Newspaper Article

Now, Who Will Speak for Rushdie?

Christopher Hitchens is the author of "Prepared For The Worst," a book of essays, Hitchens, Christopher

1989

Overview

I understand that petition-gatherers have had some difficulty in rounding up the usual literary lions. (Contrast this reticence with the courage of Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian Nobel laureate, who yesterday roundly charged Khomeini with ''intellectual terrorism.'') I noticed that Viking Penguin has insisted that it did not mean to be offensive. I observed that the normally vociferous ''anti-terrorist'' lobby is unusually cautious in its choice of terms, and that the spokesmen for the godly are uncharacteristically silent. It seems that many respectable people are prepared to be more critical of a novel written by a private individual than they are about a murder threat issued so boldly by a man with state power. In the responses of a liberal society to this direct affront, there has been altogether too much about the offended susceptibilities of the religious and altogether too little about the absolute right of free expression and free inquiry. One can and must be ''absolute'' about these. Unlike other absolutisms, they guarantee rather than abridge the rights of all - Khomeini included - to be heard and debated. [Salman Rushdie], it ought to be remembered, has been an energetic defender of the rights of Asian and Muslim minorities in a nominally Christian England. Those who would legislate our thoughts are impervious to the ridicule they attract for their frenzy to ban a book they have not read. For them, the whole point is that nobody should read ''unclean'' prose or poetry or philosophy. The processes of reason, the wit of Voltaire about the distinction between disagreement and suppression, are a kind of baffling non-sequitur to such minds.

• Publisher: New York Times Company
• Subject: BOOKS AND LITERATURE / HITCHENS, CHRISTOPHER / ISLAM / Rushdie, Salman / TERRORISM / THREATS AND THREATENING MESSAGES