By Husam Dughman
The civilized world, most especially the literary world, has lately been shocked and devastated by the news of the horrific attack on Indian British author Salman Rushdie in New York. Rushdie had for a long time been the target of a fatwa (religious edict) issued by the late Ayatollah Khomeini in the wake of the publication of Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses in September 1988. The fatwa had called for Rushdie’s death, and the Iranian government offered over three million dollars to anyone who could carry out that (mis)deed. That was 33 years ago. With the passing of time, along with the Iranian government’s distancing of itself from the fatwa in subsequent years (although it was never revoked), it seems that Rushdie had felt gradually less and less fearful, prompting his subsequent emergence from his long years of hiding. Not only that, but Rushdie had begun to feel so secure and unthreatened that he started to go to various interviews and meetings without any special security to protect him. The German magazine Stern, which had interviewed Rushdie not long before he was attacked, has stated that he had gone to the interview unaccompanied by any personal guards, and that he later stated in his interview with that magazine that his life had become “relatively normal.”
- Husam Dughman
- Viewpoints
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