Salman Rushdie Says 'Wrong Lessons' Learned from His Iran Fatwa Ordeal

NDTV.com ^ | 07/22/2015 | Agence France-Presse

[E. Pluribus Unum]

More than a quarter century after being slapped with a fatwa fromIran calling for his murder over his book “The Satanic Verses”, Salman Rushdie says the world has learned the “wrong lessons” about freedom of expression.

The British author, in an interview published Wednesday by the French news magazine L’Express, said his ordeal by religious fanatics determined to violently avenge what they construed as blasphemy should have served as a wake-up call to the world.

Instead, after the September 11, 2001 attack on America and the massacre in Paris in January this year of cartoonists and staff at the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly, and with the ongoing rampage of the brutal Islamic State group in the Middle East, Rushdie said some writers and other people were too cowed to talk freely about Islam.

“It seems we learned the wrong lessons,” he said in the interview printed in French. “Instead of concluding we need to oppose these attacks on freedom of expression, we believed we should calm them through compromises and ceding.”

The "politically correct" positions voiced by some -- including a few prominent authors who disagreed with Charlie Hebdo receiving a freedom of speech award at a PEN literary gala in New York in May -- were motivated by fear, Rushdie said.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

"It seems we learned the wrong lessons," he said in the interview printed in French. "Instead of concluding we need to oppose these attacks on freedom of expression, we believed we should calm them through compromises and ceding."

[ilgipper]

Ok, Rushdie. Why don’t you go out in the streets and be the first to offer compromise.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

If you read the article, he is saying appeasement is not the answer, but confronting them is.

[BwanaNdege]

Rushdie is saying that is the Wrong lesson learned. He is not advocating compromise.

“It seems we learned the wrong lessons,” he said in the interview printed in French. “Instead of concluding we need to oppose these attacks on freedom of expression, we believed we should calm them through compromises and ceding.”

[AppyPappy]

Yeah well, you didn’t knock down the WTC. The Muslims did that. So liberals are no longer interested in protecting you.

[Hulka]

Ahhh. . .I think Rushdie was arguing AGAINST capitulation and compromise. He defends free speech. When he published his book he was the first (as far as I can tell) author in modern times to have a hit out on on him by the muslimes for writing a book. But maybe I read the article too fast and got it worng. . .

[Jack Hammer]

Unlike Obama/Kerry, Rushdie gets it.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

It seems so quaint and cliché to say this all these years later, but I truly DID learn everything I need to know about Islam on 9/11.

Everything.

[Fightin Whitey]

I saw that vulgar S.O.B. at a public appearance on a college campus about midway into the 2000s, after the immediate peril of the fatwa had passed.

He stood on the stage and brayed about and cursed at all things American, and especially Bush 43 and our murderous troops in Iraq at that time, as the campus crowd screamed and clapped in approval.

This wormy gutless little piece of crap took refuge in this country and was kept safe and prosperous, yet had not a single syllable of praise or gratitude for his host country-—not to mention the soldiers fightin and dying for all of us.

The hell with Rushdie. I wish it had been him rather than Hebdo.

[Oratam]

Many in the West are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.