Standing with Rushdie, protecting free speech

As the trial of Matar progresses, the focus is likely to shift to larger pressing concerns such as the right to free speech and the restrictions on creativity

On August 12, 2022, a US-Lebanese citizen, Hadi Matar stabbed Salman Rushdie, now 77, multiple times when the celebrated author of Indian origin was introduced at a literary gathering in Chautauqua Institution near New York. Rushdie survived the attack but lost one eye. In a poignant 2024 memoir, Knife, Rushdie recalled the trauma the attack caused him, his family and friends, and also, reflected deeply about the motivation that drove Matar to attack him. In 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran, found Satanic Verses, Rushdie’s novel on the Prophet, blasphemous, and ordered Muslims to kill the author. A decade later, Iran disassociated with the fatwa, but Rushdie had by then passed through a harrowing time living in secrecy and under security cover in the UK. In 2000, Rushdie moved to New York City and started living without security and travelling freely, including to India, the first country to ban Satanic Verses. Matar, 27, did not cite the Ayatollah’s fatwa, but said in an interview that he didn’t think Rushdie was “a very good person” and that “he’s someone who attacked Islam”.

(FILES) Indian-British novelist Salman Rushdie reacts on stage prior to a lecture from his book 'Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder', in Berlin on May 16, 2024. The man accused of trying to kill the author Salman Rushdie, leaving him blind in one eye, goes on trial Tuesday February 3, 2025 for attempted murder, according to state court filings. (Photo by Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP) (AFP)

As the trial of Matar progresses in NY, the focus is likely to shift beyond the specifics of the attack on Rushdie and flag larger pressing concerns such as the right to free speech and the restrictions on creative freedoms, the place of faith in secular societies, and the western world’s tense relations with the Islamic world. Their resonance has only increased since intolerance towards dissident views, especially related to faith, became institutionalised since the 1980s. Rushdie today is more than his books; he is the representative of the lonely writer pleading for his right to imagine and criticise the powerful. Meanwhile, India has made peace with Rushdie, whose early works such as Midnight’s Children and Shame did not particularly endear him to Indian leaders. Rushdie too has made peace with India though he expressed his disappointment about Delhi’s silence on the attack on his life: “India, the country of my birth and my deepest inspiration, on that day found no words,” he wrote in Knife. The ban on Satanic Verses was lifted last year and the book is now available in India.