Welcome to the Deep Dive, where we take vast
amounts of information articles, research your
own notes, and distill it into the most essential,
provocative, and memorable insights, all customized
for you, our listener. Today, we are undertaking
a complex and I think a really vital deep dive
into the life and the enduring work of Sir Solomon
Rushdie. And our mission here, it isn't just
to, you know, recount a timeline of his life.
No, not at all. We're trying to really dissect
the profound and often violently contested intersection
between high literature, narrative freedom and
global geopolitics. We're really looking at.
Decades of global history, all encapsulated in
the life of one man. I mean, how does a writer's
unwavering commitment to storytelling, to the
complex, challenging narrative of fiction, suddenly
become the absolute center of a global battleground
for free expression? Well, the extensive sources
you shared with us give us a powerful panoramic
and sometimes, frankly, a chilling view. They
span his celebrated literary career, his very
pointed political commentary, and then, of course,
the meticulous documentation of the decades of
threats against him. And what makes this story
so powerful, for me at least, is this fundamental
tension at the core of Rushdie's public identity.
It's almost irreconcilable. It is. On the one
hand, he is unequivocally a literary giant. I
mean, a Booker Prize winner, a master of magical
realism. Right. A writer whose most famous work
was recognized not just once but twice as the
best novel of all winners in the award's entire
history. Yeah. This is the artist celebrated
by the Academy, by his peers. And then on the
other hand, you have this identity that the world
basically forced on him. Exactly. The man who
spent years in effective hiding under state protection.
The man who lived with a public death sentence
hanging over his head. And then just recently,
the man who survived a horrific. brutal attempt
on his life. In front of a live audience. In
front of a live audience. It's this profound
duality. The artist versus the reluctant activist.
The British, Indian, and American citizen of
Kashmiri Muslim heritage who, just by writing,
was forced to lead a life perpetually on the
edge of a global conflict. That's what we need
to focus on. OK, so let's unpack this journey.
Where do we even begin? I think we have to start
with the formative years, right? The influences
that shaped his voice. Absolutely. He was born
Ahmed Salman Rushdie in Bombay in 1947. A very
precise and pivotal moment. Incredibly so. It
literally coincides with the birth of independent
India almost to the stroke of midnight. You couldn't
write it better. And his family background is.
It's fascinating. Highly intellectual. His father,
Anas Ahmed Rushdie, was a Cambridge -educated
lawyer who went into business. And there's this
really significant detail about the family name
itself, which carries enormous symbolic weight
for his future. The name Rushdie, right. It wasn't
their original name. No. His father, Anas Ahmed,
adopted it in honor of the great 12th century
Andalusian philosopher Averroes, or in Arabic,
Ibn Rushd. Ibn Rushd. And he was, I mean, he
was a giant of rationalist thought, wasn't he?
A giant. Averroes was renowned throughout Europe
and the Islamic world for his secular rationalist
interpretations of philosophy, particularly Aristotle.
And this often put him at odds with orthodox
theology. So the name itself is a statement.
It's a statement. This lineage. consciously adopted
by his father, acknowledges a history of critical,
rationalist thought within a Muslim context.
It sets an intellectual stage that would be so
dramatically reflected in Rushdie's later insistence
on higher criticism and critical inquiry. His
education followed a pretty traditional path
for high achievement at the time. Very rigorous.
He went from the Cathedral and John Conant School
in Bombay to the very structured environment
of Rugby School in England, and then eventually
graduated from King's College, Cambridge in 1968
with a degree in history. But what really seems
to define his early mind are these unexpected,
almost contradictory literary influences he was
absorbing. The influences are, as you say, wonderfully
eclectic. Yeah. They really suggest that blend
of high fantasy and grounded, complex narrative
that would become his signature style. And he
credits one specific book as foundational. He
does. The Wizard of Oz. He claims it was the
book that made a writer of me. An American fantasy
shaping the voice of a future British Indian
novelist. That's amazing. It is. And then he
also soaked up the British literary tradition,
P .G. Woodhouse, Agatha Christie. And he had
a deep, deep affection for Lewis Carroll. He
said he can still recite the whole of Jabberwocky
from memory. Which speaks volumes about a love
for language play, for nonsense, for irreverence.
