ColonelOpossum2571
Read the attached article and use the following questions to help…
Read the attached article and use the following questions to help you formulate a response.
There is a common saying in activist circles these days: “Silence is Violence.” Would the author agree with this statement?
Do you think that one person’s creative expression should be limited by what another person finds offensive?
What, if any, are the limits of free speech?
response in essay format. It should be about three hundred words in length(answer after reading this article.
T
he terrorist assault on Salman Rushdie on Frida[ morning, in western New York, was tripl[ horri?c to contemplate. First in its sheer brutalit[ and
cruelt[, on a sevent[-?ve-[ear-old man, unprotected and about to speakl doubtless cheerfull[ and eloquentl[, as he alwa[s didlrepeatedl[ in the stomach and neck and face. Indeed, we accept the abstraction of those wordsllassaultedN and lattackedNltoo casuall[. To tr[ to feel the victim?s feelingsl?rst shock, then unimaginable pain, then the panicked sense of life bleeding awa[lto engage in the most moderate empath[ with the author is to be oneself scarred. (At the time of writing, Rushdie is reportedl[ on a ventilator, with an uncertain future, the onl[ certaint[ being that, if he lives, he will be maimed for life.)
Second, it was horri?c in the madness of its meaning and a reminder of the power of religious fanaticism to move people. Authorities did not immediatel[ release a motive for the attack, but the dark apprehension is that the terrorist who assaulted Rushdie was a radicalied Islamic militant of American upbringingllike John Updike?s imaginar[ terrorist in the novel lTerrorist,N apparentl[ one raised in New Jerse[lwho was eZecuting a fatwa ?rst decreed b[ A[atollah Khomeini, in 1989, upon the publication of Rushdie?s novel lThe Satanic Verses.N The evil absurdit[ of the death sentence pronounced on Rushdie for having written a book actuall[ more eZplorator[ than sacrilegiouslin no sense an anti-Muslim invective, but a kind of magical-realist meditation on themes from the Quranlwas alwa[s obvious. (Of course, Rushdie should have been equall[ invulnerable to persecution had he written an actual anti-Muslimlor an anti-Christianldiatribe, but, as it happens, he hadn?t.)
For the neZt decade, Rushdie was under protection and, though far from disappearing from the worldlfor the most part, he went where he wantedlit was alwa[s under guard. (I remember him, at least once, with mordant humor, going b[ the moniker Michael Jackson, italiciing his notoriet[ b[ hiding under
the name of someone even more notorious.) Over time, though, with a courage that seems even more remarkable now than it did then, he dropped the protection and went about unescorted and unprotectedlreclaiming his own humanit[ b[ refusing to be made into a special case of an[ kind. He would not allow himself to be reduced to the caricature that his idiotic enemies wanted to make of him, or into the equall[ caricatural role of a mart[r for truth. He was a writer, with a writer?s pastimes and a writer?s rights. Frida[?s attack was a reminder of just how implacable those enemies are, and a reminder, at a timel[ moment, that, when an autocrat encourages violence, violence happens. When theocrats or autocrats or simple demagogues in?ame their followers, ?res erupt, and innocent people are burned even if the time between the fuse being lit and the ?ame eZploding ma[ be longer than we could have imagined.
Finall[, if more locall[, it was horri?c because it had seemed to those who knew him that the fatwa had faded in signi?cance and threat, that it had become the subject for retrospective memoir, as in his ?ne one, lJoseph Anton,N and even for actual comed[. No one can forgetlor now not wince a little at the memor[l Rushdie?s hilarious cameo on Larr[ David?s lCurb Your Enthusiasm,N a couple of seasons ago, where he counselled Larr[, then under an imaginar[ fatwa himself, on the bene?ts of fatwa seZ. Though the apologists for the Iranian government insist that the fatwa had been disregarded or increasingl[ neglected b[ the authorities, none in power had had the decenc[ to reject it, much less denounce it lindeed, the current Supreme Leader, A[atollah Khamenei, seems to have reiterated the fatwa as recentl[ as 2019land the murderous assault on Rushdie onl[ seems to have earned gloating and crowing from the hol[ men in Iran. Se[ed Mohammad Marandi, a ?gure involved in the U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations, announced on Twitter that he lwon?t be shedding tears for a writer who spouts endless hatred & contempt for Muslims & Islam.N
Of course, Rushdie did no such thing. What makes the stor[ so tragic, and the comic-television moment so illustrative of his nature, is that Salman, to those who
knew himlno, kPQY himlas a friend, was the most amiable of men, the least narrowl[ contentious, the most rational and TeaUQPable gu[ the[ would ever meet. Full of lore and life, with immensel[ comprehensive tastes and subjects, over dinner he would talk as readil[, and as abl[, of movies and TV series and pop music, which he loved, as he would of literature and religion. (Nor was he unwilling to be self-deprecatingl[ comic in order to assist a social occasion; I recall him once doing a karaoke version of Gloria Ga[nor?s lI Will SurviveN at a part[ in London.) In the thirt[ [ears or so that I have known himlfar from intimatel[ but steadil[ and alwa[s pleasurabl[lI was alwa[s impressed b[ the eUortless equanimit[ with which, in public at least, he dealt with his strange fate. (We met when we walked through the great 1992 Matisse show at ??? together, at the height of the threat, and he was full of delight in each painting as it passed, with a nice, full[ developed if slightl[ ironic sense of how much Matisse had drawn on Islamic civiliation, on Persian ornaments and North African teZtiles, for his inspiration.)
