Anniversary of a Fatwa

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the fatwa, or decree of death, issued by Iran against Salman Rushdie for his novel “The Satanic Verses.” The anniversary is not going unnoticed. The Rushdie Defense Committee USA, made up of a dozen major American literary organizations, including the Assn. of American Publishers, the American Booksellers Assn., the American Library Assn., and PEN Center USA West, is distributing half a million pro-Rushdie book inserts. Anyone buying or borrowing a book this week is likely to be reminded that Rushdie still lives and Iran still wants him dead.

Will it all have any effect? Salman Rushdie may be doing better on his own terms, just now, than the fanatic government installed in Tehran by the Islamic revolution is doing on its. Among the revolution’s “successes” are attacks on three Rushdie translators and the murder of one, the Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi. But those attacks are dwarfed by the size and strength of the international consensus that the fatwa has called into being. The fatwa has become a standing reminder that reading in our day is often an international as well as interpersonal activity and that a threat anywhere becomes, potentially, a threat everywhere. Reading, in a word, is as international as terrorism.

Along with the Rushdie Defense Committee USA, we hope that Rushdie will live, thrive and continue to mine his multicultural literary talent. But he has already given the international literary world more than it falls to most writers to give. He has reminded all readers of the link, in any serious writer’s work, between courage and truth.