There are so many Salman Rushdies in the world

[Skybird]

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/es-gibt-unzaehlige-rushdies-in-der-welt-sie-leben-gefaehrlich-ld.1697890?_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_sl=auto


Hope this link to Google translator works...??


I "know" the author of this article, I mean I once met him and talked with him for a few minutes. He once was a convinced fundamentalist, now is a threatened critic of Islam, and since he wrote his book "The Islamic fascism" he lives under police protection. Since many years.

[Jimbuna]

In light of what happened to Rushdie recently I reckon he'll be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life unfortunately.

[Jimbuna]

In light of what happened to Rushdie recently I reckon he'll be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life unfortunately.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-62536592

[Skybird]

I learned from the US thread that my attempt to bypass my issues with Google website translator apparently were not successful. So, here too the full text in DeepL text translation.



Edit:


No, the essay has dissapperad behind their paywall meanwhile. NZZ does so, many of their articles are free only the first one or two days. Should have thought of that.

[Skybird]

If the frontdoor is locked, use the backdoor. :D Here is the text in full.


There are countless Rushdies in the world. Whoever dares to criticize Islam lives a dangerous life.

As a child, I hated the writer as many Muslims do; until I read his "Satanic Verses" myself. Behind the hatred of Salman Rushdie is a deep hatred of Western culture.

"So you are the Egyptian Salman Rushdie everyone is talking about?" asked Salman Rushdie with a smile at our first and only meeting in Berlin three years ago. It was a celebration of the thirty-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the celebration coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the fatwa issued against Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeiny. "Thirty years ago there was a single Salman Rushdie in the world, today there is at least one Salman Rushdie in every Islamic country, not to mention those in Western countries. That should make you happy," I replied.

Rushdie was composed, witty, but vehemently rejected the role of hero and role model. He did not want to be reduced to the fatwa, came to the event without a bodyguard, and simply wanted to be perceived as a novelist. I told him that thirty years ago I hated him without having read a single word of his. Today, however, I am one of his great admirers, not because of the death fatwa, but because of his great novels like "The Moor's Last Sigh" and "Midnight Children."

A Muslim knight against Satan

In 1989, I was still in high school in an Egyptian village when Khomeiny called for Rushdie's death. Our Arabic teacher claimed that an Indian writer named Salman Rushdie, paid by the West, had insulted the Prophet Muhammad and called him "a dog." He cited a poem by the famous Egyptian poet Farouk Gouida in which the latter criticized Rushdie and accused him of blaspheming Islam and its prophet. The poet described Rushdie as a person whose heart was possessed by the devil and prophesied that one day a Muslim knight would cut off his satanic head.

Yes, it was not a cleric, but a poet, of all people, who had stirred up my hatred of Rushdie. As a devout Muslim who revered the Prophet, I had no choice at the time but to hate Rushdie, just like everyone else around me. At the end of that year, I began to study English literature in Cairo, and later I came across a smuggled copy of The Satanic Verses. In it I found nothing to justify the great hatred for Rushdie. It was a novel of magical realism like the works of Gabriel García Márquez, only with a touch of British humor and a breeze of Indian storytelling.

When I heard about the attack on Salman Rushdie on Friday night, I was shocked, angry and deeply affected. First I thought of him, a 75-year-old man hovering between life and death who has committed no crime except exercising his right to artistic freedom. Then I thought of the Egyptian poet who, at the time, did not support a writer's freedom of speech, but supported the angry mob and predicted Rushdie's execution.

Who's next?

This poet is still considered an excellent intellectual, not an Islamist, although many of his thoughts are deeply rooted in Islamism. Then I thought of myself, a writer who criticizes Islam much more vehemently than Rushdie and receives constant death threats because of it. I thought of that day when an official from the Berlin State Criminal Police Office came to me and told me that from now on I would be under twenty-four-hour police protection, gave me a bulletproof vest, and said that from now on I should wear it during my lectures because the death threats against me were becoming more concrete and there were plans to put them into practice.

