From Fatwa to Jihad

‘[Rushdie’s critics’] campaign against Satanic Verses was not to protect the Muslim communities from unconscionable attack by anti-Muslim bigots but to protect their own privileged position within those communities from political attack by radical critics, to assert their right to be the true voice of Islam by denying legitimacy to such critics.  They succeeded at least in part because secular liberals embraced them as the authentic voice of the Muslim community’ p. 165.

‘With the criminalizing of criticism of Islam has come the criminalizing of Islamic dissent.  With the ban on incitement to religious hatred has come the ban on the glorification of terrorism.  Far from specifically targeting Muslims, the law is taking it upon itself to determine what anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim, can say about others.  Many of those who opposed the law against the glorification of terror supported the criminalizing of religious hatred as a protection for a beleaguered minority.  Many of those who opposed the religious hatred law as infringing legitimate speech supported constraints on the glorification of terrorism as a necessary measure in the post-9/11  age.  We cannot have it both ways.  If we invite the state to define the boundaries of acceptable speech, we cannot complain if it is not just speech to which we object that gets curtailed.  If the twenty years since the Rushdie affair have taught us anything, it should be that (p. 191).’

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ISBN: 184354825