What took al Qaeda so long? Ayman al Zawahiri has been a little slow in making a response to Salman Rushdie’s knighthood. Is it perhaps because there actually hasn’t been much Muslim anger – beyond a few pockets of politically motivated protest? Al Qaeda are taking the opportunity to stir it up again – just in case anyone somehow missed the news of Rushdie’s knighthood the first time around.
The response to Salman Rushdie’s knighthood has been predictable, as Muslim leaders and politicians compete with each other to register their outrage – if Rushdie gets an honour, it must be an affront to Islam.
Let’s get one thing straight. This is not about Islam – it’s a recognition of the achievements of one of Britain’s finest writers, a writer who led a solitary, persecuted life for many years because of death threats against him. No novelist sets out on their career aiming for a knighthood. It is in fact ironic that Rushdie – an iconoclast and outsider as most artists are – should be embraced by the establishment. But Rushdie is one of the greatest and most influential contemporary writers working today. The Satanic Verses is just one of his novels (and perhaps not even his finest).
Rushdie’s more striking achievement is to have created an original, post-colonial narrative in which East and West meet – an imaginative interpretation of the modern world we live in, shaped by migration. It is an interpretation that defies the boundaries of religion and culture – and it is the kind of artistic vision that can make sense of the world and promote understanding across the divide. The forces that decry and denounce Rushdie are in fact driving a wedge between East and West, between Muslim and non-Muslim, and between the literal and the imagination. They do more harm to Islam and Muslim culture than Rushdie ever has.
Yet somehow it has become a badge of credibility among certain Muslim spokesmen, politicians and organisations – whether Lord Ahmed or the Muslim Council of Britain or Mohammed Ijaz ul Haq, Pakistan’s religious affairs minister – to be the one who shouts the loudest whenever there’s a perceived slight to Islam.
The spectacle of this self-regarding outrage has become wearingly familiar as Islam’s self-appointed defenders seek to silence and intimidate critical or challenging voices. Rushdie, through no desire of his own, has been elevated beyond his literary output to become a symbol. He is, first and foremost, a novelist and it’s clearly important to reiterate that no art can flourish without the licence of free expression.
This level of intimidation against writers and intellectuals who wish to explore, criticise or pass comment on Islam is anathema to free speech. As a knee-jerk response which seeks nothing but political gain it only brings discredit to its advocates.
Jo Glanville is editor of Index on Censorship
