yllus
Elite Member & Lifer
I keep up with Daniel Pipes because, despite disagreeing with him often, he's a powerful intellect who thoroughly researches the topics that he discusses. Below is a strong, chilling piece of how the West has continually ceded ground in the battle over free speech (and as Pipes terms it, civilization itself) since Khomeini's initial edict to kill Salman Rushdie way back in 1989.
It's a long but extremely compelling read that I've only pasted about a third of. Please take a look.
Two Decades of the Rushdie Rules
It's a long but extremely compelling read that I've only pasted about a third of. Please take a look.
Two Decades of the Rushdie Rules
From a novel by Salman Rushdie published in 1989 to an American civil protest called "Everyone Draw Muhammad Day" in 2010, a familiar pattern has evolved. It begins when Westerners say or do something critical of Islam. Islamists respond with name-calling and outrage, demands for retraction, threats of lawsuits and violence, and actual violence. In turn, Westerners hem and haw, prevaricate, and finally fold. Along the way, each controversy prompts a debate focusing on the issue of free speech.
I shall argue two points about this sequence. First, that the right of Westerners to discuss, criticize, and even ridicule Islam and Muslims has eroded over the years. Second, that free speech is a minor part of the problem; at stake is something much deeper – indeed, a defining question of our time: will Westerners maintain their own historic civilization in the face of assault by Islamists, or will they cede to Islamic culture and law and submit to a form of second-class citizenship?
The era of Islamist uproar began abruptly on February 14, 1989, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's supreme leader, watched on television as Pakistanis responded with violence to a new novel by Salman Rushdie, the famous writer of South Asian Muslim origins.
His book's very title, The Satanic Verses, refers to the Koran and poses a direct challenge to Islamic sensibilities; its contents further exacerbate the problem. Outraged by what he considered Rushdie's blasphemous portrait of Islam, Khomeini issued an edict whose continued impact makes it worthy of quotation at length:
I inform all zealous Muslims of the world that the author of the book entitled The Satanic Verses – which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran – and all those involved in the publication who were aware of its contents, are sentenced to death.
I call upon all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they may be found, so that no one else will dare to insult the Muslim sanctities. God willing, whoever is killed on this path is a martyr.
In addition, anyone who has access to the author of this book but does not possess the power to execute him should report him to the people so that he may be punished for his actions.
This unprecedented edict – no head of government had ever called for the execution of a novelist living in another country – came out of the blue and surprised everyone, from Iranian government officials to Rushdie himself. No one had imagined that a magical realist novel, replete with people falling out of the sky and animals that talk, might incur the wrath of the ruler of Iran, a country to which Rushdie had few connections.
The edict led to physical attacks on bookstores in Italy, Norway, and the United States and on translators of The Satanic Verses in Norway, Japan, and Turkey; in the last case, the translator and 36 others perished in an arson attack on a hotel.
Other violence in Muslim-majority countries led to more than 20 fatalities, mostly in South Asia. Then, just as the furor wound down, in June 1989, Khomeini died; his death made the edict, sometimes inaccurately called a fatwa, immutable.
The edict contains four important elements. First, by noting "opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran," Khomeini delineated the wide range of sacred topics that may not be treated disrespectfully without invoking a death sentence.
Second, by targeting "all those involved in the publication who were aware of its contents," he declared war not just on the artist but also on an entire cultural infrastructure – including the thousands of employees of publishing houses, advertisers, distribution companies, and bookstores.
Third, by ordering Rushdie's execution "so that no one else will dare to insult the Muslim sanctities," Khomeini made clear his purpose not only to punish one writer but also to prevent further instances of ridicule.
Finally, by demanding that those unable to execute Rushdie "report him," Khomeini called on every Muslim worldwide to become part of an informal intelligence network dedicated to upholding Islamic sanctities.
These four features together constitute what I call the Rushdie Rules. Two decades later, they remain very much in place.
The edict set several precedents in the West. A foreign political leader successfully ignored conventional limits on state powers. A religious leader at will intervened directly, with little cost or resistance, in Western cultural affairs. And a Muslim leader established the precedent of applying an aspect of Islamic law, the Shari'a, in an overwhelmingly non-Muslim country.
On this last point: Western states have, at times, served as Khomeini's effective agents. The government of Austria imposed a suspended prison sentence on a person who defied the Rushdie Rules, while the governments of France and Australia brought charges that could have meant jail time. Most strikingly, authorities in Canada, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Finland, and Israel actually jailed Rushdie-Rule trespassers.
