The Peace FAQ:

Blasphemy

Frequently Asked Questions:

• What is Blasphemy?
• What has been the punishment for Blasphemy in Islam?
• How did Muhammad set the example for the way Islam deals with dissenters and critics?
• Who is Salman Rushdie, what did he do, and what followed?
• Isn't it true that only the fundamentalists, like the Ayatollah, are guilty of such outragous behavior?
• What does the Rushdie episode teach us about Islam today?
• What does the Rushdie episode remind us of?
• Why should all of this concern me?
• What can we do to protect our own freedoms from the law of Islam?
• What was the reaction of Western democracies to this outrage?
• What was the reaction of other religious groups?

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What is Blasphemy?

• Absolute faith is the glue behind the powerful grip of cults, most organized religions and utopian ideologies in the world. The leadership stucture of those faiths desires, above all else, a large and committed following. At the risk of stating the obvious, reductions in the numbers and faith of their followers is the greatest threat. Threats to a faith include the existence of other perhaps more attractive faiths, and blasphemy. Blasphemy can include doubting the existence of a god, to questioning the word of a sacred text, to criticizing laws, statements, figures, actions within that text. Essentially, any statement or action which may challenge the faith of the protected religion can be considered Blasphemy. Authoritarian Edenistic faiths are usually highly protected. These include Christianity until the modern era, Islam at all times, Communism in the ex-USSR, China, Cuba, North Korea, etc...

  - The Society for Rational Peace

• Excerpts and examples to further illustrate what constitutes blasphemy in Islam

  by Abd al-Rahman Jaziri (Urdu translation)

  It is necessary to have evidence of two reliable witnesses corroborating each other before a Khazi (judge) shall be required to question the witnesses. Thereupon the witnesses will have to make statements describing the words uttered or the acts done which constitute apostasy.

  Apostasy can be committed in two ways: (1) by uttering expressly by tongue that he is (or has become) a Mushrik , a polytheist (i.e. one who associates others with the One God and considers them to be worthy of worship) or, by saying something which is bound to connote in its meaning a denial of the existence of God, for instance to say that God has corporeal (physical, material) existence just like any other corporeal object, or (2) by the performance of an act in which one cannot avoid the clear conclusion that it is tantamount to 'kufr' (infidelity, denial of Islam), for example, to throw away with contempt the holy Qur'an or any part of it or even a single word of it; or to throw it in the fire in an insulting, contemptuous manner; or to throw it in such a place as a garbage dump where there are filthy, dirty and repulsive things; or in a spittoon etc. These acts would be blasphemous and constitute apostasy.

  The same rules apply to the Most Beautiful Names of Allah as well as to books of Ahadith (Prophetic Traditions - i.e. records of the Prophet's sayings, doings and tacit approvals) and it would be considered blasphemy amounting to apostasy.

  The same rules apply to books of Fiqh (Muslim jurisprudence) provided the acts are done with the intention of defaming or belittling with contempt the Islamic injunctions or the Islamic code of law. This would be regarded as blasphemy/apostasy.

  Other examples of blasphemy/apostasy are:

  To believe in transmigration of souls or reincarnation because this amounts to rejecting the belief in life-after-death and the world of the Hereafter.

  To deny or reject something of which the whole Muslim Community (Ummah) is agreed upon, e.g. to hold that the obligatory ritual prayers or fasting are not obligatory or to deny legal permissibility (halal) of a thing on which the whole Muslim Community is agreed upon and which is definitely proven to be so on the basis of its proof from the holy Qur'an and Hadith mutawatir.

  To call names and use swear-words in respect of all such Messengers of God, Apostles, Prophets who are accepted as such by the whole Muslim Community.

  This same rule applies to angels.

  This same rule applies to angels and prophets with regard to fault-finding using taunting or derogatory or sarcastic language against them even in respect of their physical/bodily defects.

  To use sarcasm and belittling words in respect of the moral character or the way of life (religion) of the Prophet Muhammad or other prophets.

  - from 'Abd al-Rahman Jaziri, Urdu translation, Munzur Ahsan Abbasi, Kitab al-fiqh Ala' al-Madahib al-Arba'ah, Lahore, Pakistan, Ulama Academy, 1985

 

What has been the punishment for Blasphemy in Islam?

• Death.

• "The Prophet did not urge his followers to love their enemies or to turn the other cheek. The Prophet of Islam preached his message during a bloody and violent period in Arabian history. He waged holy war--jihad--upon his enemies, the polytheists of Mecca, before overcoming them with superior numbers and force. On occasions he behaved with utter ruthlessness towards his ideological opponents, like his former Jewish allies, the Banu Qurayza, whose males were massacred after the Battle of the Ditch (627 CE). The men--about 600 of them--were all beheaded, apart from those who converted to Islam; the women and children were sold into slavery." p. 48 "According to Ibn Taymiyya, anyone defaming the Prophet must be executed, whether he is a Muslim or not. There is disagreement among the experts about whether the blasphemer should be allowed to repent. Ibn Taymiyya comes down on the side of those who insist that even if the culprit repents, or converts to Islam in the case of a non-Muslim must be killed. Some authorities argued that Jews or Christians who cursed the Prophet should be killed unless they converted to Islam, and there are documented cases where this was applied."

  - Malise Ruthven, A SATANIC AFFAIR: Salman Rushdie and the Rage of Islam

 

How did Muhammad set the example for the way Islam deals with dissenters and critics?

• Prophet Muhammad and His Mockers: Assassination and Islam

  From "The Life of Muhammad"

  The poets of old Arabia were equivalent to our TV presenters. They tended to make fun of Muhammad and his claims of prophethood. Muhammad was determined to eliminate this mockery.

  Muhammad was sorely tried by several poets. One was Asma bint Marwan. When her latest verses were recited to the Prophet, he cried out, "Will no one rid me of this daughter of Marwan?" Umayr ibn Ali, a clansman of hers volunteered. That night she was sleeping, her youngest child still at her breast, when her clansman thrust his sword through her. On that day new converts were won as they could see the power of Islam.24

  A month later an almost identical situation occurred. This time it was the poet Abu Afak, reputedly over a hundred years old, who raised the Prophet's ire. Muhammad exclaimed: "Who will avenge me on this scoundrel?" and Salim ibn Umayr was the helper of God.