All because I had dared to write a book entitled "Islamic Fascism." I thought of the numerous instances when security personnel, searching guests' bags before my lectures, confiscated metal objects that could be used as weapons. And of the many times I was attacked on the open street in Berlin despite being escorted by the police. Of the many nights of fear and despair.

Will I be the next victim? A question that automatically came to my mind after the attack on "Charlie Hebdo," then again after the beheading of the French teacher Samuel Paty, who dared to show Mohammed cartoons in his classroom, and now after the assassination attempt on Salman Rushdie.


Does there have to be a next victim at all? Where does the source of error lie? Does it lie in an unleashed ideology and theology of violence that has thrived for centuries at the heart of Islam and cannot be stopped? Or is it because Western policy hides fear of terrorism and concern for economic relations with Muslim countries behind respect, tolerance and diversity?

Or is it because most people here don't care too much about freedom? Why is it okay to criticize Jesus and Moses and Buddha, but not Mohammed? Why can a Salafist live and preach undisturbed in the West, while any critic of Islam must fear for his life here? Why are critics of Islam considered troublemakers in the multicultural paradise, even though they profess Western values and even though this multicultural doctrine now offers many retreats for Islamists?

Get well wishes from the Arab world

After a sleepless night, I was fed up with German newspapers that kept reporting that the motives for the assassination of Rushdie were still unknown. I wondered what the literati and intellectuals in the Arab world had to say about the assassination, so I visited their accounts on social networks and was surprised to see that some of them supported Salman Rushdie and wished him a speedy recovery.

They emphasized that one must respond to thoughts only with thoughts. That gave me a little hope. But as I read on, I was disappointed. Many, while condemning the attack, insisted that Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses" was also a crime because it hurt the feelings of Muslims.

The absolute majority did not think of the old man hovering between life and death, but saw that their religion was the real victim of the attack. They were afraid that the incident would harm the image of Islam and pour water on the mills of Islamophobia in the West. Their views were an expression of infantility, selfishness and lack of sense of responsibility, which I consider much more dangerous than Islamism itself. We are talking about the intellectual elite here, not the average citizen, who often react irrationally to criticism.

Secular sugar coating

This elite continues to bury its head in the sand and cares more about the image of Islam than about the victims of Islamist violence. It is unable to name the real causes of misery. Syrian writer Mais al-Kridi called Rushdie vulgar and racist. His book, she said, aims only to insult 1.5 billion Muslims. Al-Jazeera journalist and anchor Nazih al-Ahdab wrote on Facebook, "I am against murder, but I am also against Salman Rushdie." He said the writer is far too insignificant for a young man to spend his life in prison because of him.

Behind their hatred of Rushdie is a deep hatred of the West and everything that comes from it. Many members of the elite have grown up with Islamist discourse from their earliest days, and even when they claim to be secular, the foundation of their thinking remains Islamist. They fail to recognize where the problem lies. The wrong diagnosis always leads to the wrong medicine, as has been the case in recent decades. They claim that the problem comes from the outside, from the West's attitude toward Islam, rather than from Islam's attitude toward the West and the world at large. A common tactic is to view Salman Rushdie as part of a Western agenda to undermine Islam. Some even go so far as to compare him to Isis and Usama bin Ladin to avoid sympathizing with him. They use the same old tactics to discredit all critics of Islam.

So fundamentalism is running rampant, and the hatred goes beyond the borders of the Islamic world and hits places like New York, London, Berlin, and Paris. This hatred cuts across all classes and is also generational. The perpetrator of the Rushdie attack is 24 years old. That is, he was born years after Rushdie's book and after Khomeiny's fatwa. Yet he felt it was his duty to silence Rushdie forever because hatred is passed from one generation to the next.

Reason is lacking everywhere


It was no surprise for me to read comments full of hatred, gloating and conspiracy theories from ordinary Muslims, but it was shocking to see intellectuals - who themselves are always calling for more freedom of expression in their countries - not only abandoning a fellow writer, but also setting up a tribunal for him while he lies injured in an intensive care unit. This somehow reminded me of the reactions of some German intellectuals who, at the time of the Rushdie affair, instead of showing solidarity with their colleague who was threatened with death, stressed that his novel was not good literature, as if freedom of expression was tied to the literary quality of the work.

