[Mb-civic] Salman Rushdie on Terrorism, Intellectual freedom and the Patriot Act

[Michael Butler]

Hecate sent this

Salman Rushdie on Terrorism, Intellectual freedom and the Patriot Act

Tuesday, August 10th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/10/1410204

Salman Rushdie, one of the most highly acclaimed writers in the world,
discusses the Bush administration, civil liberties and war in a rare
appearance in New York. Rushdie was forced into hiding and lived underground
for many years after Iran issued a fatwa calling for his death following the
publication of his controversial novel The Satanic Verses. [includes rush
transcript]

 Salman Rushdie is one of the most highly acclaimed writers in the world
today. His book Midnight's Children published in 1981, won him the Booker
Prize and brought him international fame. But it was his fourth novel The
Satanic Verses that the Indian-British novelist is most known for. In the
book, Rushdie's transcription of the Quran is portrayed in an unconventional
light and one of the novel's main characters is modeled on the Muslim
Prophet Muhammad.

 The Satanic Verses was quickly banned in India and South Africa. In Iran,
the late Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to execute
Salman Rushdie and the publishers of the book and a million-dollar reward
was offered for Rushdie's death. He was forced into hiding and lived
underground for many years. The fatwa was finally lifted in 1998.

 In a rare appearance in the United States, Salman Rushdie spoke at an event
last week sponsored by the PEN American Center, a fellowship of writers to
advance literature, promote a culture of reading, and to defend free
expression.
 RUSH TRANSCRIPT 

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SALMAN RUSHDIE: I wanted to start by saying that I don't think any of us who
are at this event delude ourselves about terrorism. Terrorism does exist. In
this city of all cities, we know that. We know what when it exist, what it
exists to do, what it has done, what it tries to do. We know it exists and
must be fought. I don't think any of us would question that. How we fight it
in my view is going to be the great civilizational test of our time. Will we
become our enemy or not? Will we become repressive as our enemy is
repressive. Will we become intolerant as our enemy is intolerant? Or will we
not? Will we fight with different weapons, weapons of openness and
acceptance and seeking to increase the dialogue between peoples rather than
decrease it. This is a big test. Will we become, you could say, the suits of
armor that our fear makes us put on, or will we not? It seems to us, to PEN,
to many of us in the last month that we are not passing this test very well.
And that there are serious reasons to say that there is a crisis in this
country of civil liberties, freedom of speech and human rights, of exactly
the kind that PEN has spent over 80 years protesting about when it happens
in other countries. It's exactly the things that -- not exactly, because
nothing, no power is ever exact, but the kind of things that we have tried
to highlight, whether it was in Cuba or Burma or Iran or China -- those
sorts of problems are beginning to crop up here. Problems of what it is
possible to say without being in trouble. What is it possible to have access
to the information media, to talk about. The tones which it is possible to
talk about these things when one does have access to the news media. The way
in which the government is becoming increasingly intrusive into areas of our
lives which the government has no business to go into. What books we read.
What shops we go to. What books we borrow from universities. What do we
think about. That is -- this gets very close to the thought police, and it
something which is not acceptable in a free society.

 PEN has identified three particular areas of concern in the Patriot Act and
the many related laws and executive orders which have been enacted since
September 11, 2001. These concerns have to do with privacy, access to
information, and compliance with the international law and human rights
standards. We have launched the campaign which this event is here to
support, which we are calling the campaign for core freedoms in an effort to
restore fundamental protections in these areas. People like me came to
America because of our admiration for the protections afforded by the first
amendment. And it is extremely saddening to see those protections being
eroded. So, this is not -- it is really not a question of left or right. It
seems to me whatever kind of American you are you, you should know that the
first amendment is the jewel in the crown. And to erode that is to do
terrible damage to one's sense of what it is to be an American and a citizen
or a resident of this country.

 AMY GOODMAN:  Salmon Rushdie, speaking at a PEN America event just a few
days ago. Each of the authors read from other writers' works, beginning with
Salman Rushdie. This is Democracy Now!.

 SALMAN RUSHDIE: And just by way of starting off, I¹m going to read one
paragraph of the great text, John Stuart Mills' Text on Liberty written --
well, getting on to 200 years ago but feels fresh as a daisy. And just to --
the warning he offers us is that if we do not fight for our rights, we lose
them. ³The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of
those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another until they pass
into common places but which all experience refutes. History teems with
instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed forever, it
may be thrown back for centuries. To speak only of religious opinions the
reformation broke out at least 20 times before Luther was put down.² Another
very long list of such things. ³It is a piece of idle sentimentality, that
truth nearly as truth has any inherent power denied to error of prevailing
against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than
they often are for error and a sufficient application of legal or even of
social penalty will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either.
The real advantage which truth has, consists in this -- when an opinion is
true, it may be extinguished once, twice or many times, but in the course of
ages, there will generally be found persons to rediscover it until someone
of its reappearances falls on a time when from favorable circumstances it
escapes persecution until it is made such head as to withstand subsequent
attempts to suppress it.

