Salman Rushdie, free speech and blasphemy: a very British problem

After nine years in hiding and half a lifetime of death threats, Sir Salman Rushdie is off the ventilator and talking after being stabbed multiple times on Friday in New York State. His likely survival will be a win for freedom of speech but in the much longer battle against extreme interpretations of Islam which seek to punish insults against the Prophet Mohammed, there is much to be done.

Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses has been accused of blasphemy and banned in many countries for more than three decades. Although he was attacked in the United States, the deaths of those associated with the book and a life lived in fear for Rushdie himself can seemingly be worked back to a British individual and his journey to Iran.

On 14 February 1989, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa against Rushdie:

“I would like to inform all the intrepid Muslims in the world… that the author of the book titled The Satanic Verses, which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur’an, as well as those publishers who were aware of its contents, have been declared ‘those whose blood must be shed’. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they find them, so that no one will dare to insult Islam again.”

The response was swift and deadly. In 1991, the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses was stabbed to death. Shortly afterward, the Italian translator was also stabbed, but survived. In the summer of 1993, an Islamist mob killed forty people in an arson attack against the Turkish translator of the book and a few months later the Norwegian publisher was injured in a gun attack.

It would later transpire that the fatwa may have originated with Kalim Siddiqui (1931-1996), the former director of the now-dissolved Muslim Institute and the founder of the since-dissolved Muslim Parliament of Great Britain; he had travelled to Iran at the time of the Fatwa. He was at Tehran Airport when Dr Khatami, then the Minister of Islamic Guidance, later president of the Islamic Republic, came to meet him and asked what he knew about Rushdie and the book. Journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown said that “the fatwa would not have been issued had the Britons not made that trip. The origins of the fatwa were here.”

British Muslims were a people primed at the time. 1980s Britain was a deeply racist place and a policy of multiculturalism left communities divided. The South Asian community, of which the UK has the largest number in Europe, felt vilified and disempowered. Meanwhile the South Asian Islamist organisation Jamaat e Islami launched the initial campaign against Indian-born Rushdie, framing his novel as a Western, secular attack on Islam. It was those with connections to it that then were inspired to set up UK Muslim organisations of their own, to defend Islam from criticism, stifling liberal Muslim voices and platforming Islamist ones.

Mass protests in the town of Bradford acted as a watershed moment for the British Muslim population. The Rushdie Affair was intrinsically interwoven with British Muslim feeling; it was rooted in Britain, but it was how it fundamentally carved out the British Islamist scene that is of grave concern today.

Ed Hussain, author of The Islamist and himself a former radical, commented on the impact of the affair: “We’d gone from opposing an author to opposing the British Government. We’d been completely politicised.”

In a bid to communicate with its siloed, unintegrated Muslim communities, the UK Government adopted community spokespersons. Religious conservatives rose to the occasion, representatives often of these new Jamaat e Islami-inspired organisations. The Islamist-friendly Salaam portal summarised how activists collected and organisations then formed: “The most positive outcome of the Rushdie Affair was that it permitted some level of coordination and networking among Muslim community bodies and activists, leading to the formation of UKACIA, which in turn was a precursor of a more ambitious initiative to unite British Muslims—the Muslim Council of Britain.”

Organisations intent on not only defending Islam from criticism but on defining what was Islam and who was Muslim, dominated this new landscape as “representatives” of the “British Muslim’” community. The MCB still claims today to be the largest UK Muslim umbrella organisation.

Concern about blasphemy amongst some of Britain’s Muslims spread and became entrenched. Owing to its reliance on “community representatives”, multiculturalist policy and the increasingly Islamist sympathies of the Left, the Government found itself politically hampered in its ability to challenge threats to freedom of speech.

In 2010 a Pakistani woman, Asia Bibi, was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death in Lahore. After her appeals were rejected, and facing the death penalty, she sought asylum in the United Kingdom. The Government refused, for fear that British clerics and their followers would cause “civil unrest” in the UK and launch attacks on embassies. In 2018 Canada granted her asylum.

in 2016, Asad Shah, a member of the Ahmadi Muslim sect, which is considered blasphemous by some Sunni authorities, was brutally murdered in Glasgow. Shah was stabbed multiple times, dragged into the street and stamped on with such force that every bone in his face was broken. Afterwards, the murderer, Tanveer Ahmed, claimed that, “If I had not done this, others would have and there would be more killings and violence in the world.” Though sentences to 27 years, he reportedly receives fan mail and visits from people who regard him as a hero.

The family of Asad Shah no longer feel safe in the UK. The authorities have not provided them the with asylum from persecution under the blasphemy laws in Pakistan that it had promised.

This June Cineworld pulled the film Lady of Heaven from its cinemas. Responding to pressure from sections of the Muslim communities over concerns that the film was “blasphemous”. Cineworld released this statement: “Due to recent incidents related to screenings of The Lady of Heaven, we have made the decision to cancel upcoming screenings of the film nationwide to ensure the safety of our staff and customers.”

David Cameron’s declaration that multiculturalism had failed and a more muscular liberalism would be needed to ensure individual liberty and freedoms for all, struggled to come to fruition. Counter-extremism and bids to improve cohesion were received as culturally imperialist by the Left and an attack on Islam by the all-too-legitimised Islamists. Today there is very little left of the 2016 counter-extremism strategy.

Extreme anti-blasphemy attitudes in the UK are impacting on our ability to safeguard our citizens, offer asylum and maintain freedom of expression. Salman Rushdie may not have been attacked in the UK, but the fatwa above his head was born here and the seed it planted continues to grow. Britain may have created a monster but we need to stop running scared from it. We need to platform our liberal Muslim voices and stand unashamedly firm on our values of individual liberty and freedom of speech.

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