WIt’s a relief that Salman Rushdie survived the Chautauqua assassination attempt. And how good that a group of people immediately threw themselves at the assassin when he attacked the British writer with a knife, who was just about to start a speech. These people – it is said to have been about five – prevented the worst from happening. And risked their own lives in the process.
A dramatic, symbolic scene: how a collective formed around Rushdie to protect him and overpower the assassin. A scene that was also comforting because something had apparently worked: a civil defense mechanism against violence and hatred.
The first reactions to the assassination attempt reinforced this impression: that the civilian world, embodied by five people, had stood in front of Rushdie. “His fight is our fight,” said French President Macron. “It hit us all,” said Governor Kathy Hochul, in whose state New York the assassination took place. Emphatic sentences, but they shouldn’t hide the fact that it hasn’t been “our” fight for some time now, but honestly Rushdie’s fight.
Living with the fatwa had become a private matter. Rushdie himself voluntarily waived personal security in January 1998. Sang “I will survive” at parties, ironized the fatwa with a guest appearance in a television series. Lived freely, writing and performing publicly, just as he had planned to do in Chautauqua the Friday before last. That was wonderful to see – but the fatwa that Ayatollah Khomeini had declared against Rushdie in 1988 was never completely withdrawn by his successors.
“All of us,” said Governor Hochul: It was probably one of the insights after the attack that “all of us” came to terms with Rushdie’s decision against personal security. Actually, in the sense of the solidarity addresses of the last few days, a collective movement should have stood in front of the writer when he decided 25 years ago to forego personal protection and live his life. Instead it got suspiciously quiet – the sound when everyone’s hoping for the best.
Soon after the solidarity addresses, sometimes at the same time, comments appeared that wanted to establish a connection between the Chautauqua assassination attempt and the “cult of insult”, as Graeme Wood, a columnist for the “Atlantic”, called it.
He is not the only one who now claims that the changed climate of recent years, a false consideration for the offended and offended, for example after the Islamist attack on the French satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo”, favored this attack. Or at least, from within their own ranks, weakened the cohesion against such totalitarian attacks on liberal values. So now it’s not so clear that “all of us” are equally resolutely on Rushdie’s side.
It was also read several times that there had already been voices when the fatwa was proclaimed, for example by ex-US President Carter, who accused Rushdie of having exaggerated the freedom of art in the “Satanic Verses”. In the meantime, however, a new level has been reached, says Wood in the “Atlantic”: “In view of the last few decades, I wonder whether some of us have become more Khomeini than we would like to admit.” Wood thus confuses words and deeds in an obscene way Way. The assassination has just shown clearly what separates words and deeds from each other.
