In August of last year, just as he was being introduced to give a talk at a small upstate New York conference, an assailant rushed the stage and attacked muslim author Salmon Rushdie with a knife, presumably intending to kill him. His "sin" in the eye of the perpetrator (and in the opinion of the Ayatollah in Iran who placed this fatwa on him) was that a book he wrote 34 years ago cast aspersions on the authenticity of the Qu'ran.
Salmon Rushdie did not die, but has lost the use of one of his eyes, and also one arm. The author survived this tale perpetrated by an idiot, but I wonder where he is in his own mind and emotions on the matter. Does he wonder, as I do, if this incident of stabbing disqualifies him from the fatwa, or must he stay now forever out of the public forum? In dark moments, does he ponder whether it has all been worth it?
I am not alone in my outrage that he should ever have been put in this position. He is an author, for God's sake. Not a politician. Not an idealogue. Not a preacher in a pulpit. He is a person who had an idea. His idea was, as it is for anyone starting to write a novel, "What If?" It is a question that conjurs a Neverland and bids the reader come along for the journey.
In 1955, Nikos Kazantzakis asked the reader that same question when he began "The Last Temptation." "What if," he asked, "the dying Christ on the cross reviewed his life and wondered if it could have played out differently." The Greek Synod in Athens excommunicated him and the Catholic church banned the book. In 1988, when the film version came out, good American Christians burned it.
But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what art is. The reader doesn't have to go on a journey with any particular author. If you don't like his or her Neverland, then don't go. These artistic journeys are fantastical - they are not claiming to be a treatise. Kazantzakis is not saying, "You know that Yeshua Ben Yosef - he wasn't really what he said he was. He wasn't really for celibacy, but in actual fact, entertained ideas about having a wife and children." Kazantzakis was doing what everyone in the arts in any free society does, just laying out a vision, a what if? It is telling that when free societies collapse into authoritarianism, the first thing that disappears is art. (An aside, just look at all the censorship of literature going on in USA right now.) Art requires that space to wander, and that is not the kind of freedom that sits well with top-down control.
There is a well-respected professor of Early Christianity, Bart Ehrman, who, when Dan Brown published his best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code," went after the author. He in fact wrote an entire book putting Dan Brown right and excoriating him in lectures. His point of contention was that Brown flat out misrepresented what was decided at The Council Of Nicaea. Ehrmann did not call out a fatwa on Dan Brown (though he did call for outrage ), so, it makes it different in kind from what was going on that evening Salmon Rushdie was stabbed. (In the spirit of transparency, I should add that I am a paying member of Bart Ehrmann's daily blog. He is an accomplished historian. I appreciate him.) Still, Ehrmann fails, like the others, to really grasp what the artist is about. A novel is in pursuit of an idea, this "what if?" I have been talking about. The reader can either go with it or not, but the reader is in no position to say they won't accept the what if, whether for historical or political or religious reasons.
Salmon Rushdie once, in 1998 went on a journey. It took him a few years to accomplish. Random House had faith in his journey and published "The Satanic Verses." This novel, like all novels, stands or falls with how many decide to go to that Neverland with the author. It is a piece of art, and its creator should never have been placed under a death threat (nor the many translators who were stabbed for their trouble, including one who died.) I hope Rushdie gathers his courage and goes on other journeys. It's probably what keeps him going. As a writer myself, I will vouch for that. As the author of an upcoming book re-imagining what the Jewish visionary Yeshua Ben Yosev was all about, I suppose I must gird up my own loins and expect a torrent of similar voices who don't really understand the quest.
