the offense was taken in the first place: it’s analogous to someone saying filthy things about someone’s parents. You may not see it that way, but that’s the way it is. It need not be a manifesto against Islam for it to be offensive. Don Imus didn’t spew a manifesto against africans.
Now, that was many, many years ago…if you had asked about Rushdie a month ago, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Most people had stopped caring about this issue a long time ago. But this knighthood does rake up the past. It seems to be a move to court diplomatic distress. Rushdie may be persona non grata to most muslims but to honour him in this way rankles. It’s like if Rudyard Kipling or Joseph Conrad were living today and were honoured in this way, I’m sure many Indians and Africans would not be exactly blissfully happy. And please, enough with the “it’s just an arachaic relic of an award”…that is SO irrelevant.
“Here the people who say “free speech = free speech” are absolutely correct.”
Don’t you mean you think that those people are correct?