  A poet, Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf who was partly Jewish was deeply upset by Muhammad's actions. Ka'b went to Mecca to agitate the Quraysh against the Prophet, who determined to rid himself of Ka'b and his satire. Kab's foster-brother and some accomplices pretended that they were conspiring against the Prophet so that they could lure Ka'b out of his fortress. They succeeded in tbis and having killed him exultantly presented the head of Ka'b to the Prophet.

  Muhammad's old enemy, Abu Jahl was killed and his head brought triumphantly to him. The Muslims lost fifteen dead but the Meccans about seventy and, in addition about the same number were captured. Two of these the Prophet had executed-Nadr for laughing at him and his divine revelations and Uqba for throwing offal at him in Mecca. When Uqba asked him, "But who will take care of my sons, Muhammad?", he answered him "Hell!"24

  The worst five mockers of Muhammad had been warned in Revelation thus: "We shall suffice thee against the mockers who worship another god with Allah; they will know." 11 Indeed they did find out. Gabriel came to the Prophet while the five were ambulating around the Ka'bah. "When the first mocker passed by, Gabriel threw a green leaf in his face and he became blind. He pointed to the abdomen of the second, who died of dropsy. The third had a scar on his heel which opened again and killed him. When the fourth passed by he pointed to the soul of his foot, and thereupon a thorn penetrated it and the man died. When the fifth man passed by Gabriel pointed to his head and it began to ferment with poison and he died." 12

  Aba Dawud Book 38, Number 4348 A blind man had a slave-mother who used to abuse the Prophet and disparage him. He took a dagger and killed her Judging him, the Prophet said, " Oh be a witness, no retaliation is payable for her blood." And similarly (38A349) "A Jewess used to abuse the Prophet. A man strangled her till she died The Apostle of Allah declared that no recompense was payable for her blood."

 

Who is Salman Rushdie, what did he do, and what followed?

• On February 14, 1989, the Ayatollah of Iran passed the sentence of death in absentia on Indian-born, Salman Rushdie, the writer of a book of fiction called "The Satanic Verses":

  I inform proud Moslems all over the world, that the author of the book The Satanic Verses, which is inclined against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran, and everybody connected knowingly with the book's publication is hereby condemned to death. I challenge all Moslems to execute these persons wherever they may be found.

  The world seemed shocked, as this was the strongest action of religious fundamentalists since the Nazis' book burnings and Christian-Catholic Inquisition: a death sentence on an author who had taken issue with a world religion in a critical/fantastical way.

  Muslim extremists have reacted violently against the novel and more than a dozen bookshops in Britain have been attacked. Book-burning has been witnessed on the British streets for probably the first time. Here the Muslims hold common ground with the Nazis who burnt books in Germany in 1933.

  Many western readers would not have understood all facets of "The Satanic Verses", but having read this book, "The Wrath of Allah" you should have a better background to cope with Rushdie's work.

  It is quite probable that the demonstrators and book-burners have not even read the book that they are condemning. In my opinion it is pleasing comical fiction and the writer has used Muhammad and his contemporaries quite cleverly as his characters. He had the right to do so being a British citizen and living under British Law.

  In the West the laws of blasphemy mainly go by default. I certainly would not be prosecuted for saying that Jehovah was an irascible tribal god, that Jesus was a mere mortal or that his apostles might have been homosexuals who hallucinated on magic mushrooms. Let the gods stick up for themselves, for example by hurling bolts of lightning if they think that they or their prophets have been maligned. Adherents to the faith should not expect the state machine to interfere in religious matters. There should be freedom of speech for the non- religious as well as for the religious, for the person wanting a humanist society and not a sectarian one. In a free secular state, truth will sort itself out by a dialectical exchange of ideas. Humour and satire should be weapons in this intellectual debate for as much information can be traded by satirical as by serious works. Unfortunately Islam has ossified so that its tenets are not negotiable, with the result that they will just get more and more out of kilter with the West.

  Rushdie claimed (1985) to be a non-Muslim and so is not bound by Shariah blasphemy laws. If he was born of Muslim parents then the Shariah does not allow him to leave Islam even in childhood. The penalty under Muslim law for apostasy is death. Did you know that Islamic leaders in Britain want Muslim religious law to rate as equal to existing British law? A British Pakistani father murdered his daughter for converting to a Jehovah's Witness. He would, of course, have been acquitted, under Shariah which the Muslim fundamentalists are trying to bring into England.

  The aim of every Britisher should be to repeal out-of-date laws such as those dealing with blasphemy and to allow no further repressive laws to be added to the books. Indeed if human brotherhood means anything to us then we, through organizations such as Amnesty International, should help people in Muslim countries who run foul of the Shariah, in particular, the apostasy provisions.

  The question of censorship is a vexed one. If Salman Rushdie had been advocating the violent overthrow of Islam then a court case would have been in order. As it was, I am sure that he was aiming at the evolutionary liberalization of theocracy by Muslims being able to laugh at the risible instead of taking themselves so seriously.

  On 24 December 1990, Salman Rushdie met with six Muslim scholars and "embraced Islam". I have left my earlier comments unaltered as that was the situation before that date. Let us all hope that his days of hiding and worrying about a premature death are over.

  As a Muslim modernist he may still have problems with the fundamentalists. Will he still ask: "are all the rules laid down at a religion's origin immutable for ever?"' or state that "no religion is any longer a sufficient basis for a society. The world has changed too much for that."2 or: "Terrible things are being done in the name of Islam" 3 or "The Islamic revival is a throwback to medieval times".4

  We trust that Salman Rushdie can maintain his modern outlook despite all the pressures that will be brought to bear on him. For example he stated that in multicultural societies such as India, secularism "is the only way of safeguarding the constitutional, civil, human and religious rights of minority groups" 5 The opposite sectarian or communalist society could be dominated by the largest religion, in India's case, the Hindus.

  In his essay on Stephen Hawking, Salman stated that the Professor has changed his mind on Genesis.6 "So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose that it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained... [with] ... neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place then for a creator"?7

  I hope, Salman, that you have thought through what your position would be in the future if you ever wanted to change your mind on Creation. Apostasy II?

