Back to the Rushdie Affair Once More
by Mohammed Arkoun
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some corrections were made.
Back to the Rushdie Affair Once More
by Mohammed Arkoun
In his didactic broadcast entitled “The March of the Century,” Jean-Marie Cavada awakened in many memories, at least in the memories of many in France, the realization that the Rushdie affair is still very much with us. This writer is still living under the threat of the famous fatwa condemning him to death which was reaffirmed by the Iranian authorities after the death of the imam, the Ayatollah Khomeini. During the program, a very serene Salman Rushdie was shown on French television screens bearing up with a great deal of dignity under the burden of a personal drama which, at this point, has taken on the dimensions of a historical destiny: the destiny of an immigrant Muslim now living in Europe who is being pursued in his refuge there both by the ancient heritage of Muslim societies and by their more recent heritage as well.
It is even less possible to escape from this double heritage of both ancient and modern than it would otherwise be when we consider that both the current political situation and the economic and social disorders in the world impose the whole thing more and more on all concerned. And if, like Rushdie, one has undertaken to stir things up further—if only by producing a work of art, by electing to touch upon a system of basic religious symbolism that gives support to the hopes of millions of human beings marginalized by a history that is blind—if one attempts this, then, one is only too likely to
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Islamologist, Algeria. Originally written in French.
BACK TO THE RVShduVppau ONCE More unite against oneself forces of vengeance directed •> ■ that will necessarily be less and less subject to anv IJj'T ’ deStiny It cannot be said that the participants on 7 of mastery, program raised the level of the debate to a point wher^t^ w understand what is truly at stake in the Rushdie affair For hit ans, I believe it is an affair that will mark an important mil 7 T the end of this twentieth century. I myself attempted in One.for stake m the whole affair. However, the storm that blew up at tha point was so violent, passions were running so high, and the threat of actual physical force was so agonizing, that what I had to say then was rather arbitrarily classified as just one more opinion belonging on “the fundamentalist side.” It was classified thus even though for the last thirty years, I have not ceased to work for a true rational critique of Islam—and this precisely in order to make possible not only a favorable reception by the Muslim public of such works as The Satanic Verses, but also to multiply the kinds of intellectual and artistic activities that help to liberate certain kinds of mentalities from “knowledge” that just happens to be false, from mythological-type representations to which they are also prone, from fideist prejudices, and from various other primitive and often undisciplined beliefs.
My whole experience with the Rushdie affair provides rather convincing proof, though, of a current intellectual weakness in the West which is only too evident, and also of an ideological drift on the part of the intelligentsia, which is way too heavily influenced by the media, and which also refuses to consider what the real problems are at the same time that it feels quite able to give lessons in freedom of conscience to the Muslim world. It feels quite able to give such lessons even though, at least from the nineteenth century on, practically everything possible has been done in that Muslim world to downgrade and render inoperative and even ridiculous any such thing as an appeal to respect “the rights of man.
I do not wish to repeat my earlier offense, that of stirring up again the same old “defenders of the West”; nor do I wish to pro-vide another occasion for people to decide to believe that I actually
accept the condemnation of Rushdie in order to protect “the values of Islam.” What I do say is that the condemnation of*^ author was a political act, which sought to amplify its effect b° resorting to a certain method of operating and also by insistin k' there was a serious religious issue at stake in the whole thing I want to say that, given the present state of religious psychology jn the Islamic context, making a distinction between an essentially political strategy and act and a religious commitment aimed at prol tecting spiritual values is not one that was ever going to be accessible to a very large number. The imaginary collectivity was bound to react blindly, immediately, and with fury when it was made to believe that the prophet has been made to look ridiculous, and that God himself had been blasphemed.
