ninme

The Sunday Times - Rushdie, the man they love to hate
Surely there’s a difference between careful diplomacy and pandering to extremists, India Knight

What an extraordinary, if depressingly predictable, fuss about Salman Rushdie’s knighthood. Eighteen years after the fatwa was issued, Ijaz ul-Haq, the Pakistani religious affairs minister, last week told his country’s parliament that “if someone exploded a bomb on Rushdie’s body, he would be right to do so unless the British government apologises and withdraws the ‘sir’ title”.

Union Jacks were burnt in Pakistan, with rioters shouting “Kill him!”. If I were Pakistani, I’d be more inclined to riot about the monstrous off-the-scale corruption that riddled my government, and the corrupted version of Islam that brainwashed disenfranchised young men in the madrasahs, but anyway.

Hehe.

It’s as though the Vatican took such exception to The Da Vinci Code that, instead of putting out composed-sounding statements and seeking (not entirely successfully) to reassure people that super-creepy Opus Dei is not in fact creepy at all, its spokesmen started foaming at the mouth like nutters and ordered crusades against Dan Brown for having the temerity to invent a story and write fiction.

Actually it’s not like that, because Rushdie is a brilliant writer and Brown is a sort of rich monkey with a typewriter, but you get the gist.

Hehehehe.

And no sooner is the knighthood announced in the Queen’s birthday honours than politicians such as Jack Straw are tripping over themselves “sympathising” with the “hurt feelings” of the “Muslim community” and volunteering his opinion of Rushdie’s oeuvre: “I’m afraid I found his books rather difficult and I’ve never managed to get to the end of any of them.” This just makes him sound thick, I’m afraid.

Midnight’s Children is hardly Finnegans Wake, and with the exception of The Satanic Verses none of Rushdie’s books is remotely “difficult”. So either Straw is remedially dim, poor thing, or he’s making the point that since Rushdie’s work is not his cup of tea, neither is Rushdie, and nor, by extension, is his knighthood – nothing to do with me, guv, so please keep voting for me, Muslim constituents.

Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, said she was “sorry” for any offence caused. An unnamed Labour MP told a newspaper that “anybody with common sense would have blocked this”. Thank God for John Reid: the home secretary said that although the issue was “sensitive”, the protection of people’s rights to express their opinions in literature, argument and politics was of “overriding value to our society”.

What on earth is the point of pussyfooting around like pathetic craven saps (and I write as someone who is the daughter of a Muslim and also has some Iranian blood)? Surely there’s a difference between careful diplomacy and pandering to extremist Muslims who violently oppose everything people in this country stand for and believe in?

There’s Margaret Becket again. Like a bad penny.

So what I don’t understand is why, when the knighthood was announced and gracefully acknowledged by Rushdie – “I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour” – it should have been met at home by carping and wriggly apology instead of celebration. Is it too much to ask for our politicians to stand up and paraphrase Voltaire’s “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”? Yes, apparently, because it seems that pandering to the tiny proportion of the Muslim vote that is both extremist and fundamentalist is worth more than art, beauty, reason or morality.

Hah!

There’s a third issue here. Art matters. Literature matters. They matter much more than the ravings of some overexcited, barely literate oik of a cleric with a gift for oratory, even if – especially if – said cleric ends up having global influence. When you cut to the chase, all that remains is this: Rushdie, who was 60 last week, is an exceptional writer who has written great books, for which he has been awarded prizes and awards both here and internationally. Unlike most exceptional writers, he walked around as a living target for 10 years under constant police protection.

People associated with his books were also targeted, injured – his Italian translator was beaten and stabbed; his Norwegian publisher shot and left to die – and even killed, in the case of his Japanese translator. All because he wrote a book, used his imagination, made up a story, got it published, and didn’t or wouldn’t foresee the calamitous consequences of his act of creativity – because those consequences were unimaginable to a civilised mind living in a democracy. His knighthood recognises all of this, as well as his talent. I couldn’t be more delighted for him.

Yaaay!

So, she and a number of other people make a point about how nobody has read any of his books, and I, I, have read one of his books. Sort of. When I was somewhere in the first half of my teen years we were staying at my grandparent’s house in Edmonton, and all the old novels and spill-over books are kept in these enormous bookshelves lining one wall of the laundry room in the basement, next to the bedroom I always use. My other grandmother always read romance novels, so passing the time at her place with a book was always no problem, so I was left scouring the shelves looking for something interesting enough to make up for their (very definite) absence, and I clearly remember thinking that something written by a Salman Rushdie (which was a name one isn’t likely to forget) looked like a good bet. I didn’t get through very much of it, though, and I think in light of the pressed time I was skipping bits so really I don’t remember any of it. And I’m pretty sure it was the Satanic Verses, too.

So there you go, I read it of my own free will as a young teenager. How precocious I am.