  October 1993 As predicted, Salman has apostased from Islam. He is probably no worse off as his earlier conversion did not mitigate the fatwa against him. In 1991, the Japanese translator of "The Satanic Verses" was stabbed to death and the translator of the Italian version was knifed. A few days ago, his Norwegian publisher was shot twice in the back.

• Chronology of the Rushdie Affair

  February 12, 1989
  At least six people are killed in Pakistan in shooting between police and gunmen in a crowd protesting at sale of the novel in the United States.

  February 14, 1989
  Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calls on all Moslems to kill Rushdie for blasphemy against Islam -- the "fatwa".

  February 24, 1989
  Twelve people are killed and 17 wounded in the Indian city of Bombay when police open fire to prevent a crowd of 10,000 marching on the British High Commission (embassy). In following weeks at least four people are killed and hundreds injured in other protests across India.

  March 29, 1989
  The spiritual leader of Belgium's Muslims, Saudi-born Abdullah Al Ahdal, and his deputy, Salim Bahri, from Tunisia, are shot dead in a Brussels mosque after receiving threats related to Rushdie's novel.

  May 27, 1989
  Pro-Iranian and pro-Iraqi factions clash when 30,000 Moslems mass outside British parliament.

  September 14, 1989
  Four bombs planted outside bookshops in Britain owned by Penguin, publisher of The Satanic Verses.

  July 3, 1991
  Ettore Capriolo, 61, Italian translator of The Satanic Verses, is beaten up and attacked with a knife in his Milan flat by a man who says he is Iranian.

  July 12, 1991
  Japanese scholar Hitoshi Igarashi, who translated the novel, is stabbed to death in Tokyo.

  July 4, 1993
  Thirty-seven people die in rioting by Muslim fundamentalists in the Turkish town of Sivas.

  October 11, 1993
  William Nygaard, director of the book's Norwegian publishers, is shot three times and seriously wounded outside his Oslo home.

  September 7, 1995
  After six years under police protection, Rushdie appears in London in his first pre-announced public appearance since the fatwa was issued.

  February 12, 1997
  Eight years after it first offered a reward, the Iranian revolutionary 15th Khordad Foundation increases the bounty on Rushdie's head to $2.5 million.

  September 22, 1998
  Iranian President Mohammad Khatami says the Rushdie affair is "completely finished".

  September 24, 1998
  Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi tells British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook at the United Nations in New York that Iran will take no action to threaten Rushdie's life, nor encourage anybody else to do so. The countries agree to upgrade diplomatic relations. Rushdie says: "It means everything, it means freedom."

  September 28, 1998
  Iranian media say three Iranian clerics have called on Islamic followers to kill Rushdie under the death edict the Iranian government disavowed.

  October 4, 1998
  Some 160 members of the Iranian parliament say death decree against Rushdie remains valid.

  October 7, 1998
  Iran says nothing has changed in its position over the Rushdie row with Britain.

  October 10, 1998
  A hardline Iranian student group sets a one billion rial ($333,000) bounty on the head of Rushdie.

  October 12, 1998
  Iranian religious foundation raises its $2.5 million bounty by $300,000.

  October 18, 1998
  International committees that campaigned on behalf of Rushdie say they will disband.

  January 4, 1999
  During a visit to Mexico Rushdie says he still does not lead a normal life even after the lifting of the edict.

  February 4, 1999
  BBC first reports that Rushdie is granted a visa to visit his homeland, India. Syed Ahmad Bukhari, an Indian Moslem leader, warned of dire consequences if author Salman Rushdie used a newly granted visa to visit the country of his birth for the first time since the banning of his book "The Satanic Verses". He also added: "Indian Moslems be prepared for any sacrifice... from the time he steps on Indian soil, we will follow him everywhere. If we have to give our lives, we are ready,"

  February 6, 1999
  The conservative Iranian Tehran Times said that British author Salman Rushdie was likely to be assassinated during a forthcoming visit to India. "If the visit of this most hated blasphemous and disgraceful person takes place, there is every possibility that it will be his last foreign visit."

  February 14, 1999
  On the 10th anniversary of the edict against British writer Salman Rushdie, an Iranian foundation that has put a price on his head said that it remained valid and would be carried out. "The idea of Rushdie's annihilation is still very much alive and seeks only the right moment," Ayatollah Hassan Saneii said in a statement published in the hard-line Jomhuri Islami daily.

• Consequential damages

  The cowardly and opportunistic reactions of those countries that like to see themselves as the guardians of democracy have downrightly encouraged successor criminals like book burners, cinema assaulters, and potential murderers to follow Khomeini's path. A whole bunch of "new Rushdies" seem to suddenly appear. Khomeini's ban has broken a dam.

  Most of these successor criminals come from the Islamic world. In Egypt, the leader of the fundamentalist group Jihad passed the death sentence on Nobel Prize-winning writer Naguib Mahfouz, who had criticized Khomeini's murder threat. In Italy, fanatical Moslems threatened to blow up the grave and statue of the great writer Dante Alighieri. Dante had mocked the prophet by letting him fry in hell along with popes and saints in his "Divine Comedy," written nearly six hundred years ago. Since then the tomb has had to be guarded by the police.

  Assaults on bookstores in Great Britain have been mentioned; some more took place in Italy and the United States. In Turkey, the supreme court ordered the burning of books by the Turkish author Ahmet Allan. Additionally, several Moslem preachers called for execution of the death threat against Rushdie, after cinemas showing the film "The Last Temptation of Christ" had been assaulted some months earlier in apparent solidarity with Christians. The explanation given for these violent acts was that Christ had been insulted in the film, and after all he was a prophet, too.

  In mid-May of 1989 tens of thousands of Chinese Moslems protested against the publication of a sociological study on worldwide sexual customs. The book, entitled Sexual Habits (published by the Shanghai Cultural Press), dealt with, among others, the Moslems' sexual customs, including the significance of minarets and mosques as sexual symbols and pilgrimages to Mecca as a means of celebrating orgies. The results: Moslem demonstrations in China, demanding a "hard sentence on the Chinese Salman Rushdie," meaning the study's authors. The Chinese government immediately prohibited publication.