And then there's the high fantasy element. Oh,
it's huge. J .R .R. Tolkien. He became obsessed
with The Lord of the Rings when he was 16. Apparently,
he could recite the inscription on the ruling
ring in the dark language of Mordor. So his mind
just naturally gravitated towards creating these
complex, internally consistent other worlds.
Exactly. And then there's this incredible cultural
detail he shares about his family, about how
they treated books. It just, it perfectly illustrates
his cultural hybridity and the deep reverence
for the written word that was instilled in him.
Tell us about that. Well, he recalls the traditional
Indian custom of kissing holy books. the Quran
if they were dropped as a sign of respect. Right.
But in the Rushdie household, that deep, almost
sacred respect was applied universally, secularly.
They would kiss dictionaries if they fell, atlases,
Enid Blyton novels. Even comics. Even Superman
comics. If they fell to the floor, you picked
them up and you kissed them. It speaks to a deep,
generalized reverence for the written word, regardless
of its spiritual or cultural weight. It sort
of places the writer on par with the divine messenger.
It's a perfect anecdote. Now, before any of the
literary awards and certainly before any of the
death threats, he had a truly surprising and
very successful professional detour. He was a
copywriter. An ad man. And a very good one. For
major firms like Ogilvy and Mather and Airbarker,
right up until 1982. This is one of those details
that just provides genuine insight into his skill
as a wordsmith, isn't it? I mean, to be an effective
copywriter, you have to distill a huge concept
into a tiny memorable phrase. He's the undisputed
genius behind the word irresista bubble for the
Aero chocolate bar. No way. Yes. And he coined
the incredibly famous and sticky phrase, naughty
but nice for cream cakes. He wrote that. He did.
And maybe the most enduring of all. The line
that is still synonymous with a global financial
brand for American Express, he coined, that'll
do nicely. That is incredible. That ability to
capture a global brand in three simple words.
It shows a mastery of language that's completely
different from but also complementary to the
sprawling prose of his novels. And the most fascinating
part is that he wrote Midnight's Children while
he was still working at Ogilvy. So these two
things were happening at the same time. The concise,
persuasive language of commerce and the sprawling,
complex language of literature. Simultaneously.
It wasn't until Midnight's Children had its massive
breakthrough that he was able to become a full
-time writer. And what a breakthrough it was.
His work is primarily categorized as postmodern,
right? Relying heavily on magical realism. Yes,
that crucial blending of fantasy and reality,
which he uses to explore postcolonial themes,
migration, and the intricate, often disruptive
connections between East and West, always rooted
in the Indian subcontinent. Let's talk about
that magical realism for a second. In his hands,
it isn't just. It's not just whimsy. It's a political
tool. Absolutely. Midnight's Children, published
in 1981, really established this technique. The
novel follows Salim Sinai, the narrator, who
was born precisely at the stroke of midnight
when India gains independence. And because of
this, Salim, along with the other thousand children
born in that first hour, develops supernatural
powers. Which are literally linked to the fate
of the new nation. The magic and the realism
is the necessary mechanism to handle the overwhelming,
chaotic, and often violent reality of post -colonial
nation -building. So by giving the midnight children
these supernatural gifts like telepathy or the
ability to shrink or transform, he's creating
a powerful metaphor. A metaphor for the dashed
hopes, the fragmented identities, the immense
unruly energy of a young nation. It's no wonder
it won the Booker Prize that year. And then it
went on to win the Best of the Bookers Prize
twice on the 25th and 40th anniversaries of the
award. It's just cemented its status as a defining
literary work. It has. And he's spoken about
its complex lineage. He mentions the influence
of India's oral narrative traditions, but also
the more formal structures of the English novel.
