Iran justifies assassination attempt on Salman Rushdie, India remains silent

Three days after the assassination of Salman Rushdie, the Iranian regime justified the act. The writer and his supporters are solely responsible for the attack, said a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran on Monday in Iran’s first official reaction to the attack in New York, in which the 75-year-old was seriously injured on Friday. By insulting Islam and crossing the red lines of a billion and a half Muslims, Rushdie drew people’s anger.

At the same time, the spokesman categorically denied any Iranian connection to the perpetrator. It was the first time a regime official had commented on the attempted assassination of the British-Indian author. The press in Iran close to the regime had already welcomed the crime on Saturday and celebrated the perpetrator. Some newspapers made a direct connection to the fatwa of the Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeiny, who in February 1989 called on Muslims to assassinate the author of the “Satanic Verses” and his publishers.

It is still unclear what the motive of the 24-year-old perpetrator Hadi Matar was. According to media reports, the son of Lebanese Shiites presented himself on social networks as an admirer of the current Iranian revolutionary leader Ali Khamenei and General Kassem Soleimani, who was killed by the United States in early 2020. Khamenei has yet to comment personally on the attack on Rushdie. However, he has repeatedly affirmed the validity of Khomeiny’s fatwa.

Outrage over a book that hardly any Muslim has read

In the days following the publication of the fatwa in February 1989, then-President Khamenei had initially hinted that Khomeiny could reverse the death sentence if Rushdie apologized. He then expressed his regret if he had offended the Muslims with his novel. Khomeiny, however, had remained firm and even promised non-Muslims a reward if they killed Rushdie.

While the attack on the writer was met with outrage and horror in the West, reactions in the Muslim world remained muted. While no other Muslim country has endorsed Rushdie’s death sentence, most are reluctant to support the writer. Although the vast majority of Muslims have probably never read The Satanic Verses, many still see his work as blasphemous to this day.

The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman emphasized that the anger at Rushdie’s book was not limited to Iran, but that millions of Muslims in other countries were also outraged. Especially in his native India, the novel triggered violent protests among the Muslim minority after its publication. To this day, «The Satanic Verses» is a touchy subject. This also explains why things remained remarkably quiet in India after the assassination.

In India, the government prefers to remain silent about the attack

Some intellectuals expressed their shock at the attack on the writer on social networks. So far, however, there has been no official reaction from the government to the assassination attempt on the country’s unloved son. Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) in June 1947, shortly before the partition of British India, into a Kashmiri Muslim family. At the age of 14 he moved to England where he attended boarding school and later studied at Cambridge University.

Many of his novels are set in the subcontinent. His best-known work “Midnight’s Children” deals with the division and independence of India and Pakistan and received the prestigious Booker Prize in 1981. Because Rushdie spent his adult life in the UK and later in the US, many of his colleagues in India did not consider him one of their own.

They often criticized that with his comfortable life in the West he had lost touch with the reality at home. Some even made the absurd accusation that he hadn’t realized how much he had hurt the feelings of Muslims worldwide with his “Satanic Verses”.

The right to freedom of expression is limited

India was also the first country to ban his controversial fourth book in 1988, much to Rushdie’s disappointment. At that time, Rajiv Gandhi and his Congress Party were in power in Delhi. Conservative Muslim groups organized protests against the book, and the government feared widespread unrest. In an angry letter, Rushdie then accused the head of government of capitulating to extremists and giving up freedom of expression.

Freedom of expression is not traditionally seen as an absolute right on the subcontinent, as it is in the West. In view of the ethnic and religious diversity, there is a great fear of conflict, and the right to free speech is regularly restricted politically.

The then State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Natwar Singh, defended the decision of Rajiv Gandhi’s government to the PTI news agency over the weekend. The ban was necessary to preserve law and order, said the congressman. Otherwise, hardly anything was heard from the opposition party on the subject. MP Shashi Tharoor was one of a few within the Congress party to express shock at the Rushdie assassination.

Remaining calm in this delicate matter appeared to be the easiest option, even for the ruling Hindu nationalists. In 1988 the BJP had loudly criticized the ban on the “Satanic Verses”. Now she is in power herself and has no interest in stepping into the breach for Rushdie. The 75-year-old Muslim-turned-atheist has been highly critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which has systematically discriminated against and marginalized Muslims and other religious minorities. Modi’s Hindu nationalists also have no interest in starting a debate about freedom of expression that could draw criticism of them.