  In India, fundamentalist Hindus announced they were going to murder a historian who had allegedly insulted Hinduism in a book published two years earlier. The author was put under police protection.

  These are just a few of the known examples of successor criminality after Khomeini's threat. No one can tell how many artists, scientists, and enlighteners will be threatened by religious fanatics and psychopaths in the future.

  What does it all mean?

  The so-called "Rushdie affair" is just another sign for the dawning of new Middle Ages all over the world. The imam's international murder threat takes off where the Christian world was in the Middle Ages, where openly stated dissident opinions led to one's death sentence. At the same time, we get an insight into the conditions of religious terror in which Iran's population must be living. One example might be perfect to further illustrate this: As recently as February 1989 word got out that a woman was under the threat of a death sentence in Iran, only because she had stated that she did not think of Mohammed's daughter Fatima as a model for Iranian women, for she had lived fourteen hundred years ago. She would prefer "Oshi," a Japanese television series' title role. In a letter to Iranian television's top executive, Khomeini declared that this woman had to die if it could be proven that her insult was made on purpose. Four of the television station's employees responsible for the broadcast of the woman's remark were sentenced to terms in prison and corporal punishment.

  Eventually, the Rushdie affair should clarify for all beneficiaries of European Enlightenment the consequences of a mentality like the ayatollah's: physical extinction of real and/or imaginary opponents. Most of all, though, it is, and this is most important for Atheists, a yardstick for determining how far the Enlightenment has receded in recent years, for it is due to the Enlightenment that both Europe's and the United States' citizens are not in a similarly threatening position as Iran's. Considering the reactions to this assault on freedom of speech and art, Atheists are seized by unholy terror. Official complaints about Iran's measures in dealing with Rushdie have long been forgotten; as shown above, the mullahs and all sorts of successor criminals were even encouraged to follow the path they had taken. Especially remarkable in its inherent symbolic meaning is the prohibition of readings from The Satanic Verses by universities in both Salzburg and Vienna. These prohibitions clearly mark a break with the tradition of the Enlightenment, as science and research, the universities' tasks, were made possible only by liberation from religious terror. Universities once safeguarded minority opinions; this does not seem to be the case in Austria anymore.

  Government officials and the media are of the opinion that in "opposing fanatics, one is powerless." Closely following the aforementioned developments, one cannot help the impression that the public never even planned to seriously oppose these fanatics' terror.

  - Antiklerikaler Arbeitskreis Salzburg

• Publishers & The Fear of Muslim Fundamentalists

  Ever since the infamous fatwa descended on Rushdie in February 1989, most publishers in the West have carefully avoided books that might even remotely be critical of Islam. Books heaping abuse on Christianity are perfectly acceptable, but "hands off Islam" seems to have been their guiding principle. Though often disguised as some higher moral principle, the real reason for avoiding books on Islam is fear.

  The only alternative to shunning books on Islam altogether is to have them carefully scrutinized by experts or even Muslims themselves, and to remove offending passages - self-censorship, in short. In May 1997, after complaints from a Muslim organization, Simon and Schuster recalled more than 4000 copies of a children's book that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a perfume-loving, sword-wielding dictator who despised Jews and Christians and took pleasure in chopping off the heads of those who displeased him (all true, incidentally).

  Now we have the case of Mr Paul Fregosi, the author of Jihad in the West, a history of Islamic Holy War in Europe from the 7th to the 20th centuries. According to Mr.Fregosi, the publisher Little, Brown who commissioned his book is too frightened of Islamic fundamentalists to publish it. It seems the manuscript of Fregosi's book was carefully examined by a minor British academic who has converted to Islam, and was found insulting to his newly adopted religion. Whereupon, Little, Brown cancelled its publication.

  Mr.Fregosi, who has already written a well-received book on the Napoleonic Wars, lays the blame for the violence in countries like Algeria, where more than 80,000 men, women and children have been massacred, on the Prophet Muhammad himself. Paul Fregosi now intends to sue Little, Brown for breach of contract. The publishers are simply afraid of Islamic fundamentalists, says Fregosi. But Mr. Richard Beswick who commissioned the book for Little, Brown insists the controversial book is unpublishable because it is not good enough, not because they are afraid of Muslims.

  The only publisher in the world that dares publish books critical of Islam is Prometheus Books, based in New York State. Prometheus Books are publishing Fregosi's Jihad in the West, which will be available in the Fall of 1998.

  - Reported by Ibn Warraq, Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society

 

Isn't it true that only the fundamentalists, like the Ayatollah, are guilty of such outragous behavior?

• Egypt [the "moderate" and "friendly" Arab country] offers a number of examples. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, a professor of literature who wrote that certain references in the Qur'an to supernatural phenomena should be read as meta phors, found his marriage dissolved by an Egyptian court on the grounds that his writings proved him an apostate. (According to Islamic law, a Muslim woman may not be married to a non-Muslim.) Another case involved the author of a nonconformist essay on Islam: he, his publisher, and the book's printer were each sentenced to eight years in jail on the charge of blasphemy. Farag Foda, an Egyptian intellectual who expressed scorn for the Islamist program, was shot and murdered. And Naguib Mahfouz, the elderly and much-celebrated Nobel Prize laureate for literature, was seriously injured in Cairo when an assailant knifed him in the neck, presumably in revenge for an allegorical novel written decades earlier.

  Nor has the campaign been limited to Muslim-majority countries. Makin Morcos, also an Egyptian, was killed in Australia for criticizing the Islamists' anti-Christian campaign in his native country; Rashad Khalifa, a biochemist from Egypt living in Tucson, Arizona, was stabbed to death in January 1990 to silence his heretical ideas.

  ...Islamists [employing intellectual intimidation] make full use of every recourse available to them in the laws and customs of the Western liberal democracies themselves. A few examples will illustrate. In France, Marcel Lefebvre, a renegade Catholic bishop, was fined nearly $1,000 under French law for declaring that when the Muslim presence in France becomes stronger, "it is your wives, your daughters, your children who will be kidnapped and dragged off to a certain kind of place as they exist in [Morocco]." In Canada, a Christian activist handing out leaflets protesting the Muslim persecution of Christians was accused by Muslim organizations of "inciting hatred," found guilty of breaking Canada's hate-speech laws, and sentenced to 240 hours of community service and six months of probation time in jail. At the United Nations, the decidedly non diplomatic epithets "blasphemy" and "defamation of Islam" have become part of normal discourse, serving as convenient instruments for shutting off discussion of such unpleasant matters as slavery in Sudan or Muslim anti-Semitism.