For one true thing is that, unlike his predecessor V. S. Naipaul, whom he greatl[ admired and who I think he feared did not admire him, Rushdie had, and has, in truth no lWesternN bias. No one could have been more pointedl[ contemptuous of imperialism, more open to the intermingling of postcolonial and Western themes, or more engaged in the project of postcolonial writing, s[mpathetic to the eUorts of those marginalied or forced to the edges of acceptable eZperience to be heard and have their stories told. Telling those storieslwriting about India in English from an Indian point of viewlwas what his greatest book lMidnight?s ChildrenN is all about. His commitment to the English language was as real as his commitment to post-imperial writing.
EUorts will be made, are bound to be made, to somehow equalie or level the acts of Rushdie and his tormentors and would-be eZecutionerslto impl[ that though somehow the insult to Islam might have been misunderstood or overstated, still one has to see the insult from the point of view of the insulted. This is a doubl[
despicable viewpoint, not onl[ because there was no actual insult oUered but also because the right to be insulting about other people?s religionslor their absence of onelis a fundamental right, part of the inheritance of the human spirit. Without that right of open discourse, intellectual life devolves into mere cruelt[ and power seeking.
lThe most rudimentar[ thing about literaturelit is here that one?s stud[ of it beginslis that words are not deeds.N Those were the words of the Soviet dissident author Andrei Sin[avsk[ as he tried to eZplain to hiU equall[ deaf judges just what a novel is, shortl[ before being sentenced to a labor camp. Literature eZists in the realm of the h[pothetical, the suppositional, the improbable, the imaginar[. We relish books for their eZploration of the implausible which sometimes de?nes a new possible for the rest of us. Our commitment to that belieflto what is quaintl[ called freedom of speech and libert[ of eZpressionl must be as close to absolute as humanl[ possible, because ever[thing else that we value in life, including pluralism, progress, and compassion, depends on it. We don?t know what it is possible for us to feel until we are shown what it is possible for us to imagine.
The idealwhich has sprung to dangerous new life in America as much on the progressive as on the theocratic side of the argumentlthat words are equal to actions re?ects the most primitive form of word magic, and has the same relation to the actual philosoph[ of language that astrolog[ has to astronom[. Sticks and stones reall[ can break bones. Words can never hurt [ou, just challenge [our mind and categories. (And [es, of course, some words are vile and can be rejected b[ our calling them so. No one wants to protect authors from bad reviews, even those b[ autocrats; it is threats from bullies that the[ need protection from.) Ever[one has a right to be oUended b[ whatever oUends them, and ever[one on earth has a right to articulate their oUense. No one has a right to maim or kill someone because our words oUend them. Blasphem[ is not a might[ categor[ demanding respect but a pitiful invention of those who cannot tolerate having their pet
convictions criticied. It demands no respect from an[one; on the contrar[, it requires solidarit[ among all decent people in opposing it. An insult to an ideolog[ is not the same as a threat made to a people. It is the QRRQUiVe of a threat made to a person. To assume the criticism of ideas as assaults on people is the end of the liberal civiliation. The idea that we should be free to do our work and oUer our views without eZtending a frightened veto to those who threaten to harm us isn?t just part of what we mean b[ free eZpressionlit is close to the whole of what we mean b[ civilied life.
Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, put out a brave and precise statement on Frida[ evening: lFor 33 [ears, Salman Rushdie has embodied freedom and the ?ght against obscurantism. He has just been the victim of a cowardl[ attack b[ the forces of hatred and barbarism. His ?ght is our ?ght; it is universal.N Though lobscurantismN ma[ be a word that is, well, obscure, to Americans, the point is right. The line between the ?ght for freedom and the surrender to hatred is absolute. The assault on Rushdie onl[ clari?es its contours. ?
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