I self-censored. Yes, I confess, I absolutely deliberately deleted part of an interview I did in 2003 with a brilliant writer, the Nobel Prize for Literature V.S. Naipaul.
We were talking about jihadist terrorism when Naipaul told me that Saudi Arabia was “the root of evil”. After a few hours, his agent called me and begged me not to publish those words; who was afraid of the consequences for Naipaul. I didn’t post them.
This little memory comes to mind after I finished reading Cuchillo, Salman Rushdie’s book about the assassination attempt at the hands of a faithful Muslim from which he was saved in August 2022. In this case the the root of the evil was Iran, where Ayatollah Khomeini ordered “all brave Muslims”, in the famous fatwa of 1989, to kill Rushdie.
Rushdie lost an eye but 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 “braves” 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 hadn’t been for the Rushdie precedent. But when we did the interview, 14 years had already passed since the fatwa and we all had already deeply internalized the idea that the limit of freedom of expression in our Western countries is defined by Islam.
Our forefathers fought and gave their lives for centuries so that we could be free to say whatever the holy appetite gave us and they succeeded, until the case of Rushdie. We opine without fear of reprisals about the holy Catholic Church (portray the Pope in a caricature, like a satanic pedophile in a cartoon, if you like) or about any other religion, not excluding ideological ones, except… except for that one two branches of which, the Shiite and the Sunni, are headed 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 Koran comes into play.
Have you read the Koran? I do. Do I tell you what I really think about the 77,934 words that God recited to the Prophet through the Archangel Gabriel? Better than not, right? I could tell you any nonsense about any other sacred text such as the Old Testament or the Gospels or the Torah or The Communist Manifesto of Engels and Marx, but with the Koran, beware. Let’s see if they come against me or against my family or against my colleagues in this newspaper.
Let’s stick 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 be surprisingly thin-skinned if he does not allow, on pain of death, that neither Rushdie, nor I, nor anyone else laugh, even a little, at his almighty and kind figure
As you must have guessed, I cut short. Again, self-censorship. But I take comfort 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 pissed me off a lot. As a lifelong journalist, sometimes in countries where – indeed – you were killed for telling things as they were, the right to freedom of expression is, right after “you will not kill”, my most important belief firm
It makes me sad that it doesn’t exist for people who live in countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia. How sad I am that a few days ago the Iranian rap artist Toomaj Salehi was sentenced to death for singing that the regime in his country “suffocates” 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 sentenced to 11 years in prison for not covering her head in public and for tweeting against the legal authority of her father, brother, husband or son of a Saudi woman about essential matters in his life, such as marriage or divorce. Well, at least she won’t be killed, a not unusual punishment for social media users in that blessed land.
If you make me choose between Iran and Saudi Arabia, I would say that Iran is currently worse. In the case 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 among thousands – the sentence of 26 years in prison to a professional footballer who declared himself in favor of women’s rights; by the whippings with which judges punish dissidents; for Iran’s military support for Hamas and Russia and the spectacularly bloodthirsty Syrian regime, and perhaps also for the diplomatic campaign to which the “ambassadors” Lionel Messi and Rafa Nadal have contributed in favor of the Saudis.
That last one is a joke. Sorry, Leo and Rafa: not even you, who were my idols, convince me. But it must be recognized that Saudi Arabia is at least making an attempt to make up its image, a tribute from barbarism to civilization. Iran does not hide. He clearly stands with his own, the killers of those who try to give a voice to those who don’t have one.
As I said, this makes me sad. We are talking about many millions of oppressed people. But what makes me angry is that the guardians of Islam spread their repressive superstitions into 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 mobsters who threaten to kill you and your family if you oppose them, or who leave your dead dog on your doorstep, the message they give us, and which reaches us, is: Avoid talking about Islam, don’t offend Muslims, otherwise…you know”.
Are we helpless? Is there no way to respond to this constant aggression? Well, I like the suggestion of an American writer, Lionel Shriver. Since Rushdie embodies the threat we all face, he says, why don’t we launch a campaign to buy The Satanic Verses until it reaches number one bestseller on Amazon? I just bought it right now. Here I have it, via Amazon, on my computer. Here we go. Sign up for it. They can’t kill us all.
