Salman Rusdhi attacked and wounded.

[TheGreenAnger]

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/sa ... 44423.html

I had the pleasure of meeting him many years back. I am truly shocked by this outrage.

Salman Rushdie was stabbed on stage at the Chautauqua Institution in New York state on Friday just as he was about to give a lecture. The attack comes 33 years after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued the first formal fatwa against Rushdie over the 1988 book The Satanic Verses – a satirical take on religion, culture, and identity in the Indian subcontinent that followed up on Rushdie’s magical realism allegory of the region in Midnight’s Children and Shame – putting a bounty of $3 million on the author’s head for blaspheming against Islam’s prophet Muhammad.

Over the past three decades, many translators and publishers affiliated with The Satanic Verses have been killed or injured, including those in Japan, Italy, Norway, and Turkey. In all these years, Rushdie has continued to feature prominently in the hit lists of jihadist groups, from Hezbollah to al-Qaeda.

Fatwas calling for his head have been omnipresent in the Muslim world, even in the officially secular Bangladesh and the ‘moderate’ Malaysia since the publishing of The Satanic Verses. A 1990 Pakistani film International Gorillay was based on the lead actors plotting the killing of Rushdie, who is eventually struck down by flying Qurans, as the female protagonist exclaims: “Today your death will be a warning to the rejectors of the prophet”. Pakistan’s recently ousted prime minister Imran Khan continues to cite Rushdie in his recent bid to export Islamic blasphemy laws to the West expressing a similar desire to instill global fear over sacrilege against Islam.

This quest of Khan, and his Islamist friends like Recep Erdogan and Mahathir Mohamad, to prevent Islam from being treated as other religions, is already in vogue in the west. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that mocking Muhammad is a hate crime, even as cartoonists and satirists exercising their freedom of expression against Islam have been attacked in Denmark, Sweden and other parts of the continent. Journalists affiliated with satirical publication Charlie Hebdo were massacred for caricaturing Muhammad in 2015. Samuel Paty, a French teacher who showed the Charlie Hebdo cartoons to his class, was beheaded in 2020.

While the UK has stood by Rushdie all these years, even as his knighthood in 2007 invited backlash from many Muslim countries, Britain has seemingly given up on the free speech ideals that the author has stood for. In June, screenings of the film The Lady Of Heaven were cancelled in the UK after protests over alleged blasphemy. Last year, a Batley Grammar School teacher lost his job and had to go in hiding over threats for showing Charlie Hebdo caricatures in a class on blasphemy. And the British press customarily joins the vast majority of their Western colleagues in refusing to print any pictorial depiction of Islam’s prophet even when reporting on the killings over those very images.

This has come amid prevalence of gory blasphemy laws in the Muslim world, with 12 Muslim-majority countries punishing the victimless crime with death and 20 others with harsh prison sentences. In addition to antediluvian codes in these countries continuing, mobs continue to target individuals by torching them in schools, hanging bodies to trees, or beheadings in shops over blasphemy against Islam. Just as the Muslim-majority countries enacting Islamic sharia obviously do not uphold identical punishments over blasphemy against other religions, many well-meaning progressives in the west forego the founding principle of free speech to shield Islam alone from critique.

The idea that Islam deserves special protection against offensive expression is relentlessly encouraging blasphemy violence. And it is this continued global privileging of Islam that has led to the murder attempt against Salman Rushdie.

[Ex-Ascot]

Yes indeed very bad news. Hope that he is OK. Surprised actually that they didn't get him before now.

We used to fly him backwards and forwards from the States as no airline would fly him. Only the Captain would be told just before departure and he would sit in a curtained off area. That is Salman Rushdie not the Captain.

Ridiculous situation. Bloody extremists.

[Wodrick]

Any of you claim to have read the book and enjoyed it ?

[boing]

It's understandable. The American security services have been so busy chasing terrorist school parents and retired Presidents they don't have time to protect obscure people like Rushdie or Supreme Court justices.

The much vaunted CIA and FBI have deteriorated into pastiche, slapstick comedy, B-movie parodies. All that power and financing but sod all interaction with reality and more attention to protecting their own slumping reputations than getting on with the job.

.

[OFSO]

I bet none of the stupid towelheads who have been trying to kill him have actually read his books. Still, that's the Religion of Peace for you.

