Hadi Matar, the 24-year-old Lebanese-American accused of trying to assassinate British writer Salman Rushdie, appears to have acted on his own initiative. He claims to be an admirer of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian supreme leader who issued a fatwa, or religious edict, to kill Rushdie in 1989 following the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses. There is no evidence that the attacker is in any way linked to the Iranian government. However, at least one commentator has called the assassination attempt a “state-sponsored act of terrorism.”
That description sounds acceptable. State-sponsored is not the same as state-sponsored, let alone state-run. Although the Iranian government does not
has tried to assassinate Rushdie, Khomeini’s fatwa still stands, and the state must bear some responsibility for inspiring fanatical criminals like Matar.
Of course, murderers or would-be murderers have also been incited by violent language in the past. Anders Breivik, the Norwegian who murdered 69 minors at a Social Democratic summer camp in 2011, was an avid reader of writers who warned that Muslims, coddled by European liberals, posed a fundamental threat to Western civilization. Does this mean that the individual writers and bloggers whose words convinced Breivik that he had to kill to save the West were in part responsible for his horrendous acts?
Much has been said, and rightly so, about Rushdie’s defense of free expression and the price he has paid for his mettle. In the United States, the Constitution protects right-wing activists who claim to be “at war” with Muslims or leftists, whom they see as an existential threat to the United States and the Christian way of life, as these cultural warriors they do not believe “a clear and present danger.” They cannot threaten any specific person with violence, as that would imply “a real and imminent threat”, but they can freely spread their hatred towards the creed they prefer.
European laws in this area are stricter. In France and several other countries on the continent, it is prohibited to “defame or insult” a person or group because of their ethnicity, nationality, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. You can say that Islam, Christianity or any other religion is abominable, but you can’t insult a person for what he believes.
There is a difference between insulting and offending someone. While an insult is a deliberate intent to hurt, to offend is to hold an opinion that someone may find offensive, even if no offense is intended. A writer can be accused of insulting, but not of offending. There’s no evidence that Rushdie meant to insult anyone in The Satanic Verses, but he offended a lot of people, whether they’ve read the book or (usually) not.
However, for many people, religion is much more than a set of rules or beliefs to adhere to. Like nationality, it can become the center of a person’s identity. When someone’s sense of identity is called into question, it is quickly taken as an insult by the person, even if there was no intention to do so.
Neither Rushdie nor any other writer or thinker should be limited by this. It is necessary to protect people from imminent danger and perhaps, as is the case in Europe, also from defamation or insult, but there is no reason why particular ideas and beliefs should be protected from criticism or even from ridiculous.
However, there is another distinction that needs to be considered. The impact of who says what to whom.
Even if Breivik may have been inspired by extreme anti-liberal or Islamophobic views promoted by certain individuals, those writers and bloggers are not responsible for the murders he committed. They could be criticized for failing to anticipate the possible consequences of spreading so much fear and loathing. They might be morally guilty, but their opinions have no authority.
The danger is much greater when a politician or religious leader stirs up hatred. The consequences of Khomeini’s fatwa are very clear. The Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses was murdered in 1991, the Italian and Norwegian translators barely survived violent attacks, and Rushdie’s would-be assassin nearly managed to eliminate him.
But Iranian clerics are not the only ones to blame. Today American politics is filled with verbal violence as deadly as these attacks.
Open and democratic societies depend on a consensus that conflicting interests and competition for power can be resolved peacefully. Changes of government resulting from legal and fair elections must be accepted. Those with different political opinions should not be seen as existential enemies. But this is not a view widely shared in the US Republican Party, much of which remains captive to former President Donald Trump. It has already become commonplace for far-right Republican congressmen to describe their Democratic counterparts – and even Republicans who challenge Trump – as “traitors.” During his 2016 re-election campaign, Trump himself called for his opponent to be “locked up.” Various Republican politicians have spoken of the beginning of a “civil war” and stress the duty of citizens to arm themselves. The consequences of using this kind of language were on full display on January 6, 2021, when a violent mob took the words of Trump and his supporters literally and stormed the US Capitol.
When extreme opinions are expressed, there is a difference between cynics or naive fanatics and people in positions of authority. People who spread lies and insults on the internet or on TV are revolting and sometimes dangerous, but political and religious leaders who stir up hate empower people to kill.
Translated from English by David Meléndez Tormen
Ian Buruma’s latest book is The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, From Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
www.project-syndicate.org
