Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 117
Rushdie: Haunted By His Unholy Ghosts 117 prison but suspended that part of the sentence pending an appeal. (The ‘Gay News’ trial was reported daily in The Times from July 4 to July 12 1977). One could hope that a similar verdict might have been adjudged on Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses; but instead praise from all over the literary world commended his blasphemous work and conferred endless awards on him and made him out to be an icon in literary circles. Perhaps imprisonment would be too strong a meas- ure in his case as there are no laws to prevent blasphemers against Islam in Britain, but certainly banning publication and distribution of the book would have been a sensible step, in view of the sensitiv- ity of the issue. Take a very recent example of a publication of a controversial bi- ography of the 1976 Olympic and world ice skating champion John Curry who died in 1994 of an Aids-related illness after contracting HIV from a homosexual partner. In the book entitled Black Ice, the life and death of John Curry, the author, Elva Oglanby, also claims that Curry was involved in homosexual relationships, drugs and mind-control therapy. The family of John Curry strongly challenged the book’s account of his upbringing and one of his brothers, Michael Curry, said that the book ‘caused great hurt to my family. ’ A spokesman for the publisher Victor Gollancz, part of the Cassell group, confi rmed : ‘We have received a complaint about the book and we have delayed publication. ’ (Times, 28 March 1995). How understanding of the publisher to delay the publication as it would have hurt the feelings of a handful of the immediate members of John Curry’s family. But what of the sensibilities and feelings of millions and millions of Muslims all over the world who were going to be insulted in the worst manner possible by the pub- lication of The Satanic Verses. Both the publishers and the author of The Satanic Verses were well aware of the hurt that the novel would inflict upon the Muslim world and the repercussions that it would instigate.