speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

The Struggle for Respect
and British Muslims who followed their imams "with sheeplike
docility and wolf-like aggression." And The Star fulminated:
Isn't the world getting sick of the ranting that pours from the
disgusting foam-flecked lips of the Ayatollah Khomeini? Clearly
the Muslim cleric is stark raving mad. . . . Surely the tragedy is
that millions of his misguided and equally potty followers believe
every word of hatred he hisses through those yellow stained
teeth. 41
Athough such language might be expected from the media, many
intellectuals were equally intemperate. Joseph Brodsky expressed
surprise that nobody had put a price on Khomeini's head, adding
"mind you, it shouldn't be too big." Peter Jenkins maintained that
"the offence done to our principles" by the burning of The Satanic
Verses in Bradford was "at least as great as any offence caused to
those who burned the book." He denounced the "obscurantist
Muslim fundamentalism" and "medieval intolerance" of the "geriatric
prophet in Qom." Anthony Burgess called the fatwa a jihad. "It
is a declaration of war on citizens of a free country .... It has to be
countered by an equally forthright, if less murderous, declaration of
defiance." Christopher Hitchins applied Shelley's anathema of King
George to Khomeini: "an old, mad, blind, despised and dying
king," adding: "Is it not time, as a minimal gesture of solidarity, for
all of us to don the Yellow Star . . . ?" Fay Weldon wallowed in
religious chauvinism: "The Koran is food for no-thought. . . . You
can build a decent society around the Bible . . . but the Koran? No."
Conor Cruise O'Brien unconsciously inverted Shabbir Akhtar's call
to arms: "A Westerner who claims to admire Muslim society, while
still adhering to Western values, is either a hypocrite or an ignoramus
or a bit of both." He reviled the Muslim family as "an abominable
institution" and Muslim society as "repulsive" and "sick."
Norman Mailer, always spoiling for a fight, sounded like a New
Statesman competitor imitating Hemingway:
16
[N]ow the Ayatollah Khomeini has offered us an opportunity to
regain our frail religion which happens to be faith in the power of
words and our willingness to suffer for them. He awakens us to the
great rage we feel when our liberty to say what we wish, wise or
foolish, kind or cruel, well-advised or ill-advised, is endangered.
We discover that, yes, maybe we are willing to suffer for our idea.
Maybe we are even willing, ultimately, to die for the idea that