Salman Rushdie, who is still on the hit list of the Islamic Republic of Iran, popped up again Wednesday to give an address via video to the National First Amendment Summit in Philadelphia. It was a fitting forum for the author of “The Satanic Verses,” since it was governments that uphold the First Amendment right of the freedom of speech that protected Rushdie all the decades since he first became the recipient of a death fatwa. Yet in an astonishing display of ingratitude and incomprehension, the celebrated novelist used his address to denounce Britain and the United States, the two countries to which he owes his very life.
Imagine if Rushdie had been living in any majority-Muslim country on Feb. 14, 1989, when the Ayatollah Khomeini first declared that he must be killed because of the supposed blasphemy against Islam contained in “The Satanic Verses.” There is little doubt that in that case, the bounty on his head would long ago have been collected, and he would now be a dim memory, forgotten aside from occasional literary retrospectives about prominent novelists of the late twentieth century.
Rushdie, however, was not living in Iran, but in Britain, where he immediately received protection from the government. He lived in hiding, at taxpayer expense, for many years. Rushdie was extended this protection because the British government considered it of cardinal importance to demonstrate that the United Kingdom would uphold the freedom of expression and defend those who practiced it.
The protection Rushdie received was so effective that he began to relax. The New York Times reported in Aug. 2022, when he was severely wounded as he was preparing to speak at a Chautauqua event, that “in recent years, Mr. Rushdie has enjoyed a more public life in New York City.” Ayad Akhtar of PEN America “said he never saw Mr. Rushdie bring along any kind of security detail, whether at a theater, out to dinner or at a public event.”
Clearly, Rushdie was underestimating the threat that he was facing, but that was due in large part to the fact that he had grown complacent after so many years of top-quality protection in both Britain and the United States. But on Wednesday, after pandering to the leftist crowd by denouncing Trump as an authoritarian and completely ignoring the Biden regime’s repeated demonstration of disdain for the freedom of expression, Rushdie savaged both of the countries that had kept him alive long enough to address the National First Amendment Summit.
Rushdie’s revolting display of tone-deafness began with his criticism of Trump but quickly broadened to include America itself. He denounced Trump’s central slogan as a “golden age myth,” and sneered: “‘Make America great again.’ That’s always made me want to ask: ‘When exactly was that?’ What is the date to which we are looking backwards? Was it, for example, when there was slavery? Was it before women had the right to vote? Was it before the civil rights movement? Exactly which is the American greatness to which we must return?”
Related: Salman Rushdie Breaks His Silence Amid Continued Media Denial of Why He Was Attacked
Well, Salman, your question could admit of an extensive answer that encompasses all of the negative points you listed. The abolitionist movement, for example, grew and ultimately triumphed in Britain and the United States, and then the world followed. There were no significant abolitionist movements elsewhere. Likewise, regarding civil rights, the United States leads the world in sweeping away discriminatory roadblocks that impeded the well-being of minorities. You yourself live in the U.S. today, and not anywhere else on this glorious planet, for good reason.
Rushdie wasn’t through; he went on to excoriate Britain, which went to so much trouble to protect him for so many years, as well: “And the thing about the golden age is that it never existed, and the myth of the golden age is always used to justify actions in the present. In England, the Brexit catastrophe was the result of another golden age myth, which is: ‘England used to be this glorious country and it could be that glorious country again, if only we could get rid of all these foreigners. Of course they neglected to mention to the electorate that the reason England was so prosperous was that it had spent 200 years plundering the rest of the world.”
Well, by all means, Rushdie, you should move out of these terrible plundering nations and settle in a country that won’t burden you with its tiresome concern for self-defense and individual rights. How about, say, the Islamic Republic of Iran?
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