THE WAR OF RUSHDIE'S SNEER
The media: Paul Johnson
argues that the Ayatollah is not alone in his intolerance
THE Rushdie affair has so far been pre- sented as a clash between Western civilisa- tion and oriental fanaticism. I suspect an outside observer, from Mars say, would see it as the head-on meeting of two fanaticisms. In some ways it reminds me of the War of Jenkins' Ear. In the 1730s the Spanish believed they had a God-given right to the monopoly of trade with their possessions in the Western hemisphere; the British felt that they had an equally God-given right to conduct business there. In 1731 a British sea-captain, Robert Jenk- ins, who had been involved in an incident with a Spanish coast-guard ship, claimed that one of his ears had been cut off. With war-fever over the issue rising in 1739, he actually produced what he said was the missing ear before a House of Commons committee. Asked what were his feelings when he found himself In the hands of such barbarians', he replied stoutly: 'I committed my soul to my God and my cause to my country.' It was of the ensuing declaration of war that the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, sadly remarked: `They now ring the bells, they will soon wring their hands.' Doubts were later cast on Jenkins' good faith and whether he had lost an ear at all. In 1790 Mirabeau, in a speech to the French National Assembly, was to cite the incident as an example of why the right to declare war should never be entrusted to a popular parliament.
The War of Rushdie's Sneer is still a cold war, though I believe some left-wing intel- lectuals want Mrs Thatcher to bomb Teheran. But it has already cost the lives of 18 people in the Indian sub-continent. To be sure, they are the lives of poor, insignifi- cant people, unworthy of the attention of rich 'progressive' writers here and in America; but lives all the same, leaving behind them sorrowing families. A super- stitious soul might well think that The Satanic Verses has proved diabolical. Quite apart from the lives lost, it has thrown Iran, just at the moment when it appeared to be rejoining the international commun- ity, back into the hands of the extremists, and this backlash is affecting other Muslim countries too. It has brought to an end efforts to release Western prisoners and hostages. Some of their lives may now be forfeit too. It is quite possible that many more people will be killed before the affair subsides, even assuming no further pro- vocations are offered on either side. Con- tinued publication of the book, and the closing of Western diplomatic ranks behind it, is seen as an example of white man's arrogance, and not just in Muslim states. At home the damage to the friendly feelings between the Islamic community and the whites cannot yet be calculated, but it is clearly considerable.
Race, religion and politics are interming- led in this dispute. If Salman Rushdie had been white, I doubt if the Western nations would have dared to present the degree of diplomatic solidarity they now judge appropriate. After all, they are doing more for this millionaire author, who is safe and sound, than they are willing to do for any of the white hostages. Equally, if Rushdie had been white, how much backing would he have received from fellow-writers and intellectuals? Not much, I suspect, and if he had not been a certified member of the Left either, none at all. On the contrary: he might well have found himself reported to the Race Relations Board, long before the Ayatollah intervened. Indeed it is worth pondering, if Rushdie had been white and a conservative, whether most of us would ever have heard of him. His more fanatical supporters constantly refer to him as a `distinguished' or `very distinguished' author. He seems to me an egregious example of a literary celebrity created by the left-wing cultural establishment and by the hype of the prize system, which is 'Are you supporting it too, or are you Kingsley Amis?' already beginning (as I always suspected it would) to damage English literature. Rushdie's attacks, not least on Britain, have always been a part of that hype.
His supporters are rightly judged fana- tical because they put forward a proposi- tion which is as indefensible as the Ayatol- lah's claim to sentence to death those who blaspheme against Islam. The proposition is that any writer, especially if he is 'very distinguished', has the right to publish anything he pleases. This is, apart from anything else, a profoundly unliterary dog- ma, since it devalues the power of words. The notion that words have limitless poten- cy, that in a sense since they embody ideas they have a divine origin (In the beginning was the Word') lies at the heart of Judaeo- Christian culture, and so was passed on to Islam. Words can kill, they can transmit evil. This was a point made by Erasmus, from whom we derive many of our modern ideas of tolerance. Deploring the unbridled polemics of the theological controversial- ists, he warned: `The long war of words and writings will lead to blows' — as indeed happened: books eventually pro- duced the Wars of Religion. It is precisely because words are so powerful that, like money or physical force, they must be subject to the restraints of law. Restraints must apply not least to those whose talents or position give them privileges in using words. In the cosmopolitan literary world of the Rushdies, verbal attacks are com- mon currency and can be easily repaid in the same coin. To a humble Muslim family in Bradford, an attack on the things they hold sacred, which give meaning and pur- pose to their entire lives, is the equivalent of a physical blow — worse than a physical blow in some ways — to which they cannot themselves reply.
The law ought to provide for this con- tingency and once did. The law of blas- phemy itself was designed to protect public order against those who, by words, appeared to challenge the whole framework of society. Criminal libel punished words calculated to provoke a breach of the peace. Both these laws are now largely discredited. So there is a lacuna in our system of legal remedies against the outrageous use of words. Par- liament has already shown that, in extreme cases, it is prepared to provide against those who use words to hurt racial sensibi- lities. It should now consider, as it is already considering in the case of the right of reply and privacy-invasion, whether the law should specifically deal with other kinds of verbal abuse, including the abuse of religious sentiment. This is tricky tern- tory, since it is guarded by one of the great irrational dogmas of our times, the Divine Right of Writers, itself an aspect of Media Triumphalism. But such forms of self- righteous arrogance do not differ, in princi- ple, from the old-style religious triumphal- ism of the Ayatollah, and should be given equally short shrift.
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