  - by Daniel Pipes, in "How Dare You Defame Islam", Commentary, November 1999

• "...In the Hague, 5,000 Muslims gathered in front of the Ministry of Justice, burned imitation copies of The Satanic Verses along with pictures of the author, and called for Rushdie's death. Nearly 2,000 Muslims protested noisily in Manchester on February 24 and 10,000 in New York City the next day, protesting outside the closed offices of Viking. Also on the 25th, 1,000 Muslims marched in Oslo; the next day, 2,000 marched in Copenhagen. The protests in Scandinavia were the first of such size in a decade or more. Back in England, 3,000 Muslims protested the Rushdie book in Halifax on March 3. On the 4th, demonstrations took place in Sheffield and Derby, complete with book burnings and chants for Rushdie's death. On the 6th, another 3,000 Muslims marched in Derby and burned copies of The Satanic Verses. And so on..."

  "...Then there was the atmosphere of intimidation. A wide assortment of targets were anonymously threatened with violence, leading to additional police guards being posted here and there around the globe. Politicians requiring extra security included: in Canada, the minister of revenue and the foreign minister; in Britain, the prime minister, foreign secretary and home secretary; and in France, the president of the National Assembly. Artists were publicly threatened in France, Nigeria, and Egypt. The British television interviewer Peter Sissons asked an Iranian diplomat, "Do you understand that we don't regard it as civilized to kill people for their opinions?" Muslim zealots found this an "insulting" question and threatened Sisson's life, so he too had a police guard attacked. A public reading from The Satanic Verses in Austria had to be canceled due to telephoned bomb threats--one of which was traced back to the Iranian embassy in Vienna. Followers of Khomeini also issued dozens of threats to publishing houses and book stores throughout the West.

  "...Threats with names attached were even more effective than anonymous ones. These fostered an atmosphere of intimidation the likes of which the West had not witnessed for decades. In Britain, several Muslim leaders endorsed Khomeini's decision, and some even swore to carry out the death sentence. The Union of Islamic Students' Associations in Europe issued a statement offering its services to Khomeini. Others were yet more outspoken, uttering statements that left the rest of the population aghast. "I think we should kill Salman Rushdie's whole family," Faruq Mughal screamed as he emerged from a West London mosque. "His body should be chopped into little pieces and sent to all Islamic countries as a warning to those who insult our religion." A London property developer told reporters, "If I see him, I will kill him straight away. Take my name and address. One day I will kill him." Iqbal Sacranic of the U.S. Action Committee on Islamic Affairs announced that "death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for him..his mind must be tormented for the rest of his life unless he asks for forgiveness to Almighty Allah." Back in Bradford, the secretary of the Mosque Council, Sayed Abdul Quddus, said that Rushdie "deserves hanging." Parvez Akhtar, a financial adviser in Bradford, told a reporter that "if Salman Rushdie came here, he would be torn to pieces. He is a dead man." Newspaper reports filled with such statements made it appear that Khomeini's edict enjoyed support among Muslims of Britain, regardless of age, sex, social status and religiosity"

  "Most striking, several prominent European converts to Islam endorsed the death edict, much enhancing its respectability. These included the French intellectual Vincent Mansour (ne Vincent Monteil) and the Swiss journalist Ahmed Huber. Cat Stevens, the former rock singer who converted to Islam in 1977 and changed his name to Yusuf al-Islam, told Muslim students in Surrey, "He must be killed. The Qur'an makes it clear--if someone defames the prophet, then he must die." Islam reiterated this view on television two months later, saying that is Rushdie turned up on his doorstep asking for help, "I'd try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is..."

  "...The activism of Muslims during the Rushdie incident raised a host of new questions for Europeans: would the Muslims in their midst remain ghettos of their own making, integrate themselves into Western life, or try to impose their political power and way of life on the majority population? Also, would they accept living in a secular order, or would they try to change it into something more familiar to them? ..."

  "...A rally of Muslims in Toronto heard one of their leaders declare: "We want to impose Islamic law. We don't care about the other laws of the world..."

  "...Peregrine Worsthorne, a prominent columnist, expressed the dismay that was widespread:

  Islamic fundamentalism is rapidly growing into a much bigger threat of violence and intolerance than anything emanating from, say, the [extreme right] National Front; and a threat, moreover, infinitely more difficult to contain since it is virtually impossible to monitor, let alone stamp out, the bloodthirsty anti-Jewish and anti-Christian language being preached from the pulpits of many British mosques... Britain has landed itself with a primitive religious problem that we had every reason to suppose had been solved in the Middle Ages..."

  "...Freedom of Speech: The other key issue concerns freedom of speech, both in the Muslim countries and in the West. For Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere, Khomeini's attack on Rushdie served as reminder of just how seriously personal liberties are lacking, and especially that of freedom of speech. As Amir Taheri has explained, Khomeini forced a debate on the long-deferred question, "can a man speak his mind without risking death or imprisonment? ..."

  "...The whimsically named League for the Spread of Unpopular Views, a West German organization, saw Khomeini's edict as a direct challenge to a central feature of Western civilization. "The Rushdie case is a deadly earnest probe to see what freedom of expression in the West is worth. Should Rushdie be killed, it would be the first burning of a heretic in Europe in two centuries. The West would then carry the full responsibility, for it would have failed to have protected with all available means Rushdie and with him freedom of expression! ..."

  "...The West has to make it clear that the fundamentalist Muslims will gain nothing through threats and intimidation."

  - from The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West by Daniel Pipes

 

What does the Rushdie episode teach us about Islam today?

• Under Construction

 

What does the Rushdie episode remind us of?

• "Islam's Gangster Tactics"
  by Anthony Burgess

  ...I gain the impression that few of the protesting Muslims in Britain know directly what they are protesting against. Their Imams have told them that Mr. Rushdie has published a blasphemous book and must be punished. They respond with sheeplike docility and wolflike aggression. They forget what the Nazis did to books--or perhaps they do not: after all, some of their co-religionists approved of the Holocaust--and they shame a free country by denying free expression through the vindictive agency of bonfires.

