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The chilling legacy of the Rushdie affair

by Jonathan Rauch

“Making common cause around sacred beliefs bonds humans into tribes, which further cement their solidarity by rallying against outsiders and impurities. Millions of the fatwa’s supporters were acting not in the capacity of critics or ideologues, but in the capacity of tribe members, seeking to outdo each other in their displays of loyalty to the group. […] Solidarity and sanctity, not inquiry and argument, are the point.”

Michael Jacobs demonstreert in Amsterdam in zijn eentje [waartoe geen aparte toestemming nodig is in Nederland] - foto Aart G. Broek

Michael Jacobs demonstreert aan het Spui in Amsterdam,  in zijn eentje [waartoe geen aparte toestemming nodig is in Nederland] – foto Aart G. Broek

Today, 30 years after the infamous fatwa and 20 years after its de facto withdrawal, Salman Rushdie has moved on, or so he says. Asked, as he invariably is, about the episode that caused a global upheaval and sent him into hiding for a decade, he expresses resigned exasperation and changes the subject. ‘It feels like ancient history to me’, he told an interviewer in 2018, while promoting his latest novel, The Golden House. He expresses satisfaction in finding that at long last, a generation on, The Satanic Verses can be read as a novel, rather than as a controversy, a symbol, a casus belli. ‘Now, after all this time, it’s finally been able to have the ordinary life of a book’, he said in March of 2018.

Please, continue reading here on the Spiked website, February 14th, 2019.

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