Specifically Jane Austen and Charles Dickens.
Right. Austin for her keen portraits of brilliant
women caged by social convention, and Dickens
for his descriptions of a rotting, Bombay -like
city teeming with life and injustice. It just
reinforces the cosmopolitan, synthetic nature
of his imagination. He's meshing these nested
oral stories with the keen social observation
of the 19th century English novel. And his subsequent
works immediately cemented that reputation. Shame,
in 1983, tackled the political turmoil in Pakistan
with characters who were thinly veiled versions
of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and General Zeal Haque.
And he wasn't just focused on South Asia. In
1987, he wrote a nonfiction travelogue, The Jaguar
Smile, about his experiences in Sandinista Nicaragua.
So by the late 1980s, he's an established literary
force, a global intellectual, deeply engaged
with political movements. He was critically still
largely celebrated. Until the publication of
his next novel. Yes. The success that flowed
from his literary mastery, his hybridity, his
irreverence, would suddenly be turned into the
very weapons used against him. And that brings
us to 1988 and the publication that irrevocably
changed not just his life, but the global conversation
around the limits of free speech. The Satanic
Verses. Published in September 1988. And it was
immediately recognized for its literary merit.
It won the prestigious Whitbread Award. But the
focus, as we all know, shifted very quickly from
its literary quality to its perceived content.
The core controversy revolved around what a significant
and soon to be very radicalized segment of the
global Muslim population saw as an irreverent
and blasphemous depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.
And he's referred to in the book as Mahound.
Right. And we need to unpack the specifics of
the theological offense here because it's crucial
to understanding what happened next. First, that
name. It's deliberately provocative. Yeah. It's
a derogatory medieval Christian term for the
prophet, often associated with the Crusades.
So its use in the novel immediately signaled
disrespect to many readers. And the title itself,
The Satanic Verses, that refers to a deeply contentious
tradition within early Islamic history, doesn't
it? Precisely. The core dispute is around this
idea of the satanic forces. The tradition suggests
that the Prophet Muhammad initially received
verses, which he later claims were inspired by
Satan and revoked, that accepted the intercession
of three pre -Islamic pagan goddesses. To appease
the powerful Meccan merchants. Exactly. To sort
of smooth the path for his new faith. The Orthodox
theological consensus today is that this event
either didn't happen or that the story is fundamentally
flawed. But the novel doesn't just reference
this historical dispute. It uses a narrative
device that really radicalized the perception
of the offense. That is the critical distinction.
In the novel, the disputed verses are presented
as originating not from human mistake or satanic
deception, but from the archangel Gabriel himself.
Who is supposed to be delivering the infallible,
uncorrupted word of God. So by implying divine
origin for something later deemed false, Rushdie's
narrative choice was taken by many to directly
challenge the textual integrity and, most fundamentally,
the divine origin of the Quran's revelation.
The immediate reaction, even before the fatwa,
was decisive. Massively so. The book was banned
in 20 countries with large Muslim populations.
India, Iran, Pakistan, South Africa. This was
a global political censorship campaign targeting
a work of literature. But the true firestorm,
the event that turned this literary controversy
into an existential security crisis that ignited
on a very specific date. February 14th, 1989,
Valentine's Day. A day he received the world's
most infamous public death threat. On that day,
Ayatollah Ruwa Khomeini, the supreme leader of
Iran, issued a fatwa, a legal edict, calling
for Rushdie's immediate execution for blasphemy.
And this was, I mean, this was an unprecedented
act. A state leader issuing a death warrant against
a civilian writer in a foreign country. And it
happened even though, and this was confirmed
later by his own son Khomeini himself, had never
actually read the book. He never read it. Never.
The outrage was based on reports, summaries,
and perceived political threat, not literary
analysis. This fundamentally changes the nature
of the critique from theological To purely political.