• "If members of Britain's community of some two million Muslims do not want to read Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses, all they have to do is abstain from buying it or taking it out of the local library. They should not seek to impose their feelings about its contents--or, more probably, what they have been told about them--on the rather larger non-Islamic part of the population. Their campaign to have the book banned, on the grounds that it blasphemes Islam, led to a demonstration over the weekend in Bradford in which, following the example of the Inquisition and Hitler's National Socialists, a large crowd of Muslims burnt some copies of the book..."

  - The Independent, 16th January 1989--'Dangers of a Muslim Campaign'. p. 73

• The media had tended to ignore the early Muslim protests, but the book burnings were front page news. They awakened memories of Nazi and fascist demonstrations in the thirties. The Independent wrote that the Muslims' campaign "not just against the book but against Rushdie personally does them no credit." They should not seek to impose their feelings about the book on the "rather larger non-Islamic part of the population." Was the Islamic faith not strong enough to withstand some controversial fictional analysis in a book of literary merit that was "written as a moral parable?" p. 131

  - from The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West by Daniel Pipes

 

Why should all of this concern me?

• Hitler began by burning books; he was bound to go on to the burning of people.

  - Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex"

• .What the Islamists are demanding, in short, is that the United States take a giant step toward applying within its borders the strictures of Islamic law (the shari`a) itself. A basic premise of that body of law is that no one, and especially no non-Muslim, may openly discuss certain subjects--some of the very subjects, as it happens, that CAIR wishes to render taboo. However absurd this may seem to a casual observer--Muslims, after all, make up, at most, 2 percent of the U.S. population--it is a fact that, when the guard of the democratic majority is let down, determined minorities in pursuit of anti-democratic aims can sometimes get their way.

  - by Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, Commentary Magazine, November 1999

• An Islamicist's Nightmare!
  by Daniel Easterman

  "...Islamic law is not democratic: it is a system rooted in a series of supposedly infallible and unchallengeable texts, established by an elite body of scholars long since dead, and today interpreted and implemented by a similar elite. Shi'ite law is, if anything, less democratic than its Sunni equivalent: mujtahids achieve their positions, not by election, but by scholastic achievement...

  What would happen, then, if the law did allow the Muslim case against The Satanic Verses...fundamentalist zeal could draw up an ever-expanding list of additional titles for the attention of the courts...

  Now, what does that mean? For one thing, it means that books by Muslim heretics could be cited as blasphemous and banned in Britain. Studies by Muslim scholars challenging received wisdom about the Qur'an, hadith, Prophet, or law would meet the same censorship here as they already do in Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt. Books by Baha'is--a group universally hated throughout the Muslim world--could be taken off the shelves in London or Edinburgh. Academic works on Islam would be scrutinized and, where found wanting, removed from university reading lists of libraries or bookshops. Older European texts deemed unflattering to Islam or Muhammad--Dante, Gibbon, Carlyle, Voltaire--could appear in bowdlerized editions.

  Remember, this is not paranoia on my part: books like these are already banned in most Muslim countries on the grounds of blasphemy. Why on earth would anyone stop at The Satanic Verses if they had the power to regulate anything and everything written about Islam?..."

  Source: Index on Censorship, 4/90, pp. 9-11--'A Sense of Proportion'. p.79

• The Rushdie Affair

  Editorial

  Many outrageous comments have been made in the wake of Iran's call for the murder of British author Salman Rushdie, but for sheer bloodymindedness it is hard to match the remarks of Iran's charge d'affaires in London. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's command to faithful Moslems to kill Mr. Rushdie "does not imply any political gesture by Iran, nor does it imply any interference in internal affairs of your country," Akhoond Zadeh Basti said last week. "...If the purely religious-based opinion of a religious head is going to be interpreted politically, it is very unfortunate."

  At the risk of taking Mr. Basti too seriously, what could be more political than calling for the assassination of a foreign national? It is the attempted extra-territorial application of Iran's capital sanction against blasphemy, without the inconvenience of a fair trial. It is a calculated assault on international law.

  It took a few days for Western nations to get up to speed in their political response, but the members of the European Community have not agreed to recall their ambassadors and restrict the movements of Iranian diplomats on their soil. Britain will go further by withdrawing its embassy staff from Tehran. West German Foreign Minister Dietrich Genser said the EC's action was partly in solidarity with Britain, "but it is also a signal to assure the preservation of civilization and human values, the preservation of freedom of speech and expression."

  Canada has balked at such forceful remonstrance; External Affairs Minister Joe Clark fretted that Canada should not overreact over a single issue. But Canada, no less than other countries, is vulnerable to the sort of mini-jihad Ayatollah Khomeini has launched. It is a Briton today; it might be a Canadian tomorrow, and not necessarily an author.

  Meanwhile, the government came within centimeters of a nasty blunder last week. An Ottawa association complained to the Prime Minister's Office that the Rushdie book constituted hate literature; the PMO sent the letter to Revenue Canada, whose officials promptly said they would detain any further shipments at the border pending an examination of their contents. Oh, what solace that would have given the sworn enemies of Mr. Rushdie; fortunately, officials decided over the weekend that there was no question of the book being hate literature, and new shipments may enter at will.

  The reaction of booksellers themselves has been mixed. It was sad to see Coles Book Stores Ltd. turn pale in the face of the Ayatollah's wrath and remove Mr. Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses from its 198 Canadian stores. Capitulation doesn't deter threats and acts of violence; it encourages them by showing that menace pays.

  To its credit, W. H. Smith Canada Ltd. said it saw no reason to banish Mr. Rushdie's book from its shelves: "While W.H. Smith appreciates that this novel has caused offense to certain religious groups, our company policy is to make available to our customers books which they wish to purchase and which contravene no Canadian laws." (The book, we might note, has circulated freely in Canada since its publication last year.)

  It may well be that international outrage at Iran's actions plays into the hands of hard-line Iranians, and that this whole crusade is a product of domestic Iranian politics; but no country that believes in international law can afford to let Mr. Rushdie and his allies stand alone in their ghastly predicament. The spiritual head of a nation has given religious adherents in other nations an exhortation to murder; if such practices are not bitterly challenged, who among us is safe? Even those who found The Satanic Verses offensive have a stake in finding the Ayatollah's incitement to murder many times more so.

