Thread by @JewhadiTM

The Rushdie Fatwa, Thirty Years Later

Who among us would dare to predict what the world would look like thirty years from now?

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the idea of some religious leader in Iran ordering the death of a prominent British subject struck many in the West as grotesque, absurd – a joke, even. But it soon became clear that this was no joke. Bookstores in the U.S. and Britain were bombed.

Copies of the book were publicly burned in a number of British cities. Across the Muslim world, dozens died in anti-Rushdie riots. In 1991, the book’s Italian translator was beaten and stabbed and its Japanese translator murdered;

in 1993, William Nygaard, its Norwegian publisher, was shot several times outside his home, but survived.

The fatwa also exposed for the first time the readiness of many Western political leaders and cultural icons to appease Islamic bullies – a readiness that, thirty years later, continues to define much of the Western establishment.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter called The Satanic Verses “ a work of fiction, a direct insult to…millions of Muslims.” Muslim leader Iqbal Sacranie, whom Tony Blair would later award with a knighthood, said that death was perhaps too easy a punishment for Rushdie.

Hugh Trevor-Roper, one of Britain’s most respected historians, said he “would not shed a tear” if a pack of Muslims “were to waylay [Rushdie] in a dark street.”

Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie denounced the book. So did John Cardinal O’Connor, Archbishop of New York. So did John Paul II’s Vatican. Its importation into Canada was forbidden.

Major U.S. bookstore chains stopped carrying it, and publishers in France, West Germany, and other countries dropped plans to publish it.

The Rushdie affair taught many Westerners a new word: fatwa. But at the time, relatively few people in the West recognized it as a lesson in a much broader topic – namely, Islam.

Yes, the episode taught millions that Islam takes blasphemy very seriously and that Muslim leaders feel empowered to order hits on their enemies. But few high-profile Western commentators extrapolated very far beyond the particulars of the episode.

This was not to say that people in the West thought Rushdie had it coming, but rather that they considered it unlikely that such a case would arise again anytime soon.

Rare indeed were those in the West who seriously entertained the possibility that this was not a one-off but the beginning of a new chapter in the history of relations between Islam and the West. And why should that possibility have occurred to them?

In 1988, almost no one in the West was aware of the core Islamic concept of jihad, or of the long history of jihad against the West that dated back to Islam’s birth.

Although the Rushdie affair made worldwide headlines for months, there were few if any informed attempts in prominent Western media to contextualize it by enlightening the general public about Islamic law and doctrine.

Nobody in the West could have foreseen what the next three decades would bring on this front.

Who imagined that, on a September morning 12 years after the ayatollah announced his fatwa, Islam’s contempt for Western freedom and Western lives would be manifested in an attack more breathtaking than any in human history?

That that attack, which took thousands of lives, would be followed by dozens of deadly, large-scale jihadist assaults on Western metropolises?

Who imagined that, despite these acts of mass murder, Western countries would continue to welcome to their shores armies of Muslim immigrants, shower them with welfare benefits?

tolerate their violent crimes, and surrender to their increasingly aggressive demands that Western society and culture be made sharia-compliant?

Who imagined that mainstream Western publishers, news media, and film and TV producers would routinely celebrate Islam, even as they systematically smeared its critics and denied them a platform?

Who imagined that people in Western countries who dared to speak the truth about Islam would be harassed by the police and dragged into court?

Who imagined that countless Western political leaders, law-enforcement officers, social workers, and journalists would cover up the brutal organized rape of thousands of “infidel” girls by Muslim rape gangs?

And, having asked all of the above questions, let us ask one more: now, in 2019, who among us would dare to predict what the Western world will look like thirty years from now?