Which brings us back to the content. There's
a specific chapter, chapter four, which depicts
an imam in exile. Yes, an imam who returns to
his country to incite a violent revolt, demanding
adherence to a rigid purity, regardless of the
consequences for his people. And this was immediately
seen as a deliberate, contemptuous mirroring
of Khomeini's own history. His own exile in Paris
before returning to lead the Iranian revolution.
So the book wasn't just blasphemous in this view.
It was... politically subversive and personally
insulting to the Supreme Leader. A bounty was
immediately offered for his death, forcing him
instantly into a life of secretive high level
police protection that lasted for years. The
diplomatic fallout was swift and enormous. The
United Kingdom and Iran severed all diplomatic
relations on March 7th, 1989, just weeks after
the fatwa was issued. The geopolitical stakes
suddenly elevated a work of fiction into a massive
international diplomatic and security crisis.
It really challenged the core liberal assumption
that literature, even controversial literature,
stays in the wrong of ideas. This showed that
for some, ideas carried the weight of existential
violence. And yet, despite that immediate existential
danger, Rushdie used his platform not to apologize,
but to redouble his defense of the very ideas
the book represented. His immediate public response
was famously defiant. In a column in The Observer
in January 1989, before the fatwa, he tried to
frame the book's intent, calling Muhammad one
of the great geniuses of world history, but saying
the novel was really about migration and hybridity.
But his response after the fatwa? That was pure
defiance. Pure high -stakes defiance. When he
was asked directly on BBC Radio 4 about the death
threat, he threw down the gauntlet. He said,
frankly, I wish I had written a more critical
book. That one sentence set the tone for his
entire 30 -year defense. It's intellectual courage
over personal safety. It is. He said he was sad
that Khomeini and others hadn't read it. But
later in his memoir, he wrote that he was proud
then and always of that statement. He believed
a religion whose leaders behave that way. could
probably use a little criticism he chose intellectual
freedom over tactical submission and he accepted
the consequences that followed so the crisis
of the fatwa it didn't just stay between tehran
and london it immediately kicked off this this
global war over words. It did, and it brought
a simultaneous outpouring of literary solidarity
and horrific real -world violence targeting anyone
associated with the book. The literary world
seemed to recognize immediately that this wasn't
just about one controversial novel. No, they
saw it as a direct assault on Enlightenment values,
on free expression, on the First Amendment. Christopher
Hitchens, who became a crucial ally and a close
friend of his, he defined the stakes in the clearest
possible terms. What did he say? He said this
was everything I hated. Dictatorship, religion,
censorship versus everything I loved. Literature,
irony, defense of free expression. That's such
a potent framework for understanding the conflict.
And we saw other literary giants weighing in,
too. And Berto Eco offered that quintessential
writer's perspective with that dark humor saying,
keep to your convictions. Try to protect yourself.
A death sentence is a rather harsh review. A
harsh review. And critically, this wasn't just
a Western defense, was it? We saw solidarity
coming from within the broader Muslim intellectual
community. Yes. And that's so important. Maghrib
Mahfouz, the Egyptian Nobel laureate, he said
the terrorism Rushdie faced was unjustifiable,
indefensible. And he added the profound observation
that one idea can only be opposed by other ideas.
He was arguing for debate, not violence. And
this intellectual defense, it actually materialized
formally. It did. In 1993, a hundred Muslim and
Arab intellectuals published a collection called
Farashti, expressing solidarity, condemning the
fatwa as intolerable and having nothing to do
with the tolerant Islam they were taught. They
saw the danger that religious fanaticism posed
to creative freedom globally, regardless of the
target. But this defense of the word, it came
at a terrible price. The decade that followed
saw widespread riots, protests, firebombings
of bookstores all over the world. particularly
those stalking the satanic verses. And most tragically,
the violence escalated to target those who facilitated
the book's publication. This is the grim reality
of the human cost. We need to detail the scale
of this targeted violence because it was designed
to terrify the entire chain of publishers. And
it was devastatingly effective. In 1991, the
Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, was stabbed
to death at Tsukuba University. Just for translating
the book? Just for translating it. The Italian
translator, Ettore Capriola, was also stabbed,
but thankfully he survived. Then in 1993, the
Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, was shot
three times outside his home in Oslo. He survived,
but only just. Only through immense medical effort.
