Rushdie Knighthood
Sadanand Dhume writes on the aftermath of the Rushdie Knighthood.
Sadanand Dhume, an Asia Society Fellow and a long-time contributor to Far Eastern Economic Review, WSJ and other publications, reacts to the angry response by some Muslims to the recent knighthood for Salman Rushdie.
...her majesty's conferral is a welcome example of something that has grown exceedingly rare: British backbone. After years of kowtowing to every fundamentalist demand imaginable -- from accommodating
the burqa in schools and colleges to re-orienting prison toilets to face
away from Mecca -- the British seem to be saying enough is enough. Nobody
expects Mr. Rushdie to be awarded the Nishan-e-Pakistan, the Collar of the
Nile or Iran's Islamic Republic Medal, but in Britain, as elsewhere in the
civilized world, great novelists are honored for their work. A pinched view
of the human condition or poorly imagined characters may harm your
prospects. Blasphemy does not.
Read the entire essay below and post your thoughts in the comments section.
The Wall Street Journal
June 23, 2007; Page A10
Sir Salman Rushdie
By SADANAND DHUME
Mr. Dhume is a fellow at the Asia Society in Washington, D.C. "My Friend the
Fanatic," his book about the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia, will be
published next year.
Another Friday in Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi -- and as if on cue, the
hoarse, bearded and pyromaniacal pour out of the mosques into the streets
armed with Union Jacks and effigies of Queen Elizabeth II, Tony Blair and
the newly knighted Sir Salman Rushdie.
Having protested Danish cartoons and popish detours into Byzantine history
to the point of exhaustion, the proverbial Muslim street is once again
seething. Pakistan's minister of religious affairs said Mr. Rushdie's award
justified suicide bombings, while a group of traders in Islamabad banded
together to place a $140,000 bounty on his head. Fathi Sorour, the speaker
of Egypt's parliament, declared that, "Honoring someone who has offended the
Muslim religion is a bigger error than the publication of caricatures
attacking Prophet Muhammad." Malaysian protesters besieged the British high
commission (embassy) in Kuala Lumpur chanting, "Destroy Britain" and "Crush
Salman Rushdie." With the irony perhaps lost in translation, Iran, whose
president thinks nothing of threatening to wipe Israel off the map,
condemned the award and called it a clear sign of (that mysterious new
ailment) "Islamophobia."
For many of us, however, her majesty's conferral is a welcome example of
something that has grown exceedingly rare: British backbone. After years of
kowtowing to every fundamentalist demand imaginable -- from accommodating
the burqa in schools and colleges to re-orienting prison toilets to face
away from Mecca -- the British seem to be saying enough is enough. Nobody
expects Mr. Rushdie to be awarded the Nishan-e-Pakistan, the Collar of the
Nile or Iran's Islamic Republic Medal, but in Britain, as elsewhere in the
civilized world, great novelists are honored for their work. A pinched view
of the human condition or poorly imagined characters may harm your
prospects. Blasphemy does not.
In the larger struggle against Islamism -- the ideology that demands that
every aspect of human life be ordered by the seventh-century Arabian
precepts enshrined in Shariah law -- the Rushdie affair carries totemic
significance. In 1989 the late Ayatollah Khomeini declared a price on Mr.
Rushdie's head for the crime of apostasy, after reading about his mockery of
the prophet Mohammed in "The Satanic Verses." At the time, few could have
predicted that this was merely the first act of a drama that's still
unfolding.
Eighteen years after the ayatollah's fatwa, since lifted, but thanks to
freelance fanaticism, never quite extinguished, the Bombay-born Mr. Rushdie
has managed to lead a full life. He has turned out eight novels and essay
collections, married twice (most recently the model and actress Padma
Lakshmi), mentored a generation of young Indians writing in English, and
spoken out against obscurantism and religious bigotry of every stripe. He
has also witnessed -- mirrored in his own predicament -- the consequences of
a Europe too paralyzed by deathwish multiculturalism and moral relativism to
recognize the danger it faces. It has become a continent where an Islamist
stabs a film director in broad daylight in Amsterdam, where bombs go off in
Madrid commuter trains and London buses, where writers, directors and
cartoonists suddenly find themselves bound by sensitivities imported not
merely from alien lands but from another age altogether.
No Western country has done more to accommodate Islamists than Britain, and
none better shows the folly of this course. Successive governments feted
organizations such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Public
Affairs Committee, and welcomed as refugees a stable of jihadist clerics,
including the Syrian-born Omar Bakri Muhammad and the hook-handed Abu Hamza
al-Masri. Rather than moderate Muslim passions, this climate of
permissiveness gave us Richard Reid the shoe bomber, Daniel Pearl's
murderer, Omar Saeed Sheikh, the quartet behind the 2005 London bombings and
the plotters who ensured that we must now worry about carrying moisturizing
lotion and baby formula each time we board an airplane. A recent poll by
Policy Exchange, a London think tank, shows that 28% of British Muslims
would rather live under Shariah than under British law.
But at last it looks like the pendulum has begun to swing the other way. Mr.
Rushdie's elevation signals an intention to draw a line between respecting
Islam and allowing a small minority of Islamists to impose their hairtrigger
hysteria on secular Muslims and non-Muslims. It highlights two of the core
values of Western civilization conspicuously absent in most of the Muslim
world: freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry. It squarely rejects the
notion that the fossilized norms of Mecca and Mashhad hold sway over
Manchester and Middlesex, and beyond them, over Malmo and Minneapolis. Above
all, it honors a brave man who has come to symbolize our turbulent times. A
little old-fashioned British spine has never been more welcome.
