Opinion | 'Death to Blasphemers': How Iran's
New Jersey based 24 year old Hadi Matar, who stabbed Salman Rushdie in NewYork state on Friday, was not even born when "The Satanic Verses" was written He is unlikely ever to have seen a copy of the allegorical book, deemed sacrilegious against Islam, since he would probably have been told that reading blasphemous material means committing the same heresy that makes ‘culprits’like Rushdie wajib ul qatl (liable to be murdered) And yet, the California-born Matar, whose family hails from Lebanon, chose to forfeit his liberty with the singular goal of playing out the IranianAyatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa calling for Rushdie’s head, which was issued almost a decade before the assailant’s birth
Salman Rushdie's assailant was primed by a lethal, globalized narrative of intolerance triggered by Khomeini’s 1989 call for death for blasphemy against Islam, bolstered by weak, deluded Western liberals https://wwwhaaretz com/opinion/2022-08-15/ty-article-opinion/ entire generation of muslims/00000182 a0ac d5fe afbe f2fef8df0000
Even the much celebrated Islamic GoldenAge saw officially sanctioned killings over sacrilege, notable among them being the 48 Christians decapitated under the Umayyad regime in 9th century al Andalus, since known
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Kunwar Khuldune ShahidAug 15, 2022
While Matar is reported to have long espoused support for radical Shia Islamism, the three-decade old aspiration to kill Rushdie hasn’t been bound by sectarian allegiances, with Sunni Islamists equally in agreement over what the author’s fate should be Even the famously pluralistic Sufi Muslims dedicated to the violent punishment of blasphemy by weaponizing ‘love’for Islam’s prophet Muhammad meaning they sanctify the persecution of blasphemers
Indeed, murders in the name of defending against blasphemy are as old as organized religion In Islam, the only religion that still codifies death for blasphemy today, the killing of the 7th century female poetAsma bint Marwan for insulting the Islam’s prophet, as ordered by Muhammad according to Islamic tradition, is an early example cited by many Islamists
Rushdie Fatwa Still Radicalizes Muslims Towards Violence
as the "Martyrs of Cordoba "The 1929 murder of Lahore-based Hindu publisher Raj Pal for printing a book mocking Muhammad continues to be celebrated among SouthAsian Muslims with the killer, Ilam Din, etched in Pakistan’s folklore, where he has a foreign office hostel named after him, among other memorial sites But eulogies of past ‘heroes’mightn’t have sufficed for the internet generation, which was given a blasphemy bogeyman in the shape of Salman Rushdie as soon as they reached the age of cognition.The Islamist consensus over the author’s fate has been used since to fuel blasphemy motivated terror attacks from Jyllands-Posten to Charlie Hebdo Link
In line with the growing Sunni Shia schism, the first reaction of the initially silent SunniArab world was to push for a probe into "The Satanic Verses" and to respond with a book to "refute Rushdie’s lies " It was only after the realization that they had given Iran and Shia Islamists a head start over the Rushdie affair thatArab leaders sought to balance the blasphemy scales after many a Sunni Islamist group from the likes ofAlgeria’s Islamic Salvation Front to Hamas in Gaza started glorifying Iran as their model. That also provided the SunniArab bloc clarity on inflammatory rhetoric vis-à-vis Israel, ensuring that any contrary, conciliatory view on the Jewish state would be virtually treated as sacrilege. Even while Saudi Arabia led Gulf states have worked in geostrategic tandem with Israel over the past four decades, they have sustained calls for mass violence against Jews using Islamic Judeophobia That long proliferating anti Israel genocidal hysteria is now a stumbling block in Riyadh’s quest to convince the Sunni Muslim world to formalize ties with Israel.
However, as the decidedlyAmerican biography of Rushdie’s attacker underlines, the Islamist radicalization has stretched far beyond the Muslim world’s geographical boundaries.