 AMY GOODMAN:  Salman Rushdie, speaking at the PEN America event. Many
authors then got up and read writers' works, and finally Salman Rushdie
concluded the evening by reading from the works of two others.

 SALMAN RUSHDIE:  I'm going to finish just by reading two short pieces sent
in by writers who were not able to be here today. The writer, Francisco
Goldman sent in this piece, which is written by the Cuban independence hero
and poet, Jose Marti, who was actually for a long time a New Yorker. He
lived in New York from 1880 to 1895, observed the politics of the time very
closely and wrote a piece about the presidential election of 1884, which
pitted James G. Blaine against Glover Cleveland and is often called the
dirtiest campaign in American history. During the course of which the
Republicans found if Cleveland had had a child out of wedlock and he
acknowledged paternity and won the election anyway. By 48.5% to 48.2%.
Including Florida. [ laughter] This is what Marti said about that election.
"It's brutal and nauseating, a presidential campaign in the United States.
The mud comes up to the chairs. The white beards of the newspapers forget
all about the decorum of old age, they dump buckets of mud on all of our
heads. They knowingly lie and exaggerate. They stab each other in the belly
and the back. Any defamation is treated as legitimate. Any blow is good as
long as it staggers the enemy. He who invents an effective slander proudly
struts. A good faith observer has no idea how to analyze the battle in which
everyone considers it legitimate to campaign in bad faith. But he who
observes this country without rancor, as much as he is disgusted by the
primacy ceded to the appetites here and the forgetfulness if not the distant
which the general qualities are held also has to recognize whenever it
appears that a danger is imminent or an institution has been profaned beyond
redemption or that some vice has half devoured the nation, there arises with
the reliability of a law and without great operators and when the evil can
still be cured, the men and systems that can avoid ruin. They appear, do
what they have to do and drop from sight. And it also appears that a
condition of this law is that the evil has to be extreme, as if the
prosperous peoples never decide to change direction or perturb their habits
until the reality is so dire that it is impossible to ignore. This was the
law affirmed by the election of Grover Cleveland. The evil was grave. The
Republicans entrenched in power cynically abused it. They subverted the
integrity of the vote and of the press. They mocked the spirit of the
constitution through partisan legislation, and copying the tactics of
tyrants and used overseas wars to deflect attentions from their actions. "
It's history. "Who had a chance to compete against them, defeat against
them? If elections are won by the force of money, if the Republicans have a
free hand with the national coffers. But a wave rose up, that no one saw
forming on the margins and no one knows how it came, breaking over the heads
of all of the ambitious and illustrious politicians of the nation. Despite
the anger of the members of his own Democratic Party. Despite time proven
practices and conceits and landed in the white house, a man just a little
more than barely known, a tough but humble man fit for the task of
fearlessly and patiently reforming the corrupt government. The wave brought
Cleveland. Up close, you see that that the change has not been essential or
durable, but circumstantial and like a proof. An eruption proving it can be
done. That the eruption of a fistful of men, a fistful of vulnerable people,
nothing more than that, have given victory to Cleveland. A thousand votes
less among 10 million voters and the president would have been an impure and
sinister man, a brilliant sophist. He would have been Bush -- sorry Blaine.
He would have been Blaine. [laughter] [applause]

 Finally, from former president of PEN, Norman Mailer. He sent us the
briefest contribution of anybody. From John Dos Passos in U.S.A. All right
then, we are two nations. However, I also wanted to read from -- [ laughter
] so, what Norman said in the interview that is in the current issue of the
New York magazine he had a conversation with his son, and this is how it
ends. Norman writes, or says, "Wisdom is ready to reach us from the most
unexpected quarters. Here I quote from a man who became wise, a little too
late in life. ŒNaturally, the common people don't want war. But after all,
it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always
the simple matter to drag the people along whether it is a democracy or a
fascist dictatorship or parliament or communist dictatorship. Voice or no
voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This
is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked, and
denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to
danger. It works the same in every country.¹ That was Herman Goering
speaking at the Nuremburg Trials after World War II. It is one thing to be
forewarned. Will we ever be fore-armed?" Thank you.

 AMY GOODMAN:  Author, Salman Rushdie speaking at an event sponsored by the
PEN American Center at Cooper Union in New York.

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