Salman Rushdie in the NYT

And how the Islamic fatwa differs from the Liberal fatwa

NYT: Salman Rushdie Is Not Who You Think He Is

IMMIGRANT MOVES TO THE WEST AND IMMEDIATELY STARTS DENOUNCING IT AS ‘RACIST’:

What was your public reputation [pre-’Satanic Verses’]?

I had become identified as one of a rising group of British-based writers. … I also had become perhaps a little bit more politically engaged than some of the others. So I had written and done things on television about racism in England and postcolonialism, the remnants of the empire, and so I was also associated with that kind of subject. 

LIKE ALL THOSE DEMONIZED IN THE MEDIA, THE IMAGE DISPLACES THE PERSON:

Ezra Klein: I want to begin with a story you mention a little bit offhandedly in the book: “The Shadow” by Hans Christian Andersen.

Salman Rushdie: I think it’s my favorite story of his. It’s about a man whose shadow gets detached from him and goes away.

For many years, he loses his shadow. The shadow has traveled the world. The shadow is quite sophisticated and cool and in some ways is more interesting than the man. …

And in the end, the shadow manages to arrange for the man to be executed. So the shadow takes over the life of the man.

So what did that story mean to you?

It meant to me that a thing that happens — more and more often, I think — is that a shadow self can separate itself from the person and end up becoming, in some way, more real than the original person. People believe the shadow and don’t believe the self.

SAME WITH JEAN RASPAIL’S “CAMP OF THE SAINTS,” DAVID COLE’S “REPUBLICAN PARTY ANIMAL” AND EVERY OUTRAGE I’VE EVER CAUSED.

[EXCEPT SATANIC VERSES IS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON (HARDCOVER, PAPERBACK, KINDLE AND AUDIBLE0, BUT ‘REPUBLICAN PARTY ANIMAL’ IS NOT, NOT EVEN AVAILABLE SECOND HAND — NOT EVEN ACKNOWLEDGED AS A BOOK.] —

I hadn’t read “The Satanic Verses” until preparing for this show with you. I think I’d always assumed it must be a pretty extreme and offensive piece of literature. And then I went and read it, and it’s not. It’s a very fun, stuffed, manic, exciting, imaginative novel, but it’s nothing like what I had assumed.

I can’t even tell you how many times that people who, like you, have finally got around to reading the book, have said to me, “Well, where’s the problem? Where’s the dirty bit?” And the other thing people say to me is, “Who knew it was funny?” …

Before “The Satanic Verses,” people thought my books were funny. People would write about me as a funny writer. After “The Satanic Verses,” for a long time, nobody wrote about me as a funny writer….

But it was almost universally true that the people who attacked it did not read it. …So that was the kind of attitude: You don’t need to read it. It’s just bad.

LIBERALS, OF COURSE, WERE THE FIRST TO ABANDON RUSHDIE:

[A]nd then there was a very upsetting literary strain to the hostility. Writers I wouldn’t expect — John Berger, Germaine Greer, John le Carré. One of that group said nobody can insult a great world religion with impunity. As if to say: If you do that, then you don’t deserve to be safe.

I remember being very surprised to find Jimmy Carter on the side of the detractors. 

EVERY CONSERVATIVE WHO’S BEEN DE-PLATFORMED AND DE-MONETIZED FROM SOCIAL MEDIA MUST FEEL THIS WAY:

I would write safe little frightened books, or it would fill me so much with anger and a desire for revenge that I would write revenge books. And I’ve told myself that both of those would be the destruction of my artistic independence and whatever quality I have as a writer, it would destroy. I think probably the — one of the greatest acts of will that I’ve ever performed in my life was to try and not let my writing be knocked off track by the attack on “The Satanic Verses.”

REMINDER THAT APOLOGIES NEVER WORK:

About a year or a year and a half into the story, when I was very, very depressed and didn’t see how it would ever end, I thought maybe what I have to do is to reach out to the Muslim community and try and apologize. And I did, and it rebounded very hard in my face.

And actually, my sister, whom I love and is closer to me than anybody else in the world, called me when she heard me making these apologias. She said, “What the hell are you doing? Have you lost your mind?” And I thought, you know, “Yes, I have. I’m behaving in a deranged way.” And that felt to me like hitting rock bottom.

ANOTHER BENEFIT OF IMMIGRATION:

What do you know about [your attacker]?

[H[is parents were of Lebanese origin. They moved to the United States, and he was born and raised in Jersey. His parents separated. His father went back to Lebanon. His mother stayed in New Jersey with himself and his sisters.

Until he was approximately 19 years old, he was a kid growing up in Jersey and had no criminal record. And then at about that time, he chooses to go to Lebanon to visit his father. …

[H]e came back a month later and, according to his mother, had completely transformed, was a different person and was now angry with her for not having taught him properly about religion.  …

[His own family] were not fanatics. They were perfectly secularized American citizens. So I don’t know where he got it from.