Now in politics, I contend—even in the West—nobody has the right either to ignore or scorn the psychological dimensions that are necessarily involved in the public perception of events. So it is perfectly vain to proclaim in the abstract the universal rights of man in societies that for centuries have been subject to all forms of arbi-
trary power and denial of the dignity of the human being—including during the long period of colonial domination by the West itself, which only very recently has suddenly become the defender of freedom all over the world (and this still remains perfectly true, whatever necessary correctives or reservations the most lucid observers in the West might raise in this regard).
It is necessary that Salman Rushdie should be able to recover his full liberty—his freedom to live his life, to move about, to express his thoughts, to publish his books, and, in general, to enrich by means of his talent as a writer the great debates of the present day, and precisely on questions of politics and religion. I would like to see The Satanic Verses made available to all Muslims in order that they might be able to reflect in a more modern fashion on the cognitive status of revelation, not only as regards Islam, but also as regards the other monotheistic religions which profess belief in the same phenomenon that Islam does, namely, that the very Word of God has actually intervened in human history.
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BACK TO THE RUSHDIE AFFAIR ONCE MORE
At the same time, however, it would seem m K,.. n that a serious debate take place in the West concernmlThel''0^^"' of brutally dismissing an entire culture, a historic world re”in fact, entirely on the basts of supposed philosophical po5tulot that even tn the West, have not been subjected to any real tests of intellectual validation or cultural efficaciousness. But now suddenly they have been transferred into entirely new religious, historical and psychosocial contexts. I refer in particular to certain ideological forms and modalities understood in certain European countries as the separation of the temporal from the spiritual— to be distinguished clearly from the separation of church and state, of one power apparatus from another. This question of the separation of the temporal from the spiritual is today in need of a radical philosophical reconsideration. Yet it is precisely here that a truly violent form of Western arrogance takes root which, under the cover of a defense of “freedom of expression,” in fact seeks to debase Islam and prove that all the old talk about the civilizing mission of the European colonial powers is and has always been fundamentally valid.
It is time to cease treating the Rushdie affair by moving in one direction only, by taking one side only. The demonstrations, manifestations, and rejections that have been characteristic of certain Muslim milieus have been directed much less against the person of Rushdie than they have against a book that very quickly became a symbol of all of the aggressions of recent history, especially from the time of the eighteenth century on, directed against Muslim societies. The forms of domination that still weigh upon the nation-al states that have issued from the Muslim wars for independence are currently experienced and interpreted as nothing else but a prolongation and aggravation of the domination that had earlier been imposedby thermal empires. Thus, merely to prote^agamst the of the whole
silence some things that repres battle that has involved Rushdie. What
was said, what protests were launched, w p
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FOR RUSHDIE
tions made, what petitions were circulated in the West against Gulf War? Is there no connection here between the flood of pa 'h' that was unleashed—the violence the rages, the destructive^* the desire for vengeance-and the destre to do away with an ene J Is there no connection between all of this and the similar phenone na that have been manifested in the Rushdie affair? Or the affair of the scarf that followed so closely upon it in France?
The fact of the matter is that all of our discourses, our commit, ments, our analyses, our denunciations, our warnings, our predictions—none of these things even begins to suffice to deal with the challenges of history opened up by what has been called—so absurdly!—decolonization. The social sciences, which are supposed to throw light on the complexity of our present history, instead take refuge in mere expertise, in descriptive studies, in summing up developments after the fact, or simply in peddling a kind of “futurology.” Philosophy, meanwhile, has simply retired from the field, leaving it to the various social science specialties to focus on such narrow and severely limited issues as those related to studying ancient clans or tribes, for example. As far as speaking seriously about ethics or spiritual values, even the religious authorities no longer really dare to do it—so great is their desire to speak in no language but the language of the media, because that is the only language anybody listens to anymore; hence it is the only language that finally comes to be imposed.
How then, under these conditions, is it even possible to speak of an affair such as the Rushdie affair, which brings out, precisely, all the failures, incapacities, humiliations, and rejections from which the intelligence of our day suffers?
Source: For Rushdie: essays by Arab and Muslim writers in defense of free speech.
