Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (39 page)

On February 10, 2006, thousands of Muslims across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East set out from Friday prayers to demonstrate against the cartoons. Some of their protests ended in violence, despite calls by many religious leaders for them to remain peaceful. Egyptian demonstrators invoked the name of Osama bin Laden and burned a Danish flag.
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Thousands in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, called for the destruction of Denmark, Israel, George Bush, and America.
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In Karbala, Iraq, around 10,000 demonstrators burned Danish flags and called for breaking off Iraq’s relations with Denmark.
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Hamas organized a protest in which about 500 children trampled a Danish flag, carried a coffin bearing the word “Denmark,” and demanded a boycott of Danish goods.
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Police quelled riots in Hyderabad, India, with batons and tear gas.
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Kenyan security forces used tear gas to keep hundreds of protesters away from the Danish embassy in Nairobi.
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Pakistan and Afghanistan saw many of the worst riots. The cartoons continue to be
both vilified by Muslims and, from time to time, defiantly republished by advocates of free expression. All told, the Danish cartoons crisis has so far cost at least 241 lives internationally
.
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Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders was no stranger to controversy when, in November 2007, he announced that he had begun work on a film to illustrate “the intolerant and fascist nature of the Koran.”
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In January 2008, he announced a March release date for his film titled Fitna, an Arabic word meaning strife or discord. He stated that Fitna would link the Qur’an directly to violence and depict it as “the latest test to Western democracies since Nazism and communism.”

In the aftermath of Fitna’s appearance online, angry protests, threats, acts of vandalism, and accusations of blasphemy reverberated around the globe. Egyptian, Moroccan, and Bangladeshi cabinet ministers denounced the movie, with the latter calling it “mentally retarded.” Sudan, Iran, Malaysia, and Indonesia spoke out against it, calling for boycotts and threatening various consequences. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said that “insults to other religions could never be justified on the basis of freedom of expression” and demanded that the Dutch government bring charges against Wilders. On April 6, more than 20,000 people attended a Jamaat-e-Islami rally in Karachi to protest both Wilders’s film and the Danish cartoons reprint
.
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In Afghanistan on April 18, 2008, a roadside bomb killed Lieutenant Dennis van Uhm, son of newly appointed Dutch chief of staff Peter van Uhm. A Taliban spokesman claimed to have known van Uhm was in the vehicle and that the attack was part of an “operation against the Dutch”; “first it was because they have occupied our country and secondly it was in retaliation to the Dutch insult to our great prophet Muhammad.”
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In the following chapters, we describe blasphemy and hate-speech restrictions in the West, enforced either by the state or by vigilante action and mobs. We also describe the efforts by governments in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and others, either through the United Nations or by direct pressure, to persuade or force Western governments to apply the same denial of freedom of speech and of religion as do OIC members. Some of these events and pressures are described in
chapter 11
on the United Nations, in
chapter 12
on legal developments in the West, and in
chapter 13
on private violence. However, some of the
major crises and developments concerning blasphemy and apostasy—reactions to the novel
The Satanic Verses
, the Danish and Swedish cartoons, the pope’s lecture at Regensburg, and the doings of Geert Wilders—spill over these boundaries. They play out in the Muslim world and the West, the United Nations, and other international bodies, and they involve not only law but also mob violence, vigilantism, and terrorism. Hence, they need to be described here as a whole.

