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Much ado about nothing — a
summary of international reactions
Even before the ayatollah's appeal for
murder, Rushdie's book had been an issue in political confrontations and had
been banned. Saudi Arabia, South Africa, India, and Pakistan (where Islamic
fundamentalists had assailed the United
States' Cultural Institute, foreshadowing the ban) had all forbidden
publication. Pakistan's government, led by
Benazir Bhutto (who in the summer of
1989 was President Bush's guest of honor), stated that blasphemy was equal to
an offence against the state. The ban
was also introduced by Indonesia in
March 1989.
In Bombay, India, demonstrations following Khomeini's appeal resulted in
several casualties. The highest ranking
Indian Islamic official, Syed Abdullah
Bukhari, supported the appeal in a sermon. The Lebanese "Revolutionary
Front of Justice" took on the job of executing the Imam's orders. The Islamic
World Conference judged the novel to
be blasphemous and said that according
to the Sharia (the Islamic code of law),
Rushdie was a heretic and therefore
doomed, but did not support the ayatollah's atrocity directly.
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.
Austria is a little world, in which
the big one stages rehearsals.
This sentence was written in the first
half of the nineteenth century by the
German author Friedrich Hebbel. And
what happened all over Europe as a reaction to Khomeini's monstrosity took
place in Austria, too. In a note to the
secretary of state for foreign affairs,
Alois Mock, the "Antikierikaler Arbeitskreis" demanded discontinuance of
diplomatic and economic relations with
Iran immediately after the threat was
made. 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.
Additionally, some members of parliament had the not-so-bad idea of staging
a public reading from The Satanic
Verses in parliament, but devaluated it
by having the reading in a small back
room of parliament, accessible only to
journalists. At the same time, the religious fanatic's line of reasoning was
followed in the choice of parts to read
from: of course one was going to recite
only those parts that were not blasphemous and did not hurt religious feelings.
Even this was too much for a Socialist
member of parliament: disregarding her
prior assent to take part in the reading,
she chickened out and instead used the
debate in parliament to talk about all
sorts of things, but not Rushdie — and
so reached the peak of hypocrisy.
The Combine of Austrian Authors (a
trade union-like association of Austrian
writers) organized a reading and discussion. An attempt was made to hold it at
the Vienna university, but bomb threats
were issued, and demonstrations against
the reading by Islamic immigrants prompted University officials to prohibit a
public reading on campus. (It has been a
long time since universities were places
of free thinking and guarantors of freedom of speech.) Also, an Iranian in exile
in Vienna, who has Austrian citizenship,
received death threats because he had
planned to take part in the reading.
Austrian police refused to grant protection; since that time he has been in
hiding. At long last, the reading and discussion took place in a large tent erected
on a Viennese square — with massive
police protection and threats by a huge
number of anti-Rushdie demonstrators.
One of the most important effects the
reading had is that a well-known Austrian Catholic fundamentalist, in accordance
with the Iranian embassy in Vienna and
Islamic fundamentalist groups, filed a
lawsuit against the chairman of the
Combine of Austrian Authors according to §188, the Austrian blasphemy
paragraph. (See "History of the Antikierikaler Arbeitskreis Salzburg,"
American Atheist, March 1989.) His declared
object was to prevent publication of the
book in Austria in the fall of 1989. Even
President Waldheim had something to
say about The Satanic Verses. On one
of his rare trips abroad (he is restricted
by lack of invitations to countries other
than the Vatican and Islamic nations),
this time to Abu Dhabi in Saudi Arabia,
he stated that Rushdie's book was blasphemous and to be condemned.
Members of Austria's Antiklerikaler Arbeitskreis Salzburg (Salzburg Anticlerical Working Group) with Madalyn O'Hair (center) and Jon Murray (second from right). The officers of the group are Paul Freidländer (left), Michaela Bartsch (right), and Anton Neureiter (to the left of Madalyn O'Hair).
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The "Anticlerical Working Group:
Organization for Atheism and Enlightenment" wanted to organize a reading
in solidarity with Salman Rushdie and
rented a room on the campus of Salzburg
University for that purpose. The Viennese procedure was adopted by the
Salzburg University administrators:
they prohibited the reading. Most viciously opposed to it were members of the
theological faculty, because it was Atheists who were to stage the reading. The
official reason for the denial of a room
was concern for the "security of the university," because "security is paramount
to such abstract terms as freedom of
speech," a quote from the rector, a theologian. These "security reasons" were
used as a means of prohibiting the reading, although there are no Islamic
fundamentalists in Salzburg, although there
were no threats at all, and although the
police declared that the reading could
take place without any problem and
added that one should not refrain from
staging events because of threats, because otherwise it would become
impossible to stage anything at all in the
future. After the university's refusal, the
Antikierikaler Arbeitskreis organized a
panel discussion on "Solidarity with Salman Rushdie — Freedom of Art and
Censorship" under police protection in
a former cinema now used for pop concerts. On the panel were the chairman
of the Combine of Austrian Authors and a member of parliament from the Green Party.
