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By Tamara Qiblawi and Zeena Saifi, CNN
Almost 10 years after being driven underground, Salman Rushdie thought he was free. He lived under maximum security and in the greatest secrecy of London. But in 1998, the Iranian government of President Mohammad Khatami publicly distanced itself from the devout fatwa calling for his assassination. .
The movement component of a historic agreement with the United Kingdom. Iran has issued a public guarantee not to push for Rushdie’s murder in exchange for improved diplomatic relations between London and Tehran.
“Well, it looks like it’s over,” Rushdie told reporters at the time. “It says it all. It means freedom. “
But there is a catch. The 1989 murderous decree on Rushdie’s satirical novel The Satanic Verses may not be officially revoked because the source of the fatwa, Iran’s first ideal leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, had died. At least that’s what Rushdie said, according to his memoirs.
It was an ingeniously elaborate ambiguity that explained Iran’s policy on the factor, and on many other issues, in the years that followed. he has not been executed, saying he encouraged others to “insult” the Prophet Muhammad. In 2019, Iran’s current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, reminded his followers that the resolution opposing Rushdie was “solid and irrevocable,” in a tweet that led to the closure of his account. Khamenei continues to tweet from other accounts.
Four months before Rushdie brutally stabbed on one occasion in New York on Friday, an Iranian media outlet, Iran Online, published an article praising the fatwa.
Meanwhile, Iran insists on proceeding to hang the executioner’s sword in front of Rushdie.
Regardless of their motivations, Iran’s cynical exploitation of certain Muslim sensibilities is evident. The satanic verses are encouraged through a deeply debatable tale in early Islamic culture that claims satan momentarily interfered in divine revelations to the prophet Muhammad. Iran did not ban the book electrónico. de immediately; The country’s leaders did not take action until several months later, after the e-book sparked protests in Pakistan.
The fatwa that followed proved to be politically useful. He raised Khomeini in the eyes of the Islamic fundamentalists of the Muslim world, adding among the Sunnis. However, then, as now, it had its main Muslim and regional detractors.
Robin Wright of the New Yorker reports that Khomeini’s closest protégé at the time, Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, criticized the decree. Montazeri, who also opposed mass executions of Iranian dissidents, fell out of favor with the regime and was placed under space arrest in 1997.
A 1989 letter published in The New York Review of Books signed by Arabs and Muslims also denounced the crusade against Rushdie.
“This crusade is carried out under the call of Islam, although none of this gives credit to Islam,” the letter signs through five prominent intellectuals, adding the late Indian-born poet Aga Shahid Ali and the late Palestinian-American scholar. Eduardo said.
“It is certain that Muslims and others have the right to protest against Satanic Verses if they feel that the novel offends their faith and cultural sensibilities,” the letter’s authors added. “But bringing protest and debate into the realm of sectarian violence is contrary to Islamic traditions of learning and tolerance. “
In Rushdie’s memoirs, Joseph Anton, the Mumbai-born writer, is described blatantly wondering if he was being “sold” through the 1998 London-Tehran deal, just days after noting that the threats to his life were “over. “Joseph Anton was his pseudonym from his underground time and refers to himself in the third-person e-book.
Although he claimed that the death sentence would still weigh on his head, he fainted from his hidden life and moved to New York where decades later he would be brutally attacked in front of horrified onlookers.
The suspect in last week’s attack named through the government Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from New Jersey.
Matar pleaded guilty Saturday to attempted second-degree murder and other charges.
True to its style, Iran denied any involvement in the attack and said Rushdie and his “supporters” were to blame. Hezbollah also said it had no information about the attacker and the plot in comments to CNN.
“Nothing was perfect, but there was a point of imperfection that was hard to bear,” Rushdie wrote in his memoirs about the 1998 decision. “Still, he remained determined,” Rushdie added, referring to himself. You may no longer wait for the “imperfection factor” to fall to a more appropriate point. »
Iran will give the latest reaction to the PROPOSED EU nuclear deal through Tehran: FM
Iran will give its final response on a European Union proposal to revive the nuclear deal on Monday, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said, according to state media.
At least 18 young people killed in church fire in Egypt
At least 41 people, plus 18 children, died after a chimney exploded Sunday at Abu Sefein’s church in the densely populated Imbaba neighborhood of Giza, according to a spokesman for Egypt’s Coptic Church who spoke to fitness officials.
Five Americans Wounded in Jerusalem Shooting
At least 8 people, totaling five Americans, were wounded in a shooting at a bus near the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City early Sunday morning.
A man in the United Arab Emirates was fined up to 15,000 dirhams (about $4,000) for telling one that he would “give him a lesson he would never forget,” state media outlet Emarat Alyoum reported.
The woguy filed a civil lawsuit and the Abu Dhabi Family Court ruled in his favor, while the man was fined for clothing and ethical harm, Emarat Alyum reported, without offering further details on the cause of the word war or the main points. of the two sides. relationship.
The news comes amid a rise in gender-based violence in the Middle East and the development of activist calls for legal coverage for women in the region.
The horrific killing of student Naira Ashraf in Egypt has triggered a barrage of condemnation and praise for the accused, with some male social media users advocating violence against women.
Just last week, Egyptian state media reported on the killing of a female student through a young man after she allegedly ended their relationship. The guy reportedly threatened to kill her before her death and is lately in pre-trial detention awaiting an investigation, state media reported.
According to UN Women, one in 3 international women has experienced physical or sexual violence at least once in their lifetime, basically through their intimate partner.
In the Middle East, at least 37% of Arabs have experienced some form of violence in their lifetime, according to the same UN study.
By Nadeen Ebrahim
El-CNN-Wire™
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