What is freedom of speech?
Can such a conceptual discourse prevail in a social cohesion floating on holy sanctuaries or sacred political regimes?
To which extent?
How many Muslims have actually read The Satanic Verses? Who do we blame for the attack on Rushdie?
Last but not the least, is it politics or simply religious fanaticism? Or both?
I shall start from the very beginning.
Freedom of speech is a myth, a fantasy, perhaps a lunatic pseudonym for liberalism. It cannot reign under a structure of power practice. There has been a moulded paradigm of beliefs, customs, and practices that has set the norms since the history of civilization.
Freedom of speech -- a democratic ideology that dates back to Ancient Greece. An ideology that came to the fore to sew up rights for an individual's discrete ideals and expression. Since then, the intensity of such an ideology has been stretched to a specific point or position in society in accordance with the masses or the political figures.
Politics and the inveterate dyed-in-the-wool sentiments of the masses interweave each other. Power practice is a part of a crucial yet momentus allegory to clean sweep all the probable rivalries, and they do it smoothly, rhythmically like clockwork by playing the role of a ventriloquist, but in the lives of the ordinary. Juxtaposing values of populist culture and propaganda-based, newly-formed ideals and opinions.
Albeit, its root is within the core belief system. One can't survive without the other but one can surely make a fool of the latter.
As I've already discussed communal lucidity, perenniality, and its parallelism in relation to political strategies, I hereby would now draw details and information which could help catch sight of what is in the dark in the disguise of light.
When The Satanic Verses was first published, it was banned in India. As plain as a pikestaff, it was to avoid riots and communal violence. A writing isn't unambiguous, it's open to more than one interpretation. Muslim scholars, intellectuals (not everyone but a few of them) could easily get triggered by such a form of writing, and it wouldn't have taken them long to spread repugnant animosity.
It was published in the West and the West embraced it. Muslims who managed to come across the book or the concept of it (whether right or wrong) expressed a sense of disgust and loathing towards Rushdie but it didn't hit the extreme until Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed the fatwa by accusing Rushdie, claiming the book and the writer as being “against Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur’an,” and asking Muslims all over the world to execute him wherever he was found.
The fatwa pulled off Rushdie's integrity with force and questioned his existence. He was immediately brought under high-security protection and sought escape from one town to another with his family and children. The question that arises at this point is this: Was there any political motive or just a Muslim fanatic who didn't even bother to read The Satanic Verses?
When Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed the fatwa, he was losing in power. He was struggling in the war against Iraq and millions of Iranians shed blood due to the political hostilities between the two countries. His followers turned their back on him; collective consciousness is powerful. Concurrently, Britain withdrew their support to counteract Khomeini.
Before Khomeini returned from exile in February 1979, The Shah ruled Iran, with Margaret Thatcher endorsing him; In 1978, she described the Shah as “one of the world’s most far-sighted statesmen” who had given Iran “dynamic leadership” and is “leading Iran through a twentieth century renaissance.” By October 1978, with unrest in Tehran threatening the regime, foreign officials saw the survival of the Shah was unlikely and advised to switch sides.
Thatcher saw Iranian theocracy as a counter to Soviet ideology. Khomeini came to power. Great Britain armed Iranian the Regime under Ayatollah Khomeini to execute and arrest communist members of the Tudeh Party, the main leftist organization in Iran. Khomeini played according to Thatcher but how could one forget his own nature? Soon, Khomeini and his frenzied Islamic ideologies became a threat to Britain.
Power needs to be constantly exercized. Khomeini, realizing his time is over after the war in Iraq (in which Britain gave no support) tried to assemble his disciples and cause unsettling violence in Britain by triggering the British Muslims.
With Khomeini proclaiming the fatwa and putting Rushdie on the hook for The Satanic Verses, which was by then already published and gaining fame in the West, it didn't take long to set fire across the globe. Coming back to the point about the ventriloquist, Khomeini played the role of a ventriloquist; he knew his puppets. A person in the front row would see the puppet dancing and talking, but it's the ventriloquist backstage controlling the movements of the puppets. It's his voice through which the puppets talk.
As far as the concern is about Western Imperialism, politicized Islamic fundamentalism, and conservative political regimes, freedom of speech cannot exist. Politics and collective consciousness are interrelated; one shapes the other. The devil is in the details.
Nree Raha Adrija is a Marxist freelance writer.