  - Globe eMail, Toronto, 21 Feb. 1989, pgs. 145-147

• What does it all mean?

  The so-called "Rushdie affair" is just another sign for the dawning of new Middle Ages all over the world. The imam's international murder threat takes off where the Christian world was in the Middle Ages, where openly stated dissident opinions led to one's death sentence. At the same time, we get an insight into the conditions of religious terror in which Iran's population must be living. One example might be perfect to further illustrate this: As recently as February 1989 word got out that a woman was under the threat of a death sentence in Iran, only because she had stated that she did not think of Mohammed's daughter Fatima as a model for Iranian women, for she had lived fourteen hundred years ago. She would prefer "Oshi," a Japanese television series' title role. In a letter to Iranian television's top executive, Khomeini declared that this woman had to die if it could be proven that her insult was made on purpose. Four of the television station's employees responsible for the broadcast of the woman's remark were sentenced to terms in prison and corporal punishment.

  Eventually, the Rushdie affair should clarify for all beneficiaries of European Enlightenment the consequences of a mentality like the ayatollah's: physical extinction of real and/or imaginary opponents.

  - Antiklerikaler Arbeitskreis Salzburg

 

What can we do to protect our own freedoms from the law of Islam?

• Limits of Tolerance

  "There are few more difficult tasks, even or perhaps especially in a liberal democracy, than to define the limits of tolerance. A year after the Ayatollah Khomeini first pronounced sentence on Mr. Salman Rushdie, the difficulties for the author, his publishers, and our own society have become no easier to reconcile. Yet to almost all of us, Mr. Rushdie's right to publish his book was, and remains, beyond dispute. It has been dismaying to behold British Moslems publicly echoing the murderous threats of the Iranians. Only a month or two ago, several hundred Moslems gathered in Walthamstow to vote that the death sentence against the author should "remain in place". One Dr. Kalim Siddiqui has been strongly and openly associated with the call for Mr. Rushdie's death.

  If Moslem fundamentalism, and its bloodier manifestations, gain any hold in this country, they will have to be suppressed, employing the full vigour of the laws which were introduced to protect minority communities from racial harassment.

  We may all wish that Mr. Rushdie had not written his book. But he has done so, and we should continue to defend his rights, as Mrs. Thatcher and her Government have done with such credit. British publishers should encourage Penguin to proceed with the paperback edition. To flinch from publication now would be a surrender to those forces of fanaticism with which we cannot compromise, if we are to sustain the traditional values and license of our own society. It is those values to which British Moslems must subscribe, however unwillingly, if they are to play a full part in British life, as we all wish that they should."

  Source: ©The Daily Telegraph, 6th February 1990--'Limits of Tolerance'. (Italics ours.). pgs. 78-79

 

What was the reaction of Western democracies to this outrage?

• The world's number two industrial nation, Japan, acted completely opportunistically by not even considering diplomatic protest in Tehran. The most important Japanese publishers refused to bring out the book. In Australia, the government called for mitigation, and that was that. New Zealand, however, cancelled its minister of commerce's trip to Tehran, but soon Prime Minister David Lange made that action obsolete by announcing that New Zealand could not afford to let a threat to some writer in London endanger its exporting sheep and butter to Iran.

  In Europe, the main confrontations took place in Great Britain, where quite a number of Islamic immigrants are living. In Bradford, book burnings and riots occurred as early as January 1989. So-called "left" Labour Members of Parliament demanded that the law against blasphemy be extended to all religions (only Christian religions are included at the moment). After the ayatollah's appeal, British Moslem leaders demonstrated solidarity with it. Among them was Yussuf Islam - former British pop idol Cat Stevens, now a Moslem.

  British book store chains withdrew the book from their shelves. The publisher (Viking Penguin) issued a statement saying it was sorry to have caused distress to Moslems and renounced publication of the paperback edition later this year. The British Foreign Office withdrew its ambassador to Tehran, but soon Margaret "Iron Lady" Thatcher and the secretary of state for foreign affairs, Sir Geoffrey Howe, said they understood that Moslems claimed that their religious feelings were hurt. Suddenly, British officials discovered that the British themselves were "strongly offended" by the book, too, as it deals with racism and the results of Conservative government policy in England. In this context, the novel tells us of "Mrs. Torture," that is, "Maggie, the bitch" and diehard policemen beating up refugees just for the fun of it.

  In May 1989, a mass demonstration of Moslems took place in London, at which, besides the protests against Rushdie, rival Islamic groups had it out with each other. In June 1989 the British Supreme Court accepted a prosecution of Salman Rushdie for violating the law against blasphemy.

  In Sweden, the eighteen members of the Nobel Prize Committee dissociated from the Imam's appeal, but merely as citizens, not as an institution, which led to several members leaving the committee in protest.

  The states in the European Economic Community (EEC) followed Great Britain in withdrawing their ambassadors from Iran, but after a two-week vacation at home the plucky diplomats returned to their Tehran residences without making a fuss about it. It is understandable that they were laughed to scorn by Tehran leaders, but of course the EEC did not want some writer to spoil the most profitable deals in rebuilding the Persian Gulf region after the war.

  France was the only state that called upon fundamentalists to refrain from further threats on French territory after there had been riots, by stressing that there was a law against it.

  The Federal Republic of Germany acted not unlike the other EEC countries, especially as a treaty about German-Iranian cultural association, was due to be signed soon. The publishing house that had bought the German translation rights, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, acted just as shabbily as its government had: immediately after the threat from Tehran had been made, the publisher, in accordance with the Association of German Publishers, announced its decision not to translate the book at all. At the same time, it refused to sell the rights to another publishing company. It took massive pressure and threats of boycott from writers all over Germany to ensure publication of a German version of The Satanic Verses through a group of companies and writers in the fall of 1989. Also, as in other countries, Moslems protested against the book in Germany.

  In Belgium, the principal of a mosque, who had stated his opposition to the imam's threat, was murdered, presumably by Islamic fundamentalists.