Khomeini issued his fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the publishers of his novel on February 14, 1989, while also declaring February 15 a day of mourning over
Satanic Verses’
“poisonous and insulting subject-matter concerning Islam, the Koran and the blessed prophet.” The ayatollah called for “all zealous Moslems to execute [Rushdie and others involved with the novel] quickly, wherever they find them, so that no one will dare to insult Islamic sanctity.” He promised that anyone who was killed while complying with his edict would go directly to paradise. For the more earthly-minded, the 15th Khordad Relief Agency also offered a bounty for anyone who killed Rushdie: $2.6 million for an Iranian; $1 million for a foreigner.
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A densely written work of magical realism, Rushdie’s novel had drawn attention of a decidedly nonliterary nature by touching on Islamic theology in several areas. The phrase “Satanic Verses” was derived from the story itself, which speaks of the tenth-century historian and Qur’anic commentator Abu Ja’far Muhammad ibn Jarir Al-Tabari. Al-Tabari’s view, considered heretical by most Muslims, was that some of the verses Muhammad included in the Qu’ran, and then retracted, had come from Satan rather than the Angel Gabriel.
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The most controversial material in Rushdie’s book involved a short section concerning a man called Mahound, a derogatory term for Muhammad that originated from medieval polemics against Islam. In his account of Mahound’s story, Rushdie presents the origin of the verses in question as a case of opportunistic deception rather than diabolical intervention; he suggests that Mahound’s revelation was the product of artifice. He also observes that Mahound seemed habitually to receive revelations suspiciously convenient for his own purposes at the moment. This substory has been interpreted as an attack on Islam, although Rushdie himself has called that an oversimplification. In fact, many who have protested the novel have not read it or even been familiar with its content.

The Mahound sequence also depicts a brothel in Mecca called The Curtain—which translates to
Al-Hijab
—with twelve prostitutes who assume the names and some of the features of Muhammad’s wives. In other sections, the book contains an unflattering portrayal of Ayatollah Khomeini and a story that has been taken as a metaphor for the Iranian Islamic revolution. For the most part, Rushdie’s attitude toward his subject matter is not entirely clear, particularly because the
Mahound and Iranian sequences appear only as the dreams of one of the central characters. But the work does appear consciously intended to challenge Islamic doctrine. Indeed,
Verses
includes one passage in which Mahound accuses a character named Salman of “blasphemy.”
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Once the novel was proclaimed sacrilegious by many Muslim leaders, demonstrations ensued. There were violent protests in India (where the controversy over the novel and its prohibition began) and in Pakistan shortly before Khomeini’s fatwa. The book was banned in Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Pakistan, and South Africa, among others. Already in November 1988, the grand sheikh of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, one of the most respected scholarly figures in the Muslim world, had called on British Muslim groups to seek legal means of suppressing the novel. He also asked that the OIC take action.
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In late December, three Muslim ambassadors met with Britain’s Home Minister.