The message was crystal clear. Simply being associated
with Rushdie's work was a life -threatening choice.
And even before these attacks on his associates,
there was a shocking failed attempt to kill Rushdie
directly in London. Yes, on August 3rd, 1989,
less than six months after the fatwa. A man using
the alias Mustafa Mobudmazza was priming a powerful
book bomb loaded with RDX explosives in a Paddington
hotel. And the bomb went off prematurely? It
did. It detonated, killing Mazza instantly and
destroying two floors of the hotel. And this
man, he's not just a failed terrorist. He is
tragically recognized by hardliners as the first
martyr to die on a mission to kill Rushdie. He
has a prominent shrine in Tehran's largest cemetery.
It just underscores how deeply this mission was
integrated into the hardline political religious
apparatus. It does. And the cultural reaction
wasn't just violence. It also included some bizarre,
almost surreal propaganda. Like the 1990 Pakistani
film International Gorillas. Which is a surreal
reflection of how he is being publicly demonized.
The film depicts Rushdie as this James Bond -style
villain plotting Pakistan's downfall through
casinos and discos before being killed by four
righteous Pakistani guerrillas. And what's truly
insightful is Rushdie's incredibly savvy reaction
to the film possibly being banned in the UK.
He actually wrote to the British Board of Film
Classification and told them not to ban what
he called this trash film. Why? He argued that
censoring it would only grant it notoriety, validating
its message and turning it into a hotter underground
hit. That reveals his core philosophy, doesn't
it? Censorship, even of bad ideas, just gives
power and myth to the censors. Exactly. He understood
that the best way to deal with bad ideas is not
to silence them, but to expose them to the light
of criticism and ridicule. During this decade,
Rushie lived largely underground under constant
protection. He adopted the secret alias Joseph
Anton. A name composed of the first names of
two of his favorite writers, Joseph Conrad and
Anton Chekhov. It later became the title of his
2012 memoir about those years. The psychological
toll of that must have been immense. Not being
able to tell friends where you live, your kids
having to learn protocols, constantly moving.
And yet, despite the extreme security, he managed
these bursts of defiant public visibility. He
was deliberately undermining the idea that the
fatwa had imprisoned him completely. And that
appearance in 1993 at the U2 concert at Wembley
Stadium is just fantastic. A monumental moment
of defiance. U2 singer Bono had been making a
ritual of calling Rushdie from the stage every
night on that tour, this symbolic gesture of
solidarity. And then one night, he actually showed
up. He showed up, and the stadium reportedly
erupted with spontaneous support. The source
has confirmed that he frequently used a backstage
pass to attend concerts, proving that even a
man supposedly in absolute hiding was determined
to experience life and art in freedom. Though
his life in hiding was still fought with challenges,
he even had legal trouble with a former bodyguard
who published a book claiming he tried to profit
from the fatwa and was suicidal. Right, which
highlights the psychological warfare of his situation.
Rushdie dismissed the claims as a bunch of lies
and successfully sued the publisher. He was fighting
both the external death threats and these internal
narrative attempts to dehumanize him. As the
90s wore on, the fatwa remained this unresolved
global problem. Then in 1998, there was a tentative
breakthrough under Iran's more moderate president
at the time, Mohammad Khatami. It was a diplomatic
breakthrough, not a spiritual one. As a precondition
for restoring diplomatic ties with the UK, the
Iranian government committed to neither support
nor hinder assassination operations against Rusty.
But this commitment, it proved to be purely cosmetic,
didn't it, in terms of ending the actual threat?
Absolutely. It was a governmental diplomatic
gesture to restore trade. But crucially, the
hardliners, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
who later became the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary
Guards, they repeatedly and publicly reaffirmed
that the death sentence was religiously binding
and could not be revoked by the government. And
they kept increasing the bounty. Consistently.
