Every few Valentine’s Days author Salman Rushdie gets a reminder of the importance of free speech.
A card arrives reminding him there are groups that want to kill him for a story he wrote about a schizophrenic 25 years ago.
It’s freedom to read week in Canada. A week devoted to reflecting on freedom of expression, said Franklin Carter from Canada’s Book and Periodical Council.
It’s also the 25 anniversary of one of the most well known threats to free speech.
It began in January of 1989 when Rushdie’s new book, The Satanic Verses, was burned on the streets of the United Kingdom.
A month later on Valentine’s Day Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa—a judgment—calling for the execution of Rushdie.
The bounty on Rushdie’s head was millions of US dollars. Rushdie, a British citizen who was born in Mumbai, was rocketed into the international spotlight when radical Muslims forced him into hiding for over 13 years.
He was kept safe by 24-hour security. But others weren’t so lucky.
The book’s Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, was stabbed in the face until he died. Another publisher was shot but survived.
The threat was even felt in Canada.
“Canada customs seized an inbound shipment of The Satanic Verses,” said Carter who remembers the events well. “They had classified it as hate propaganda directed at Muslims.”
Though temporary, the seizures attracted enough international attention to be mentioned on C-Span during an interview with journalist Christopher Hitchens.
Carter said the initial ripples caused by the Ayatollah’s fatwa have grown into waves of fear.
When it comes to publishing something potentially inflammatory to Muslims “there are all kinds of signs that people aren’t willing to take the risk,” he said.
In late 2009 a book by Jytte Klausen about the infamous caricatures of Muhammad published by a Danish newspaper was censored by Yale University Press for fear of backlash.
The cartoons caused an international crisis when they were first published in 2006, closing embassies and resulting in the deaths of at least 200 people.
John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press told the New York Times, “when it came between that [publishing the cartoons] and blood on my hands, there was no question” that they would not publish the cartoons.
“Even South Park won’t show cartoons” of Mohammed for fear of violence,” Carter said referring to the cartoon comedy known for pushing boundaries.
Though the threat of violence is real, Carter said we as a society have “internalized Khomeini’s fatwa.”
“I think that this unwillingness to publish is partly born out of cowardice,” Carter said. “So part of the solution is overcoming the fear.
“Some say the problem is with us, people in the west,” he said. “The secular, liberal, multi-cultural west who have just come to a cultural and intellectual mindset that it’s just not right and proper to offend people.”
And it’s this fear that Carter says is leading us towards a lack of freedom.
“If you enshrine in law and culture, and in practice, that offending people, even inadvertently, is forbidden, you destroy freedom from oppression, you destroy freedom of the press, you destroy freedom of speech,” he said.
Though Carter says the threat of electronic surveillance is having the greatest chill on freedom of expression, the legacy created by the fatwa has changed how our society values the freedom to say and write what we want.
Perhaps the best example of this chill is Rushdie recently telling the BBC that the Satanic Verses would probably not be published today due to the risk of attacks.