We are dealing with a zeitgeist in which rationality plays an increasingly minor role in the West and in the East. In this vacuum created by the absence of reason, identitarian radical ideologies are spreading and building centers of power that they will not give up. The state is helpless and has no concepts. That is why the editors of "Charlie Hebdo," then Samuel Paty, and now Salman Rushdie became victims of a deranged multiculturalism. And that is why there will be a next victim, unfortunately!

[Skybird]

And another critic, also living under police protection since years. Ahmad Mansour is a psychologist and Islamism expert who has lived in Germany since 2004. In the fall of 2022, he will publish "Operation Allah: How Political Islam Wants to Infiltrate Our Democracy. The politcal caste hates him as much as it hates Abdel-Samad - they are party poopers at the political correctness party.

----------------
The assassination of Rushdie has the effect of disrupting Europe. For the continent has grown tired of defending its fundamental values

Critics of Islam are a yardstick. As long as they can speak freely, the West is intact. If they feel threatened here or even have to go into hiding, the compass in Europe is askew.

Salman Rushdie has not only created great literary works and described the reality in the Muslim world in an impressive, unsparingly honest way. He has broken Muslim taboos and shown groundbreaking courage. He is a role model for many people, including Muslims who do not want to follow the revelation to the letter. But Rushdie was wrong in one respect: his desire for freedom and normality led him to underestimate his hateful opponents in their murderous endurance - with fatal consequences.

The attempted murder of Salman Rushdie has an Islamist background. This must be noted, even if relativizations can already be heard and there is an attempt at victim-perpetrator reversal, according to which the act fuels anti-Muslim racism. This is an attempt to suppress the bigger picture of which this act is a part. In fact, this attack must be added to the now very long list of terrorist actions and intimidation attempts, all of which have the same perpetrators and accomplices, and all of which are legitimized by an understanding of Islam that creates the basis for such acts.

Already in 1984 attack on Nobel Prize winner

The victims are always the same. It hits those who dare to look critically at Islam and break Muslim taboos that are considered untouchable. Just a few prominent examples in recent years: the murder of film director Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands in 2004, the violent protests following the publication of the Muhammad cartoons in Denmark in 2005, the attack on the editorial offices of "Charlie Hebdo" in Paris in 2015, the bestial murder of Samuel Paty in 2020 and the subsequent calls for a boycott of France in the Muslim world. Egyptian Nobel laureate Nagib Mahfuz was also hit by an assassination attempt back in 1984 because he was declared an apostate by Islamists. He barely survived.

These and many other attacks show how life-threatening it has become, even in the West, to criticize Islam, and how people branded in this way remain a target over long periods of time. But the perpetrators are concerned with more than just revenge against critics of Islam. They are concerned with imposing their own standards and taboos on the European West.

In doing so, they pursue two strategies to prevent criticism of Islam: a soft and a hard one. In the soft strategy, political Islam activists pose as democrats and anti-racists in order to then discredit any criticism of Islam as Islamophobic, racist and intolerant. The hard way, on the other hand, simply chooses the path of intimidation and violence. In the past seven years, I have had to experience firsthand that it is hardly possible today to speak such truths objectively, because just like Hamed Abdel-Samad and Seyran Ates, to name just two names, I live under police protection.

Under the father's thumb

The advocates of the hard-line strategy are part of a group that identifies itself exclusively through religion. Their image of God is the mirror image of their fathers, who expected blind obedience and ruled over them by suppressing any individual desires. In such an environment, it is hardly possible to develop a healthy self-esteem. Instead, characters are formed who are deeply insecure and unreflective, and who seek their support in the outside world, especially in religion.