Khomeini’s Rushdie fatwa came at a time the Muslim world was precipitously splitting into the separately radicalized Shia and Sunni halves, at the hands of Iran and SaudiArabia. Both needed the constant recruitment of Muslims willing to kill and die in the name of Islam, albeit in effect sacrificing themselves for the proxy jihadist powerplays orchestrated byTehran and Riyadh
Similarly, in a survey after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, almost a third of French Muslims would not condemn the attack, and over two thirds dubbed it a "useless provocation" for murder, lest one forget
India was the first country in the world to ban "The Satanic Verses," and it did so under a secular, electorally robust, National Congress rule The Indian rendition of secularism, allowing separate religions their own sphere of influence instead of a uniform civil code, has not only helped prop up grotesque Hindutva majoritarianism in the country in recent years, but has also facilitated an Islamist takeover of parts of the Muslim community, which in 1989 led violent protests against Rushdie and even amidst today’s escalating anti Muslim bigotry issues beheading edicts over anti Islam blasphemy
Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, vocally supported calls for Rushdie’s death in 1989, an endorsement echoed by many Islamists in Britain, where art and film have been censored, teachers intimidated and an Ahmadi Muslim killed because he was alleged to have committed blasphemy against Muhammad
Naturally, these Islamist leaders haven’t condemned the stabbing on Rushdie in countries where the attack is largely being celebrated WhatsApp groups and public social media threads, fromTehran to Pakistan to Lebanon, and across sectarian divides, are brimming with praise for the "holy stabbing" of Hadi Matar, agent of the "revenge of God," celebrating his "defense" of Islam, even as Islam itself is being devoured from within by the same blasphemy narrative Twitter Link
Attempts to do the same to Shia Islam are ongoing in many Sunni countries, which are working on forcing Shia Muslims to respect Sunni caliphs a natural extrapolation of demanding from non-Muslims respect for Islam’s prophet. In Britain, for instance, groups like Khatm e Nabuwwat are inciting violence againstAhmadis and Sunni Islamists successfully got "The Lady Of Heaven" banned for depicting a Shia take on Islamic history
This surge in murderous intolerance over dissent within and against Islam, has also been bolstered by Western liberals and their trigger happiness in abandoning principles of free speech, in effect endorsing Islamic blasphemy laws, ostensibly to protect marginalized Muslims
While the internet generation in the Muslim world, on both side of the Sunni-Shia divide, might be fast abandoning the dogma into which they are born, in countries under Islamist control they are forced into becoming silent, largely anonymous, digital voices
Fulfillment of the notion that Islam should be treated differently to other religions and ideologies, vis à vis freedom to offend, is at the heart of the attack on Rushdie.The perplexing equation of satire on Islam with persecution of Muslims, is being duly lapped up by global Islamist leaders who use caricatures of Muhammad to claim that a "genocide of Muslims" is going on in the West
Their countries’constitutions outlaw their existence, penal codes uphold violence for their dissenting beliefs, cybercrime laws endanger their virtual and real lives, in their states proliferate bloodthirsty mobs And all the while progressive opinion makers tell them that their fear is irrational, and that they have a phobia of Islam
The idea that offense to Islam is sufficient grounds to deny others’freedoms of expression, conscience, or religion has already seenAhmadis excommunicated and persecuted around the world, including in officially secular Muslim countries like Indonesia.
Long abandoned by the global liberal intelligentsia, which would never stand for anything a fraction as contentious as "The Satanic Verses," perhaps Salman Rushdie too started believing that his fear of a three decade old, frequently renewed, Iranian fatwa was irrational In recent years he has started asking for decreased security at the events he would be participating in, which was the case at the Chautauqua Institution, where Rushdie was, ironically, slated to speak on the U.S. being a "safe haven for exiled writers." When the slowly recovering Rushdie hopefully delivers his next lecture, he might be better advised to reconsider that title. For, he, of all people, should know that for critics and dissidents of Islam, there is no such place Kunwar Khuldune Shahid is a Pakistan based journalist and a correspondent at The Diplomat. His work has been published in The Guardian, The Independent, Foreign Policy, Courrier International, New Statesman, The Telegraph, MIT Review, and Arab News among other publications.
Twitter: @khuldune