I censored myself. Yes, I confess, I quite deliberately suppressed part of an interview I did in 2003 with a brilliant writer, the Nobel Prize winner in Literature V.S. Naipaul.
We were talking about jihadist terrorism when Naipaul told me that Saudi Arabia was “the root of evil.” Hours later his agent called me and begged me not to publish those words; that he feared the consequences for Naipaul. I didn’t publish them.
This little memory comes to mind after finishing reading Cuchillo, Salman Rushdie’s book about the assassination attempt at the hands of a Muslim believer from whom he was saved in August 2022. In this case, the root of the evil was Iran, whose Ayatollah Khomeini ordered “all brave Muslims,” in his famous 1989 fatwa, to kill Rushdie.
Rushdie lost an eye, but he is still alive, unlike the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, the book that so offended the Ayatollah and various followers of the Prophet. The translator was stabbed to death by one of the “brave men” in 1991.
I make the connection with Naipaul because surely neither he nor his agent would have wanted to prevent the publication of that if it had not been for the Rushdie precedent. But when we did the interview, 14 years had already passed since the fatwa and we had all already internalized the idea that the limit of freedom of expression in our Western countries is defined by Islam.
Our ancestors fought and gave their lives for centuries so that we could be free to say whatever we wanted and they achieved it, until Rushdie. We give our opinion without fear of reprisals about the holy Catholic Church (portray the Pope in a caricature, as a satanic pedophile in a cartoon, if you want) or about any other religion, without excluding the ideological ones, except… except the one whose two branches, the Shiite and the Sunni, are led by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Freedom of expression is the most sacred right of democracy, but we make an exception when the holy book of the Quran comes into play.
Have you read the Koran? I do. Shall I tell you what I really think of the 77,934 words that God recited to the Prophet through the archangel Gabriel? Better not, right? I could tell you any nonsense about any other sacred text like the Old Testament or the Gospels or the Torah or The Communist Manifesto of Engels and Marx, but with the Koran, be careful. Let’s see if they come for me or my family or my colleagues in this newspaper.
Let’s stay with the comment that if that is not fake news, fake news does not exist. Or with the observation that the God of Islam must have surprisingly thin skin if he does not allow, under penalty of death, neither Rushdie, nor me, nor anyone else to laugh, even a little, at the all-powerful and kind figure of he.
As you can imagine, I fall short. Again, self-censorship. But I take solace in knowing that I am far from the first to succumb to such an exercise in cowardice. As you can also guess, all this irritates me a lot. Or, rather, it makes me very angry. As a journalist who has been a lifelong journalist, sometimes in countries where – effectively – they killed you for telling things as they were, the right to freedom of expression is, just behind “thou shalt not kill”, my strongest belief.
It makes me sad that it does not exist for the people who live in countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia. How cool is it that a few days ago the Iranian rap artist Toomaj Salehi was sentenced to death for singing that the regime in his country “suffocated” the people. He was referring to the fierce campaign of repression unleashed in Iran against those who demonstrate in favor of women’s freedom. His crime, according to the religious law of that country: “Corrupting the Earth.”
A few days ago Manahel al Otaibi, a 29-year-old Saudi woman, was also sentenced to 11 years in prison for not wearing her head covered in public and for tweeting against the legal authority of the father, brother, husband or son of a Saudi woman about essential issues in her life, such as marriage or divorce. Well, at least they’re not going to kill her, a not unusual punishment for social media users in that blessed land.
Given the choice between Iran and Saudi Arabia, I would say that today Iran is worse. Because of Rushdie (Iranian newspapers expressed their limited freedom of expression by celebrating the attack he suffered in 2022 as “divine retribution”); for – to cite one example of thousands – the 26-year prison sentence of a professional footballer who declared himself in favor of women’s rights; for the lashes with which judges punish dissidents; by Iran’s military support for Hamas and Russia and the spectacularly bloodthirsty Syrian regime, and perhaps also by the diplomatic campaign to which the “ambassadors” Lionel Messi and Rafa Nadal have contributed in favor of the Saudis.
This last one is a joke. Sorry, Leo and Rafa: not even you, my once idols, convince me. But, well, it must be recognized that Saudi Arabia is making at least an attempt to disguise its image, a tribute from barbarism to civilization. Iran does not even hide. She clearly positions herself with her own, the murderers of those who try to give a voice to those who do not have one.
As I say, this makes me sad. We are talking about many millions of oppressed people. But what makes me angry is that the guardians of Islam extend their repressive superstitions to the minds and hearts of people like me in free countries. We have assumed the fatwa against Rushdie as a fatwa against everyone. As with the gangsters who threaten to kill you and your family if you oppose them, or who leave your dead dog at the door of your house, the message they give us, and which reaches us, is: “Avoid talking about the Islam, do not offend Muslims, otherwise… you know.”
Are we helpless? Is there no way to respond to this permanent aggression? Well, I like the suggestion of an American writer, Lionel Shriver. Since Rushdie embodies the threat we all suffer, he says, why not launch a campaign to buy The Satanic Verses until it reaches number one on Amazon’s best-seller list? I just bought it right now. Here I have it, via Amazon, on my computer. Come on. Sign up. They can’t kill us all.