In addition, they grow up with violence, whether at the family, religious or possibly even state level. This is because most of them live in or come from authoritarian countries that lag far behind the West in every comparison, whether it is a matter of prosperity, democracy, freedom, equal rights or technical progress. The majority of Muslim countries have been stuck in a self-inflicted crisis of purpose for decades.

In this social and political environment, politicized Islam offers a way out. "We are the solution," it promises, "we are strong, for our God is strong! We renew the glory of the past!" This psychic dynamic, however, is not about Islamic spirituality, not about religion itself. Rather, it is about twisted and obdurate interpretations of Islam that dock with authoritarian and patriarchal systems, and that promote primarily immaturity and literalism instead of self-awareness.


Children who question or doubt are considered "disobedient." In the schools of the countries of origin, children learn by heart instead of discussing. In the mosque, only the revelation of the Holy Scriptures is valid - questioning and critical thinking, on the other hand, nothing. Individuality has no value. Only the collective identity, the family, the large group, the religious community is valid.

When societies glorify their actual or supposed past, they lack energy and imagination for the present and future. Political Islam could not and cannot deliver what it promised, neither in Egypt nor in Iran, nor even in Turkey. But it is impossible to blame the infallible holy message or the way it is dealt with - it is always others who are to blame, the West, the state of Israel, criticism of Islam.

This is why people who have grown up in this way approach both the West and themselves with inferiority complexes and a deep-seated fear of being exposed. For them, religion is a kind of burka that covers their weaknesses and gives them a clear collective identity that sets them apart from others.

Faith and religion are all they have to hold on to. To criticize this religion seems to them as if their entire existence were being called into question. But this is how progress and innovation, and above all any individuality, are prevented. Ultimately, Salman Rushdie's opponents do not want to protect Islam or their God. In any case, very few have read his books and thought about his statements. No, they basically want to protect themselves alone.

Europe unprepared despite everything

Just as when Salman Rushdie published his best-known work, The Satanic Verses, in 1988 and a murder fatwa was pronounced against him the following year, according to which all Muslims were called upon to kill the British-Indian author for his insults to the Prophet and Islam, the latest assassination attempt on Rushdie has caught Europe completely unprepared.

At that time, the knowledge and experience with this kind of fanaticism was almost non-existent. At that time, few thought that such thoughts and deeds could also gain significance in and for Europe. But even now the attack comes at the apparently most inopportune time. Even now, in 2022, when knowledge and experience with Islamist fanaticism have grown considerably in the meantime - and due to terrible events - the attack on Rushdie seems more like a disturbance. For Europe seems to have grown tired of defending its own fundamental values. Apart from a few Sunday speeches after each attack, little can be heard.

The spokesmen of the public discourse are now actors who follow a simple black-and-white ideology. An ideology according to which only white, old, European men can be perpetrators. Muslims, on the other hand, are always just victims of discrimination. Criticism of them, their beliefs and actions is not considered an achievement of the Enlightenment, but is reviled as an expression of anti-Muslim racism, as right-wing ideas, and consequently as grist to the mill of populist parties.

Rushdie as a yardstick

And when Muslim actors like Salman Rushdie express this criticism? That irritates and is viewed with suspicion. Thus, a network of "leftists" tries to "protect" a majority of Muslims in Germany from the minority of their Muslim critics. The fact that they thereby make common cause with Islamist actors and, intentionally or unintentionally, become their useful accomplices does not seem to bother anyone. This anti-racism ideology is too tightly knit.

The fact that criticism by believers and non-believers alike of a religion that is misused as an instrument of domination was once a core element in the self-image of the political left has increasingly been forgotten. It seems all the more absurd, then, when Muslim critics of their own religion are dismissed by the Greens, by leftists, and even by social democrats.

Salman Rushdie and his intellectual comrades-in-arms are a yardstick for the West. As long as they can speak freely, as long as they are listened to, Europe is healthy. But as soon as they feel threatened in Europe or even go into hiding, it means that the compass in Europe is askew. Only with enlightenment, clear communication and a determined defense of values, including the consistent enforcement of the principles of the rule of law, can this culture war be won.