Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 123
123 C H A P T E R F I F T E E N : T H E M E DI A G OE S T O T OW N O V E R T H E F A T WA There was world-wide condemnation of the fatwa imposed on Rushdie, and rightly so. Ayatollah Khomeini got his authority from himself, and not from the Qur’an. But the attitude of the media has been most damaging. The way that the issue has been represented has left the unknowledgeable non-Muslim population with the im- pression that Islam does not allow freedom of speech unlike ‘civi- lised’ societies in the West, and that it’s laws are entrenched in the Middle Ages and have no room in the present day-and-age. An editorial in The Independent (15 February, 1989) regarded the fatwa as out of date and more like ‘a response from the Middle Ages’. The article also suggested, as a comparison, that Christianity had become more tolerant with the passage of time of blasphemous material, and that Islam too should follow suit, and the article ends with a grossly dissolute surrender : ‘A multi-cultural society (i. e. Britain). . . should be considering the abolition, not the extension of the laws of blasphemy. ’ But surely just because the ‘Christians’ do not care does not mean that the Muslims should also follow suit. Clifford Longley, the Religious Affairs Editor of The Times, reit- erates the medieval status of the fatwa in his article on 15 February 1989 : ‘The outlook of Islam in the 20th century is not so different from than of Christianity in the 13th or 14th. ’ Most newspapers have highlighted the views of Muslim ex- tremists in Britain and how they have been crying for the ‘blood of Rushdie’, and have portrayed this as the norm as regards the feel- ings of all Muslims. But as explained earlier, the fundamental view is that of a very small minority; but then again, outrageous headlines and book-burning photos sell a lot of newspapers. For example, in The Independent of 18 February 1989, a whole page was devoted