Author: Ian O'Doherty
Publication: Irish Independent
Date: October 6, 2008
URL: http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/ian-odoherty/your-absolute-right-to-be-heard-1490581.html
Um, haven't we been here before? Twenty years
ago, a largely obscure author -- well, as obscure as someone who had already
won the Booker can be -- Salman Rushdie, published his fourth novel, The Satanic
Verses.
An avowed atheist and apostate from Islam,
Rushdie knew the book was going to drive a large section of the Muslim community
completely Tonto; but, as he said at the time and subsequently, it's a writer's
duty to make people confront their own beliefs and prejudices.
Cue the now infamous fatwa and riots across
the Muslim world and in Britain, while the Japanese translator of the novel
was assassinated in retaliation for his involvement.
It also provoked one of the largest cultural
schisms of modern times.
Muslims living in the West couldn't understand
why someone would want to offend them, and the rest of us looked on in bafflement
at the sight of people openly inciting murder against a guy, simply because
they didn't like his book -- while simultaneously draping themselves in the
cloak of victimhood. It was a piece of double-think that would have made Orwell
proud and, it can be argued, at the time it placed as big a wedge between
Westerners and the Muslim world as the war in Iraq is doing today.
And, proving that it would appear none of
us has learned anything in the two decades since that kerfuffle, we're right
back where we started.
This time, the book in question is Sherry
Jones' The Jewel Of Medina, a fictional retelling of the life of Aisha, Mohammed's
child bride. It has been derided by those who have read it, with one early
review comparing it more to a Mills and Boon novel than the serious historical
reimagining it claims to be.
But regardless of the merits or otherwise
of the book, the memory of The Satanic Verses still rings loud in the ears
of proposed publishers, Random House, who dropped the book in fear of the
prospect of "violence from a small, radical element".
Tellingly, there hadn't even been any threats
made against Random House at the time, but as poet and former Czech President
Vaclav Havel remarked on his time as a writer behind the Iron Curtain, the
biggest danger was that fear of censorship ultimately placed the censor in
their artist's own mind, so that they began to not even bother writing something
that could bring some heat down on them.
That's exactly what happened with Random House
and their cowardly, despicable capitulation to threats which, bizarrely, hadn't
even been made.
And then, in one of the most oddly under-reported
stories of recent times, the London home of the British publisher of the book
was fire bombed by angry Muslims.
Three men tried to burn Martyn Ryjna alive
because he plans to release the novel, yet people in the British media simply
seemed to shrug their shoulders.
In fact, a lot of the media's reaction to
the attempted murder of a publisher was that he pretty much got what he deserved,
because he liked publishing controversial books and was simply looking for
publicity.
Then, incredibly, Anjem Choudhary, one of
the biggest race baiters in Britain, went public with the opinion that anyone
who insults Mohammed deserves the death penalty; and that if the book is published,
then the people involved will be killed.
Now, if you or I were to go public and threaten
the lives of people in the publishing industry, we would immediately -- and
correctly -- be hauled in front of the courts for making threats with menaces.
But when we see a situation in Britain where
members of al-Muhajiroun can demonstrate outside Parliament waving placards
saying "Death To Infidel" and "Slaughter Those Who Insult Islam"
and not be arrested, are you surprised that this small, pathetic weirdo can
get away with it?
In fairness to Choudhary, the murder of someone
who insults Mohammed is indeed part of his faith; but that merely says more
about his religion than it does about our society, and it should be remembered
that we are not -- for now, anyway -- a Muslim society with Muslim rules.
In fairness to the Inayat Bunglawala from
the Muslim Council of Britain, he has previously dismissed Choudhary as a
"nutter" and recently admitted in the Guardian that he was wrong
to call for the banning of The Satanic Verses. He doesn't accept that banning
The Jewel Of Medina is the right way to go, either, saying: "Let Rushdie,
Jones and co write as they please. Muslims are likewise at liberty to use
those very same freedoms to promote their own understanding of the mission
of the Prophet Mohammed."
That remains perhaps the most mature and sensible
comment from any Muslim commentator on the issue that I've seen, and he seems
to have realised that banning something because it offends you is a two-way
street.
The Dutch politician Geert Wilders realised
this when, during the controversy over his inflammatory movie Fitna, he tried
to have the Koran banned because he said he found it offensive.
Rushdie, to his credit, came out last week
and said that he certainly did not regret writing The Satanic Verses and,
as someone who had his life and the life of his family turned upside down
for decades, he was adamant that he would still write the book today.
That represents the triumph of words and the
free exchange of ideas over the stultifying blanket of censorious, belligerent
religious conformity.
Although, having said that, as someone who
has had to review Rushdie's last two books, I often felt like issuing a fatwa
on the man myself -- he has become the literary equivalent of Paul McCartney:
revered for his early work but seemingly incapable of releasing a decent record
for the past two decades.
The Jewel Of Medina sounds, frankly, awful
tosh and no doubt would have sunk into well deserved obscurity.
But that's not the point.
The point is that all writers, even the really
bad ones, have a right to be heard.