Sadanand Dhume, an Asia Society Fellow and a long-time contributor to Far Eastern Economic Review, WSJ and other publications, reacts to the angry response by some Muslims to the recent knighthood for Salman Rushdie.
...her majesty's conferral is a welcome example of something that has grown exceedingly rare: British backbone. After years of kowtowing to every fundamentalist demand imaginable -- from accommodating
the burqa in schools and colleges to re-orienting prison toilets to face
away from Mecca -- the British seem to be saying enough is enough. Nobody
expects Mr. Rushdie to be awarded the Nishan-e-Pakistan, the Collar of the
Nile or Iran's Islamic Republic Medal, but in Britain, as elsewhere in the
civilized world, great novelists are honored for their work. A pinched view
of the human condition or poorly imagined characters may harm your
prospects. Blasphemy does not.
Read the entire essay below and post your thoughts in the comments section.
The Wall Street Journal
June 23, 2007; Page A10
Sir Salman Rushdie
By SADANAND DHUME
Mr. Dhume is a fellow at the Asia Society in Washington, D.C. "My Friend the
Fanatic," his book about the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia, will be
published next year.
Another Friday in Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi -- and as if on cue, the
hoarse, bearded and pyromaniacal pour out of the mosques into the streets
armed with Union Jacks and effigies of Queen Elizabeth II, Tony Blair and
the newly knighted Sir Salman Rushdie.
Having protested Danish cartoons and popish detours into Byzantine history
to the point of exhaustion, the proverbial Muslim street is once again
seething. Pakistan's minister of religious affairs said Mr. Rushdie's award
justified suicide bombings, while a group of traders in Islamabad banded
together to place a $140,000 bounty on his head. Fathi Sorour, the speaker
of Egypt's parliament, declared that, "Honoring someone who has offended the
Muslim religion is a bigger error than the publication of caricatures
attacking Prophet Muhammad." Malaysian protesters besieged the British high
commission (embassy) in Kuala Lumpur chanting, "Destroy Britain" and "Crush
Salman Rushdie." With the irony perhaps lost in translation, Iran, whose
president thinks nothing of threatening to wipe Israel off the map,
condemned the award and called it a clear sign of (that mysterious new
ailment) "Islamophobia."
For many of us, however, her majesty's conferral is a welcome example of
something that has grown exceedingly rare: British backbone. After years of
kowtowing to every fundamentalist demand imaginable -- from accommodating
the burqa in schools and colleges to re-orienting prison toilets to face
away from Mecca -- the British seem to be saying enough is enough. Nobody
expects Mr. Rushdie to be awarded the Nishan-e-Pakistan, the Collar of the
Nile or Iran's Islamic Republic Medal, but in Britain, as elsewhere in the
civilized world, great novelists are honored for their work. A pinched view
of the human condition or poorly imagined characters may harm your
prospects. Blasphemy does not.
In the larger struggle against Islamism -- the ideology that demands that
every aspect of human life be ordered by the seventh-century Arabian
precepts enshrined in Shariah law -- the Rushdie affair carries totemic
significance. In 1989 the late Ayatollah Khomeini declared a price on Mr.
Rushdie's head for the crime of apostasy, after reading about his mockery of
the prophet Mohammed in "The Satanic Verses." At the time, few could have
predicted that this was merely the first act of a drama that's still
unfolding.
Eighteen years after the ayatollah's fatwa, since lifted, but thanks to
freelance fanaticism, never quite extinguished, the Bombay-born Mr. Rushdie
has managed to lead a full life. He has turned out eight novels and essay
collections, married twice (most recently the model and actress Padma
Lakshmi), mentored a generation of young Indians writing in English, and
spoken out against obscurantism and religious bigotry of every stripe. He
has also witnessed -- mirrored in his own predicament -- the consequences of
a Europe too paralyzed by deathwish multiculturalism and moral relativism to
recognize the danger it faces. It has become a continent where an Islamist
stabs a film director in broad daylight in Amsterdam, where bombs go off in
Madrid commuter trains and London buses, where writers, directors and
cartoonists suddenly find themselves bound by sensitivities imported not
merely from alien lands but from another age altogether.
No Western country has done more to accommodate Islamists than Britain, and
none better shows the folly of this course. Successive governments feted
organizations such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Public
Affairs Committee, and welcomed as refugees a stable of jihadist clerics,
including the Syrian-born Omar Bakri Muhammad and the hook-handed Abu Hamza
al-Masri. Rather than moderate Muslim passions, this climate of
permissiveness gave us Richard Reid the shoe bomber, Daniel Pearl's
murderer, Omar Saeed Sheikh, the quartet behind the 2005 London bombings and
the plotters who ensured that we must now worry about carrying moisturizing
lotion and baby formula each time we board an airplane. A recent poll by
Policy Exchange, a London think tank, shows that 28% of British Muslims
would rather live under Shariah than under British law.
But at last it looks like the pendulum has begun to swing the other way. Mr.
Rushdie's elevation signals an intention to draw a line between respecting
Islam and allowing a small minority of Islamists to impose their hairtrigger
hysteria on secular Muslims and non-Muslims. It highlights two of the core
values of Western civilization conspicuously absent in most of the Muslim
world: freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry. It squarely rejects the
notion that the fossilized norms of Mecca and Mashhad hold sway over
Manchester and Middlesex, and beyond them, over Malmo and Minneapolis. Above
all, it honors a brave man who has come to symbolize our turbulent times. A
little old-fashioned British spine has never been more welcome.
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