[TheGreenAnger]

Any of you claim to have read the book and enjoyed it ?

A bit like James Joyce's Ulysses...

[TheGreenAnger]

Any of you claim to have read the book and enjoyed it ?

A bit like James Joyce's Ulysses...

In a more serious vein...

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 44542.html

JK Rowling has told her fans that the police are involved after a tweet about Salman Rushdie prompted a death threat on Twitter. The controversial Harry Potter author had expressed sympathy for Rushdie after he was stabbed onstage on Friday at a literary event in New York.

On Saturday, it was reported that Rushdie was on a ventilator, having been taken to hospital after the attack. You can follow the latest updates on the incident here.

Following the attack, Rowling tweeted: “Horrifying news. Feeling very sick right now. Let him be ok.”

[G~Man]

I bet none of the stupid towelheads who have been trying to kill him have actually read his books. Still, that's the Religion of Peace for you.

Seems the attacker is a joint UK/US citizen.

[John Hill]

I am waiting to see images of Muslims celebrating the attack of Salman Rusdhi.

[TheGreenAnger]

Rushdie' s The Satanic Verses is now riding high in the sales charts again.

The paperback edition of Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses is the top-selling book in Amazon’s contemporary literature and fiction chart, the second-best seller in censorship and politics and the 18th best-selling book on the U.S. platform overall, according to Amazon’s best seller list.

The incident has also pushed the book up the charts in other countries, with a paperback version of The Satanic Verses respectively ranking as the 16th, 48th and 50th best selling books on platforms serving Canada, Australia and the U.K.

Interest is also driving other formats and versions of the novel up the U.S. charts, with the digital version ranking 23rd in Amazon’s Kindle store for ebooks—it is the platform’s best-selling book in censorship and politics, literary satire fiction and psychological literary fiction—and a Spanish language digital copy occupies the top-selling slot for literature and fiction in Spanish and the second-best selling position for Spanish language fiction.

For audiobooks, The Satanic Verses is the fifth-best seller in Amazon’s Audible store.

There has also been a surge of interest in other Rushdie books, including Joseph Anton, his memoir detailing life underground following the publication of The Satanic Verses, which dominates the ‘religious intolerance and persecution’ chart with audiobook, ebook, hardcover and paperback respectively holding the first, second, fourth and fifth best-selling positions (a Kindle edition trails in 14th place).

Rushdie’s Midnight's Children, which was published before The Satanic Verses, also climbed, becoming the 212nd best-selling book on the platform and the 2nd best-selling book in asian myth and legend (the Kindle edition is the 3rd best-selling).

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/e2 ... r-AA10FZOt

[PHXPhlyer]

Rushdie' s The Satanic Verses is now riding high in the sales charts again.

The paperback edition of Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses is the top-selling book in Amazon’s contemporary literature and fiction chart, the second-best seller in censorship and politics and the 18th best-selling book on the U.S. platform overall, according to Amazon’s best seller list.

The incident has also pushed the book up the charts in other countries, with a paperback version of The Satanic Verses respectively ranking as the 16th, 48th and 50th best selling books on platforms serving Canada, Australia and the U.K.

Interest is also driving other formats and versions of the novel up the U.S. charts, with the digital version ranking 23rd in Amazon’s Kindle store for ebooks—it is the platform’s best-selling book in censorship and politics, literary satire fiction and psychological literary fiction—and a Spanish language digital copy occupies the top-selling slot for literature and fiction in Spanish and the second-best selling position for Spanish language fiction.

For audiobooks, The Satanic Verses is the fifth-best seller in Amazon’s Audible store.

There has also been a surge of interest in other Rushdie books, including Joseph Anton, his memoir detailing life underground following the publication of The Satanic Verses, which dominates the ‘religious intolerance and persecution’ chart with audiobook, ebook, hardcover and paperback respectively holding the first, second, fourth and fifth best-selling positions (a Kindle edition trails in 14th place).

Rushdie’s Midnight's Children, which was published before The Satanic Verses, also climbed, becoming the 212nd best-selling book on the platform and the 2nd best-selling book in asian myth and legend (the Kindle edition is the 3rd best-selling).

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/e2 ... r-AA10FZOt

Well, at least it will help pay his medical bills.

PP