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.
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The Vatican and the Kaaba are separated by distance, but the goals of their leaders are surprisingly similar. The Islamic solution to the Rushdie case will give Roman Catholic leaders insights into dealing with their own dissidents in the modern age. |
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.
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.
What we Atheists are experiencing
today is a slow poisoning of the intellectual climate. The public is desensitized
to monstrosities, and this process is accelerating very fast. At the end of this
development, freedom of art, speech,
and thought will have been abolished.
This is what the controversies concerning The Satanic Verses or "The
Last Temptation of Christ" are aiming
at. A great deal of energy is put into the
effort to further the respect for "religious feelings," overtly by brute force
and encouraging censorship, covertly
by support of religious agitation. Each
and every one of us is to acknowledge
religion as Something Special, not to be
criticized in any way by mere humans.
If anybody, like Rushdie, does not accept this as the ultimate truth, the
consequences he might have to suffer are
his own responsibility, according to the
mentally inert public. Ultimately, this
line of "reasoning" leads to the big religions' substance, beliefs, and statements
becoming unquestionable. If this is allowed to happen, we are set back to the
times before the French Revolution, the
times before the beginning of the Age of
Enlightenment. Just that, making it impossible for certain opinions and thoughts
to be stated publicly, is the barely concealed goal of the Vatican's statements.
The message conveyed to artists is
clear: if you want to avoid trouble, keep
off religion. As Austrian Bishop Krenn
explained in a recent television interview, strictly speaking, Christian
mythology is the church's possession —
thus the artists' unwanted tampering
with it is plagiarism. This statement is all
but a request for self-censorship, and as
soon as religious feelings are accepted
as a reason for censorship, other "feelings" such as "national pride," which is
closely related to "religious feelings"
psychologically anyway, are sure to follow suit.
In a climate of fear and intimidation
artistic license cannot develop but, on
the contrary, is sure to wither just like
freedom of speech will if minorities'
beliefs cannot be stated openly and
without repression. It becomes clear
that what constitutional rights are worth
shows only when they are actually made
use of. Conformist artists have no need
for freedom of speech as they never
challenge it, but rebellious and critical
artists do need these constitutional
rights, which are of almost crucial importance to Atheists.
The central point is not a lip-service to
these rights, but dedication to and
struggle for them. A question arises:
which steps can be taken against this
threat? One such step would be to make
it public knowledge that Khomeini's
appeal for murder is by no means unprecedented in history, but that such
condemnations have been an integral
part of the history of all religion. Therefore, one can not distinguish between
"good" and "bad" religions; religion as
such is an evil.
Another goal worth fighting for is the
separation of church and state. The
state must be forced to relinquish all
support for organizations which try to
undermine basic rights — including the
Roman Catholic and all other churches.
Censorship's foothold is the law
against blasphemy (§188 in Austria, but
to be found in many a country under
different names). A hard blow to censorship fanatics would be the uncompensated
removal of this relic of inquisition
from the codes of law. If religion feels the
need to argue with criticism, this could
still be done by putting forth real arguments. For example, Moslems could
prove that the Koran really is Allah's
work, Christians that Mary really was a
virgin before, during, and after giving
birth to the guy named Jesus — there is
a whole range of possibilities.
Personal consequences? Leave the
church and join American Atheists in
America, the Anticlerical Working Group
— Organization for Enlightenment and
Atheism in Austria!
Sources
The facts and quotations of this article were collected from the following
media:
Austria: Der Standard (a liberal newspa-
per), Arbeiterzeitung ("Workers
News," social-democratic), Salzburger
Nachrichten ("Salzburgian News,"
conservative), Volksstimme ("Peoples
Voice," communist).
West Germany: Die Tageszeitung (an
alternative newspaper), Deutsche
Volkszeitung — Die Tat ("German
People's News — The Action," which
stands near to the West German
Communist party), Süddeutsche
Zeitung ("Southern German News,"
conservative), Materialien und lnformationen zur Zeit ("Materials and
Informations to the Time," magazine
of the Western German League of
Atheists and Non-Believers), Bavarian
Radio Station 2 Switzerland: Neue
Zürcher Zeitung (conservative).
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