It takes effort to recall the innocent days before 1989, when Westerners freely spoke and wrote about Islam and related subjects.
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Westerners generally perceive this violence as a challenge to their right to self-expression. But if freedom of speech is the battlefield, the greater war concerns the foundational principles of Western civilization. The recurrent pattern of Islamist uproar exists to achieve three goals – not always articulated – that go well beyond prohibiting criticism of Islam.
A first goal consists of establishing a superior status for Islam. Khomeini's demands for the sacred trinity of "Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran" imply special privileges for one religion, an exclusion from the hurly-burly of the marketplace of ideas. Islam would benefit from unique rules unavailable to other religions. Jesus may be sacrilegiously lampooned in Monty Python's Life of Brian or Terry McNally's Corpus Christi, but, as one book's title puts it, "be careful with Muhammad!"
This segues to a second goal – Muslim supremacy and Western inferiority. Islamists routinely say and do things more offensive to Westerners than anything Westerners do vis-à-vis Muslims. They openly despise Western culture; in the words of an Algerian Islamist, it's not a civilization, but a "syphilization." Their mainstream media publishes coarser, viler, and more violent cartoons than anything commissioned by Flemming Rose.
They freely insult Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. They murder Jews just for being Jews, like Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, Sébastian Sellam and Ilan Halimi in France, and Pamela Waechter and Ariel Sellouk in the United States. Whether because of fear or inattention, Westerners assent to an imbalance whereby Muslims may offend and attack while they themselves are shielded from any such indignities or pains.
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Islamists all concur on the goal of applying Islamic law globally. But they differ on whether to achieve this through violence (the preference of bin Laden), totalitarian rule (Khomeini), or by politically gaming the system (the Swiss intellectual Tariq Ramadan). However done, were Islamists to achieve a Shar'i order, they would effectively replace Western civilization with Islamic civilization. In American terms, allowing the Koran to trump the Constitution ends the United States as it has existed for more than two centuries.
To understand the consequences of closing the debate about Islam, note what appears to be an innocuous report published in 2007 by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), a leading Islamist institution in the United Kingdom. Titled Towards Greater Understanding, it advises British authorities on how to deal with Muslim students in taxpayer-funded schools.
The MCB seeks to create an environment in schools in which Muslim children do not make "inappropriate assumptions" that "to progress in society they will have to compromise or give up aspects of who they are, and their religious beliefs and values." Toward this end, the MCB proposes a jaw-dropping list of changes that would fundamentally alter the nature of British schools, transforming them, in effect, into Saudi-like institutions. Some of its suggestions:
The imposition, explicit or implicit, of Rushdie Rules would render impossible any criticism of a program such as the MCB's. I could not write this article, Commentary could not publish it, and you could not read it.
- Social customs: No pressure to shake hands with members of the opposite sex, whether students or teachers.
- Scheduling: Vacation days for all on the two major Muslim holidays, the Eids.
- Holiday celebrations: Involve non-Muslim students and their parents in Islamic holiday rituals. During Ramadan, for instance, all children, not just Muslim ones, should celebrate "the spirit and values of Ramadan through collective worship or assembly themes and communal Iftar (the breaking of the fast)."
- Ramadan: (1) No examinations during this month, "since the combination of preparing for exams and fasting may prove challenging for some pupils" and (2) no sex education, to respect strictures against sex during that month.
- Clothing: Accede to the wearing of hijabs and even jilbabs (a long outer garment down to the ankles). In swimming pools, Muslim children should wear modest swimwear (e.g., for girls, full leotards and leggings). Islamic amulets must be permitted.
- Sports: Sex-segregation where there is physical contact with other team players, as in basketball and football, or when exposed, as in swimming.
- Shower rooms: Separate stalls needed, so Muslims are not subject to the "profound indignity" of seeing or being seen in the nude.
- Music: Should be limited to "the human voice and non-tuneable percussion instruments such as drums."
- Dancing: Excluded, unless it is done in a single-sex environment and does not "involve sexual connotations and messages."
- Art: Exempt Muslim pupils from producing "three dimensional figurative imagery of humans."
- Religious instruction: Pictures of any prophets (including Jesus) prohibited.
- Language instruction: Arabic should be made available to all Muslim students.
Overhauling schools is just one of a myriad of planned changes. Step by step, piece by piece, Islamists wish to trump the premises of Western life by infusing its education, cultural life, and institutions with a concurrent Islamic system that in time overrides secular institutions, until an Islamic order comes operationally into being.
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