It reached $3 .3 million by 2012, and it grew
again in 2016. The threat remained privatized
and decentralized among hardline organizations,
even if the government pretended to step back.
Which led to that dark humor he developed to
cope. He reported receiving a yearly reminder
of the vow to kill him every February 14th, his
unfunny Valentine. He eventually came to treat
the threat as rhetoric. rather than a real threat,
a dangerous but understandable psychological
defense mechanism. But that distinction between
rhetoric and reality is key, as this sustained
threat forced you to become much more than just
a novelist. Right. The sustained threat forced
Rushdie to evolve, didn't it? He became one of
the world's most articulate and uncompromising
defenders of secularism and free expression.
His own experience became the lens through which
he analyzed the global rise of religious extremism
and authoritarianism. And to understand his philosophy,
we have to clarify his personal religious stance.
It's often distorted by his opponents. It is.
While he comes from that liberal Kashmiri Muslim
family, he has been extremely clear about his
personal beliefs. He identifies unambiguously
as a hardline. an atheist, a secular human being
who doesn't believe in supernatural entities
of any kind. Which is why his intellectual work
has focused so heavily on scrutinizing the role
of religion in society using historical and critical
methods. This foundation led to his powerful
advocacy for a profound internal change within
Islam itself. In 2005, he published an op -ed
in The Washington Post and The Times calling
for a Muslim reformation. That is a loaded term.
He's deliberately invoking that historical period
in Europe when thinkers began to challenge the
absolute authority of the church. So it was a
deliberate call to action. Yes, urging Muslims
to move beyond unexamined tradition and combat,
not just jihadist ideologues, but also the dusty,
stifling seminaries of the traditionalists. His
core argument, stemming from his history background,
was that Muslims must be able to study the revelation
of their religion as an event inside history.
not supernaturally above it. So he's arguing
for higher criticism. How does he connect this
to the broader concept of freedom? He argues
that the moment you treat foundational texts
like the Quran or a nation's founding documents
as static sacred objects outside of human history,
you stop thinking new thoughts. Right. He believes
societies must constantly question and revise
their grand narratives. nation, family, religion
to avoid stagnation. The argument itself, the
ability to question without fear of violent retribution,
is freedom. This stance made him an immediate
and necessary champion of satire, especially
after the tragic Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris
in 2015. He condemned the shooting unequivocally.
He emphasized that he stood with the magazine
to defend satire against tyranny, dishonesty,
and stupidity. He knew the attack was designed
not just to kill, but to intimidate and enforce
silence, which he saw as the ultimate defeat.
And he offered that very provocative view. Religion,
a medieval form of unreason, when combined with
modern weaponry, becomes a real threat to our
freedoms. Which led to his famous assertion about
the false idol of respect. He argued that respect
for religion has become code for fear of religion.
And that religions deserve the same scrutiny
as any other idea. Exactly. They deserve criticism,
satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect. And
this isn't just rhetoric for him. He's a founding
patron of Ralston College, whose motto is a Latin
translation of his own phrase, free speech is
life itself. It's remarkable how the necessity
of hiding didn't silence his creative output.
In fact, some of his most profound allegorical
works came directly from the experience of the
fatwa. His 1990 children's book, Heron and the
Sea of Stories, is maybe the most direct and
moving literary response. Written in the immediate
shadow of the death sentence, it's an explicit
allegorical defense of the power of storytelling
over silence. As the threat subsided into the
rhetorical in the late 90s, his work expanded
again. The Ground Beneath Her Feet in 1999 was
this massive novel riffing on the Orpheus and
Eurydice myth. But casting them as modern rock
stars, exploring the mythic power of music and
tragedy. And again, a fascinating tidbit is his
connection to U2. Rushdie is actually credited
as the lyricist for the U2 song based on the
book's title. That's amazing. He continued this
exploration of history and transnational identity,
right? The Enchantress of Florence in 2008 looked
backward to a European visiting the court of
the great Mughal emperor Akbar. Always fascinated
by that interplay between East and West. Then,
in 2015, Two Years, Eight Months, and 28 Nights
was a modern, magical, realist take on 1001 Nights
with a war against jinns. And critics immediately
drew parallels, seeing him as Scheherazade reborn.