  Only in Italy, publisher Mondadori had a translation out immediately, but soon after its bookstore in Padua was burnt down. Stores in Venice, Trieste, Verona, and Bolzano were attacked by disguised fanatics.

  ...[In Austria, ] The Christian-Conservative secretary's answer was that Austria would of course not discontinue relations, but would protest against the threat in "personal consultations" with Iranian officials in Austria. The government did not even withdraw Austria's ambassador to Tehran. The Austrian parliament did get around to doing something, inasmuch as it had a debate about the issue. At its end, a "protest" resolution was drawn up in which Iran was not even mentioned by name.

  ...The cowardly and opportunistic reactions of those countries that like to see themselves as the guardians of democracy have downrightly encouraged successor criminals like book burners, cinema assaulters, and potential murderers to follow Khomeini's path. A whole bunch of "new Rushdies" seem to suddenly appear. Khomeini's ban has broken a dam.

  Most of these successor criminals come from the Islamic world. In Egypt, the leader of the fundamentalist group Jihad passed the death sentence on Nobel Prize-winning writer Naguib Mahfouz, who had criticized Khomeini's murder threat. In Italy, fanatical Moslems threatened to blow up the grave and statue of the great writer Dante Alighieri. Dante had mocked the prophet by letting him fry in hell along with popes and saints in his "Divine Comedy," written nearly six hundred years ago. Since then the tomb has had to be guarded by the police. - Antiklerikaler Arbeitskreis Salzburg

 

What was the reaction of other religious groups?

• The alliance of inquisitors

  The Roman Catholic church's reaction to Khomeini's threat was especially remarkable, as it discovered its spiritual kinship with the Imam and was visibly fascinated by the success of the Iranian god's reign. After all, what Khomeini had done was something the Roman Catholic church had not been able to accomplish in its agitation against Martin Scorsese's film "The Last Temptation of Christ." In its mouthpiece, L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican condemned The Satanic Verses as blasphemous. Rushdie had hurt the "religious feelings" of hundreds of millions of the Moslem faithful. Affiliation with the Roman Catholic church demanded rebuke of the blasphemous statements in the book, said the paper. The Spanish newspaper El Pais commented: "A new inquisition." Hardly by chance Pope John Paul II saw fit to call Khomeini (after his overdue death) one of the world's greatest religious leaders.

  Not only Rome, but other high dignitaries of the church elsewhere got a word in: Cardinal Decourtray, head of the French episcopal congregation, spoke of an "insult to God"; New York's Cardinal O'Connor stated it would be stupid to read Rushdie's book and that it was important to "let Moslems know we disapprove of attacks on their religion."

  Many a reader may be amazed by these statements, as Islam and Roman Catholicism are rival religions, especially in their struggle for world domination, but the Roman Catholic church has for centuries done what Iran is doing now - persecute and liquidate heretics and members of the opposition. Fighting against odious thinkers unifies all religions: they have to be destroyed. Given the power it once had, the Roman Catholic church would act exactly as Iran is acting today. Viewed in this context, the "Christian-Islamic dialogue" that has been going on for some years now can be seen in quite a different light. This dialogue's goal - this is detectable in its selection of themes - is obviously coordination and concerted action of the world's religions against democratic liberties and freedom of speech. One of the most important participants in this dialogue is Hans Küng, professor of theology from Tübingen, West Germany. In Europe, Küng's reputation is that of a "liberal" Roman Catholic scholar of god, as he has quarreled repeatedly with the Holy See.

  Hans Küng was a member of German Foreign Secretary Hans-Dietrich Genscher's delegation on his visit to Tehran late last year. There he, along with other Roman Catholic clergymen, conducted high-level talks with Iranian leaders, among them Khomeini's son-in-law. Topics were Feuerbach's and Marx's critique of religion and current affairs that concerned both religions - Islam and Christianity. The Iranian theocrats seemed especially interested in the Roman Catholic university teacher's experiences with convincing the students of religious doctrines, as it is not too easy to get Iranian scholars to believe in the Koran. The Roman Catholics surely were able to offer the mullahs some hints as to how they did it.

  The talks' practical results were the accomplishment of an agreement on cultural exchange between Iran and the Federal Republic of Germany, and of course a resolution to strengthen economic cooperation. Accordingly, the socalled "liberal" Küng in an interview with the "Bayerischer Rundfunk" (Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation) defended Khomeini's threat. In his opinion, writers should take religion more seriously. Rushdie should have known what he was doing and have refrained from writing the book. Authors, after all, couldn't write as they liked, because it couldn't be tolerated that religious figures like Jesus or Mohammed were attacked in writing. For Küng, the limits of freedom of speech are defined by "religious feeling." He who hurts these dubious "feelings" is responsible for the results - a murder threat in Rushdie's case. Not only is Küng "theological-diplomatic advisor" to Germany's foreign secretary, but he is also seen as one of the most influential European professors of theology, especially for students at theological faculties.

  Not only do Roman Catholic leaders and ideologists tend to view Iranian terror in a positive way, but so also do Jewish fundamentalists. Orthodox Rabbi Avraham Ravitz, leader of Degel Hatorah in Jerusalem, declared that the world should stop making a saint of Rushdie, for his dragging the prophet and his wives through the mud in the novel would hurt millions of Moslems' feelings.

  At the end of the twentieth century, two hundred years after the French revolution, obviously a new International is forming, whose goal is the rebirth of the Middle Ages.

  - Antiklerikaler Arbeitskreis Salzburg

 

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• RELATED SECTIONS:

  Apostacy, Islam, Democracy, Jihad, Muhammad

• WWW RESOURCES:

  "How Dare You Defame Islam", by Daniel Pipes

  http://www.atheists.org/Islam/enlightenment.html

  http://byrden.com/suralikeit/index.shtml

• BOOKS & PRINTED MATERIAL:
  • Blasphemy: A Novel, by Tehmina Durrani [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West, by Daniel Pipes, Koenraad Elst [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam - and the Crusades, by Robert Spencer [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith, by Irshad Manji [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Why I Am Not a Muslim, by Ibn Warraq [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Unveiling Islam: An Insider's Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs, by Ergun Mehmet Caner [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith, by Robert Spencer, David Pryce-Jones [VIEW BOOK HERE]

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