Salman Rushdie is off ventilator and able to talk, agent says
Author seriously injured in New York stabbing remains in hospital, as Joe Biden praises his courage and suspect denies attempted murder
In NZ, when we want to destroy art, we sign a petition and allow Patrick Gower to be the Chief Censor, overseas however, they still prefer blood.
The beauty of Salmon Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses‘ asks deep cultural, religious and spiritual questions about Islam.
That he is attacked almost 34 years later after its publication by some Islamic fundamentalist extremist is so fucking ugly.
Any society who makes enemies of writers and artists and performers is sick and not worthy of the name society.
Salmon Rushdie has always been a personal hero of mine, watching him stabbed by religious ignorance is so terribly angering.
But that’s what the religious fuckwits want isn’t it? They want us to ignore the beauty of the art and allow the anger of violence against the artist to eclipse the beauty and the truth they reveal.
True, passionate lovers of art must never allow the violence of extremists to invoke the same blindness to truth and beauty they themselves are blighted by.
I’m going out this week to buy another copy of The Satanic Verses to spite those fuckers.
Solidarity Comrade Rushdie.
Solidarity!
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Would our “power to truth” mavens, our state thought police, even allow The Satanic Verses to be released here today? Yet the Iranian Islamist inspired would be assassins with their Kill Rushdie posters were given free reign, support even, while the great man was forced into hiding. After the Charlie Hebdo folk were gunned down the call went out “Je Suis Charlie”. I am Charlie. How quickly we forget, weren’t we even listening at all.
“The Islamist vengeance that Rushdie has suffered shows us where you end up when you abandon free speech. When giving offence becomes a moral crime. When you say that speech is violence. You end up with violence and unreason and terror. So to all those who have looked at their shoelaces as this poison has built up, it is time to pick a side. Those who believe in freedom and humanity need to speak up for Salman Rushdie – and all the other heretics. And do not even think of saying ‘but…’. The attack on Rushdie is an attack on us all. Let’s make freedom of speech, the cause of his life, the cause of our time.”
Tom Slater, Spiked on line.
100%!
Violence borne of blind adherence to dogma, be it religious or secular, is still violence and should always be condemned. But to be damning this man for the religious zealotry that drove him to attack Salman Rushdie, while turning a blind eye to the religious zealotry that drives Israel’s killing of Palestinians is Hypocrisy. To sneer at Islam while swallowing the dogma that Israel’s state religion justifies its systematic slaughter of Palestinians is a thousand times more absurd, and makes blind zealots of us all.
Despite your best efforts Malcolm trying to pin this on Israel is a bit of a stretch.
Indeed- Rushdie was closely connected to the genocide of the Palestinians. He even received a major award from the so-called ‘American Jewish Committee’, one of the worst anti-Palestinian organizations, for his betrayal of the Palestinian people.
“systematic slaughter of Palestinians”
I’ve no idea where you got that from – or how you can ignore the thousands of rockets regularly fired into Israel from people bent on their destruction. Tellingly, people allied, via Iran, with Rushdie’s attacker.
And your mate Jeffrey Epstein was an innocent man persecuted by antisemites, I’m sure.
It’s not Palestine, it’s Israel. Its the land occupied by the Jewish people continuously at least a 1000 years before islam. The Jewish settlers arriving prior to the creation of the modern state, helped the indigenous Jewish people rid themselves of the colonial oppression of the Arabs.
100% Martyn
I enjoyed reading Salman Rushdie’s books, but they are a mission. I believe the authors biggest mistake in satanic verses was to ridicule a certain Ayatollah and to expose him as a vain man. The part where the verses in question are mentioned, and the cause of the so called offence is misunderstood at best by his critics. At worst it is being used disingenuously.
“They are us” art? Come on…
Sadly in woke NZ they would probably ban The Satanic Verses as being hate speech (aka causing alarm/offence to a religious group) rather than help spreed freedom of speech and expression.
Not the only person in the arts being attacked, now even comedians are attacked with knives on stage if they have offended some group.
The onus needs to go back onto people controlling their violent behaviours as being the hate crime, NOT government trying to stop freedom of expression.
The mixed up message is causing more public attacks on people as the woke are enabling those to take offence and then plan violent attacks on people they don’t know due to some book/joke/belief they don’t agree with.
All the best to Salman Rushdie after this attempt on his life.
Salman Rushdie had started to believe his ‘life was normal again
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/13/salman-rushdie-had-started-to-believe-his-life-was-normal-again
“Asked what made him afraid now, Rushdie said: “In the past I would have said religious fanaticism. I no longer say that. The biggest danger facing us right now is that we lose our democracy. Since the supreme court abortion verdict I have been seriously concerned that the US won’t manage that. That the problems are irreparable and the country will break apart. Today’s greatest danger facing us is this kind of cryptofascism that we see in America and elsewhere.”
Making an absolute mockery of the argument that this is about freedom of speech, New Zealand media systematically refuses to publish any news reports on world affairs that run counter to that decreed acceptable by the US State Department. So that, for instance, we get endless tear-jerking coverage of civilian casualties in Ukraine, but absolutely no mention of the 15 children killed last week in Gaza by the Israelis.
the religion of peace – I support your rights to your beliefs but don’t expect me to stop laughing at you and telling you you’re delusional. eff religion and anyone who believes in it. akin to a mental illness IMO.
Cripes mate, don’t the usual suspects flood out when there’s a good holy war on the cards.
It’s worth noting that Rushdie, due to his zionist financial backers, openly supported an attack on Iraq as a “A war of liberation”. A war that killed more than a million Iraqis and immiserated and displaced millions more, and led to the establishment of ISIS.
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