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Arise, Sir SalmanRushdie's knighthood reignites "Salmanophobia" at home and abroad.

By Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Posted Wednesday, June 20, 2007, at 2:41 PM ET
Salman Rushdie. Click image to expand.

"I am delighted for him," Ian McEwan said, when told that his friend and fellow novelist Salman Rushdie had been knighted. "He's a wonderful writer, and this sends a firm message to the book-burners and their appeasers." It would seem that the message was heard all too clearly, and not only in Iran and Pakistan.

This is the last honors list of Tony Blair's long premiership—and it's not Buckingham Palace but Downing Street, with some help from pompous committees of "the great and the good," deliberating who else might be considered great and good enough, that decides who will be honored. By awarding the knighthood, the outgoing prime minister has invited again the charge of "Islamophobia." Whatever that may mean, and however true the charge is, what we've certainly seen is a resurgence of Salmanophobia, that other powerful force of the age. The response to his honor in London, as well as in more distant capitals, reminds us that this man can unite Muslims, conservative nationalists, and the fashionable academic-intellectual left in hatred of him. It's an impressive feat.

Last Saturday was the queen's "official birthday," which, along with the New Year, is when assorted gongs are handed out, according to degree, to persons likely and unlikely. Those honored this time around included a former England cricket captain, Dame Edna (or at least Barry Humphries), rock singer Joe Cocker, and "the founders of the erotic lingerie line Agent Provocateur," along with Sir Salman.

He himself was "thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour, and am very grateful that my work has been recognised in this way," while others saw a belated endorsement or even recompense. Critic and former professor John Sutherland thought it was by way of apology from those who had not supported Rushdie clearly enough in his hour of need 18 years ago. "It's astonishing that Tony Blair, among others, has been so reluctant to be seen shaking Rushdie's hand, and here he is getting a knighthood from the Queen."

But there are still plenty of others who have no wish to shake Rushdie's hand, even figuratively. In the House of Islam, the reaction was all too predictable. "Salman Rushdie has turned into a hated corpse, which cannot be resurrected by any action," Mohammad Reza Bahonar told the parliament in Tehran, where the knighthood was angrily denounced as a further provocation. For good measure, one speaker called our dear queen "an old crone." Iran was, of course, the country where the fatwa was pronounced on Rushdie by the ayatollahs in 1989.

At points east, the knighthood was unanimously condemned by the parliament in Pakistan, our supposed ally in the "war on terror." Many Union Jacks were burned in cities there. (As with the innumerable Danish flags burned in Muslim countries when the cartoon affair broke out, one has to admire the entrepreneurial spirit that either stocks the offending flags in such numbers as a contingency for such events or runs them up at speed.)

In Islamabad, Robert Brinkley, the British representative, was summoned to be rebuked for the "utter lack of sensitivity" in knighting Rushdie. In turn, he expressed the British government's deep concern at the reported comment of religious affairs minister Mohammad Ejaz ul-Haq that the knighthood could justify suicide attacks. The minister later "clarified" this by saying that he meant it might seem to some suicide bombers a justification. So, that's all right, then.

All this was familiar from the eruption over Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses 18 years ago, but the response in England was also painfully familiar. So far, there haven't been book burnings in the streets of London and Bradford, but there has been quite enough indignation.

When Lord Ahmed was made a member of the House of Lords by Blair, he was paraded as a moderate Muslim voice. He sounded only fairly moderate when he said on television that "Sir Salman" was an outrage against Islam and that the government should have knighted journalist Robert Fisk instead. (He really did say that.)

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Geoffrey Wheatcroft's book Yo, Blair! has just been published in Britain.
Photograph of Rushdie by Sean Gallup/Getty Images.
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Remarks from the Fray:

It is true that Salman Rushdie as an author is more well known than he is read. But I don't think this is unusual. In general, celebrities and people who receive these types of honors can only be appreciated by a select audience.

For instance, how many people have read A. S. Byatt? She is one of my favorite authors and a dame. I think she deserved the honor. I'm sure most Rushdie readers think the same about him. For the rest of us, he's just another guy who got knighted for something. We shouldn't support him for his work if it is meaningless to us.

We should support him for what he represents: free speech. Salman Rushdie may not have chosen to be a symbol of free speech, but he has accepted that it is now his role. He doesn't deserve our pity or our resentment, and if anything his example should inspire us to fight extremism, even if he does not personally inspire us. The response of the Islamic world is a travesty and only highlights how dangerous tyranny is, whether it's islamofascism or Russian "democracy" or Chavez in Chile.

Just as the Chinese have the right to see friends' photos on flickr, Great Britain has the right to honor a distinguished citizen, and we have the right to read (or not) his books.

--roseburkam

(To reply, click here.)

Poor Salman Rushdie... consistently lauded for works completed nearly two decades ago. Must be frustrating for a writer to keep delivering new prose when all people want to talk about is Midnight's Children and Satanic Verses. It's rough that no one for a second discussed the knighthood in relation to Fury (at having shelled out $24.95 for a hard cover) or The Ground Beneath Her Feet (stomping on this book) or Shalimar the Clown (fool me three times shame on... but shame was a great novel).

Either way, each discussion of Salman Rushdie, by being inextricably linked to Satanic Verses or Midnight's Children, is really just a criticism of his newer work...

--mrbiswas

(To reply, click here.)

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