A master storyteller facing death for telling
unwelcome tales. And then, of course, Victory
City was published in 2023, shortly after the
devastating 2022 attack. A powerful, immediate
statement of his ultimate refusal to be silenced.
And beyond literature, his political views stayed
consistent and globally engaged. He supported
removing the Taliban after 9 -11, but was a harsh
critic of the 2003 Iraq War, calling the U .S.
intervention unjustifiable. His focus then brought
into this phenomenon he called populist authoritarian
demagoguery. All around the world, he was specifically
lamenting the failure in the U .S. to uphold
the democratic principles of the First Amendment,
the very freedom he spent decades defending.
And his criticism extends pointedly to his country
of birth, India. Yes, he's consistently criticized
the ruling BJP party and Prime Minister Narendra
Modi. And he spoke out about the revocation of
Jammu and Kashmir's special status in 2019, calling
it an atrocity. He suggested a direct link between
that political heavy handedness and the fueling
of extremism in the region. Precisely. He argued
the actions of the Indian army created a vacuum
and a climate of despair where jihadism could
gain support, leaving Kashmiris feeling caught
between the devil and the deep blue sea. His
core philosophy, that societies must allow internal
criticism, was applied to Indian politics just
as forcefully as it was to religious extremism.
You know, for over 30 years, the fatwa existed
as this dark, enduring background hum to his
life. He tried to treat it as rhetoric, but the
sources make it chillingly clear that the physical
danger was always real. The reality of that long
-term threat, it's just chillingly summarized
by the fact that in 2010, his name was published
on an Al -Qaeda hit list. In their magazine,
Inspire. alongside figures like Ayaan Hirsi Ali
and the staff of Charlie Hebdo. Many of those
on that land were subsequently attacked or murdered.
It was a living operational target list. And
even after he had emerged from official hiding
and was living mostly in the U .S., the threat
was concrete enough to affect his movements.
In 2012, he had to cancel an appearance at the
Jaipur Literature Festival. Because local police
had credible intelligence that paid assassins
were being sent to kill him. And that Jaipur
incident is crucial because it showed the continued
power of the threat to enforce censorship even
a quarter century later. It did. When Rushdie
canceled, four other Indian authors read excerpts
from the banned novel in protest. A brave act.
An incredibly brave act, which led to their immediate
forced flight from the festival due to the threat
of arrest and public outcry. The government even
pressured the festival to cancel a proposed video
link session with him. So the fatwa function
as this self -enforcing system of international
censorship. Using fear and sporadic violence
to achieve its aims. And all of this history,
it led inexorably to the horrifying events of
August 12th, 2022. In a moment where he felt
relatively safe. Preparing to give a lecture
on artistic freedom at the Chautauqua Institution
in New York, he was violently attacked. A 24
-year -old man, Hadi Mattar, rushed the stage
and stabbed him repeatedly in the face, neck,
and abdomen. The speed and brutality of it were
just shocking. He was airlifted to a trauma center,
put on a ventilator. Security had to be drastically
increased at the hospital. Because of the real
potential for secondary attempts on his life
by those seeking to fulfill the edict. The injuries
were so severe. Stab wounds to the liver, his
hand and the permanent loss of sight in his right
eye. This was not a symbolic attack. It was a
focused, near successful murder attempt. And
yet, demonstrating that immediate resilience,
he was off the ventilator and speaking just a
day later. But the profound psychological element
of the attack is detailed in his memoir, Knife.