Initially, Saudi Arabia took the lead in sponsoring denunciations of the novel.
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Saudis and Saudi-backed organizations played a prominent role in anti-Rushdie efforts in Britain, which were considerable. Following publicity (though likely without authorization) from these organizations, Rushdie began receiving death threats in October 1988. A public burning of the novel, organized by the Bradford Council of Mosques, led local booksellers to withdraw
Verses
and 8,000 Muslims to demonstrate in London in late January 1989. Threats also targeted Rushdie’s U.S. publisher, Viking Penguin.
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Then, on February 14, 1989, came the Iranian fatwa, which has received a mixed response from Muslims. Sayed Abdul Quddas, who had orchestrated the Bradford book-burning, said he was ready to act on the ayatollah’s decree and declared, “every good Muslim is after [Rushdie’s] life. He has tortured Islam and has to pay the penalty.” On February 15, Rushdie’s French publisher, Christian Bourgois, suspended publication of the book due to security concerns. In the United States, B. Dalton and Barnes and Noble initially refused to sell the book at all, although they later reversed their decisions. Waldenbooks agreed to sell it only from storerooms. On February 28, two California bookstores, and the offices of a newspaper that had published an article defending the book, were firebombed.
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At first, Rushdie asserted that he only wished his book had been more critical. “It seems to me,” he said, “that Islamic fundamentalists could do with a little bit of criticism right now.” On February 18, however, after a possible suggestion by Iran’s president, Sayyid Ali Khamenei, that the fatwa might be reversed if he apologized, Rushdie stated: “I profoundly regret the distress the publication has occasioned to sincere followers of Islam. Living as we do in a world of many faiths, this experience has served to remind us that we must all be conscious of the sensibilities of others.” Yet Ayatollah Khomeini promptly proclaimed, “Even if Salman Rushdie repents and becomes the most pious man of [all] time, it is incumbent on every Muslim to employ everything he’s got, his life and wealth, to send him to hell.”
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While Khomeini’s death edict against a British citizen led the United Kingdom to freeze relations with Iran, it was Tehran that officially severed relations on March 7, after Britain refused to condemn Rushdie’s book. In a statement carried by the Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran’s government cited an alleged “anti-Islamic campaign” by “the world oppressors and the West, which find genuine Islam against their objectives and plots.” Other Muslim countries, some of which had led their own efforts against
The Satanic Verses
prior to February 14, did not risk fully associating themselves with the Iranian fatwa. On March 16, the OIC declined to back the fatwa directly but condemned Rushdie’s “blasphemous” novel and called on countries “to ban the book and take all necessary steps to protect sacred religious beliefs.”
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Tensions in Britain soon escalated. On May 27, participants in an approximately 20,000-strong London demonstration shouted, “Rushdie must die,” hung him in effigy, and delivered a petition to 10 Downing Street calling for the widening of Britain’s blasphemy laws. Clashes with police led to eighty-four arrests. The violence inspired two Labour MPs, Keith Vaz, and Max Madden, to suggest banning the book; Vaz actually led 3,000 protesters “intent on burning an effigy of Rushdie.” Other establishment figures were also less than sympathetic to the author. Historian Lord Dacre declared he “would not shed a tear if some British Muslims, deploring Mr. Rushdie’s manners, were to waylay him in a dark street and seek to improve them.”
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Following Khomeini’s death in June 1989, the Iranian government attempted subtly to distance itself from his fatwa. It suggested that, while the decree could only have been altered by Khomeini himself, Iran’s political leaders did not wish it to be treated as their handiwork, nor did they want it to become a complicating factor in their relations with Western governments. This, however, did little to ease the pressure on Rushdie and others affected by the fatwa. There were major demonstrations outside the headquarters of publisher Viking Penguin in January 1990, and a Viking spokesman said his organization had been the target of “a stream of threats and violence.”
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Following his unsuccessful apology of February 18, Rushdie, still in hiding, insisted that the reaction was his attackers’ problem, not his. Then, once again, he altered his position under pressure. In May 1990, some Britons suggested he should apologize and withhold a paperback version of
Verses
. This was to be done, at least in part, in order to improve relations with Iran, which was believed to have control over terror groups holding British hostages in Lebanon. In September 1990, Rushdie stated that “if people have been upset, I’m sorry,” that he had not meant for his work to be interpreted as an insult and that his life in hiding was “hell.” If Muslims wished to punish him, he noted, they already had. Only hours later, Britain announced it was resuming diplomatic relations with Iran, and British officials suggested Rushdie would no longer have to live in hiding.
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Nevertheless, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati told an interviewer that there was “no change … When somebody insults the main Islamic values and
Islamic principles, you cannot ignore it.”
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This was the first of many similar misunderstandings between Iran and the United Kingdom. Rushdie emerged from hiding for the first time in early December of 1990. At the same time, Iran’s culture minister, Mohammad Khatami, reaffirmed the death sentence against him.
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In November, Rushdie stated on television that he agreed with Muslims that Britain’s blasphemy laws were unfair, that they protected only Christianity and should be replaced with a law against incitement to religious hatred, a charge for which he was sure his own novel would not qualify. Meanwhile, when rumors surfaced that Rushdie was in talks with Muslim leaders, several British Muslims, including Dr. Kalim Saddiqui of the Muslim Institute and Abdal Chowdury of the British Muslim Action Front, took exception to the idea of any such discussion, asserting that the fatwa should not be lifted.
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Nonetheless, Rushdie’s talks with less militant British Muslims bore some fruit.