And there's this surprising, almost prophetic
detail he shares. The dream. The dream. Two nights
before the attack, he had this vivid, intense
dream of being violently stabbed multiple times
in an ancient Roman amphitheater. Like being
stabbed by a gladiator. That's how he described
it. The intensity of the dream was so great that
it caused him to seriously consider canceling
the event. But he decided to proceed anyway,
refusing to let fear dictate his schedule. The
aftermath has been characterized by legal entanglement
and a return to literary creation as a form of
self -defense. Right. Hadi Matar was charged
with attempted murder. His trial faced a specific
high -profile delay in January 2024. Because
of the memoir? The defense attorney argued they
were entitled to review Rushdie's forthcoming
memoir, Knife. Meditations. After an attempted
murder. Arguing that the details within it constituted
potential evidence. That memoir, Knife, was published
in April 2024 to massive commercial and critical
success. It was even a finalist for the National
Book Award. And the book details not just his
physical and emotional recovery, but it also
includes fictional conversations with his assailant,
whom he refers to simply as A. This narrative
choice to create a dialogue with his attacker,
even a fictional one, is such a profound act
of literary assertion. It's the author claiming
control of the narrative, refusing to allow the
attacker to remain a silent, faceless void. He's
trying to understand, dissect, and ultimately
reduce the power of the violence by turning it
into literature. And the legal proceedings finally
concluded. Yes. In February 2025, Hadi Matar
was found guilty of attempted murder and assault,
and he was sentenced to 25 years in prison in
May 2025. A crucial measure of accountability.
And amidst all this trauma, the world has continued
to recognize his endurance. He was appointed
a member of the Order of the Companions of Honor,
received the German Book Trade Peace Prize. And
it's important to remember the controversy around
his knighthood in 2007. While celebrated in the
West, it drew outrage from some Muslim -majority
nations and was condemned by al -Qaeda as an
insult to Islam. It just reinforces that the
death sentence remained woven into his identity,
ready to be activated by extremists. And Christopher
Hitchens, defending the knighthood at the time,
made a powerful counterargument. He noted that
Midnight's Children had actually won the main
literary award in Iran before the fatwa. So he
was celebrated there once. He was. And Hitches
asserted that lumping all Muslims together with
the most extreme, homicidal, fanatical, illiterate,
intolerant people who hadn't read the book was
an insult to Islam itself. It is a powerful argument
against allowing extremists to define an entire
faith. You know, what stands out in this decades
-long narrative is this profound synthesis of
literature and liberty. His journey is defined
by his commitment to telling the stories, a theme
he articulated so powerfully in Haroon in the
Sea of Stories. And that insistence on the power
of the narrative forced him to lead a life defined
by this battle for liberty against religious
and political totalitarianism. We've tracked
the long arc of censorship attempts from international
book bans and death vows to failed bombings,
targeted attacks on his associates. And finally,
the direct, brutal, near successful attack in.
He survived every attempt to silence him, transforming
his body into a battleground for global freedom.
And if we connect this decades long struggle
to the bigger picture, Rushdie himself has said
that the biggest threat he now faces is shifting
in focus. He's noted the global rise of populist
authoritarian demagoguery. He believes the problem
is increasingly political more than primarily
religious. He suggests a failure to value democratic
principles and critical thinking is the root
issue now challenging global liberty. So what
does this all mean for you, the listener, in
the contemporary struggle for open debate? In
an age of information overload, where speech
is often immediately judged through a highly
partisan lens, and where fear of offense frequently
trumps the courage to speak, How does the sheer
decades -long endurance of a single controversial
work of literature reflect our struggle for open
debate and critical awareness in global society?
Consider this. Rushdie's entire ethos is built
on the necessity of questioning our grand narratives.
He used a knife to write his latest memoir, a
direct, symbolic confrontation of the weapon
used against him. the writer transforming violence
into art is perhaps the ultimate act of intellectual
defiance if we become a society where fear of
offense replaces the courage to critically examine
our foundational stories whether they are stories
of faith nation or ideology we risk building
the kind of stagnant suffocating prison Rushdie
has always fought to escape the only way to win
a war over words is to keep speaking and to keep
demanding the right to think new thoughts