September 1989

A Journal of Atheist News and Thought

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American Atheist

September 1989

A Journal of Atheist News and Thought

American Atheist
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Cover design by C. Sornat.

Volume 31, No.9

Austin, Texas

Editor's Desk
R. Murray-O'Hair

Director's Briefcase
Jon G. Murray

"The Right to Disrespect" bad ideas is

essential to human freedom.

Moslem fundamentalists. - 55
The Theopolitics of the Rushdie
Case - Madalyn O'Hair reviews the
statistics and politics behind the controversy that drew the attention of the
world. - 57

60

Talking Back
Ask A.A.

10

American Atheists is asked for its

opinions on drugs, church taxation,
and war.

When Christians ask "Where did you

come from?" they assume that they're
presenting a puzzle in which the missing piece is god. Atheists think otherwise.

12
The Rushdie Controversy
Poetry
Atheists from around the world
examine the news and meaning of
The Satanic Verses controversy.
Red Herring Rushdie - Madalyn
O'Hair presents a chronology of the
riots, murders, bombings, and threats
that resulted from one novel. - 12
Lessons from The Satanic Verses
- Conrad Goeringer gives a bookseller's view of the furor over Rushdie's
book. What he finds most appalling is
not the Moslems' reaction to the
work, but big business' reaction to
their opinions. - 32
Fundamentalist Moslem Violence in
Britain - England's Barbara Smoker
finds that the Rushdie controversy is
just part of a larger religious problem
in her country: the isolation of a subculture. - 37
Blasphemy Is Enlightenment Austria's Atheist group explains why
the Moslem riots set a bad example
for the Roman Catholic church. - 47
Frankfurt"Book Fair: The Most Important Author Was Missing - A
West German Atheist press found
that it was the only advocate of absolute freedom of speech at the world's
largest book fair. - 53
The Rushdie Case and the Cowardice of the West - Peter Priskel
criticizes the West's appeasement of
September 1989

62

63

American Atheist Radio Series

Madalyn O'Hair
Religionists around the world are anxious to defend the honor of "Mohammed." But who was he?

66

Under the Covers

Written by an Atheist, The Satanic
Verses has been branded as heresy.
But how heretical is it?

69

Me Too
A Texan writes about "Animal Rights
- A Choice for Humans."

Letters to the Editor

70

Classified Advertisements

72
Page 1

American Atheist

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Poetry
Angeline Bennett
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September 1989

American Atheist

Editor's Desk

Why this issue

s this issue was going to press, a
man slightly past retirement age
.,
visited our offices. His delight at
finally meeting other Atheists was evident, and he joyfully talked to members
of our staff in our bookstore. He signed
the register with a flourish. He was finally here, in the home of American Atheism. When the woman who for so long
was simply known as "The Atheist"
paused to talk to him for a few minutes,
his enthusiasm doubled, for he had finally met that one person he knew from
newspapers and magazines shared his
opinions on religion.
Throughout his stay, his eyes rested
hungrily on our books, pamphlets, and
magazines. He was from a little northern
town, in which the librarian would faint
if she ever saw an Atheist magazine. If
his town had a bookstore, it would have
been run out of business if it had ever
dared stock a freethought book. And
could you imagine what the guys down
in the Elk Lodge would have said if the
very idea had been brought up? But
here, spread before him, was a banquet
of Atheism. Original Haldeman-Julius
booklets. Reprints of Robert G. Ingersoll,
the Great Agnostic. Bible-bashing books
the likes of which he had never even
imagined but which he had always
hoped to see. Reprints of books by a
Southern Atheist who had lived a hundred years before his time. Pamphlets
on topics of the day and on topics that
never seem to go away. Issues of the
American Atheist that stretched ten or
fifteen years back, with articles on
creationism, and Bible origins, and Supreme Court decisions, and religious
holidays, and on all the glorious deeds of
Atheist activists around the nation.
But he didn't take a single thing home.
Not one little paperback. Not one .
two-buck booklet.
Not even the free magazine and pamphlets we press on every visitor.
Nothing, but his memories.
~

R. Murray-O'Hair
Austin, Texas

You see, he was married. And his wife

had taken to religion a few years ago. He
hadn't noticed at first, really, but now
that he was retired and at home all day
it had dawned upon him how deep and
fervent was her commitment to theism.
I do not remember if it was a televangelist, fundamentalist preacher, or plain,
old-fashioned minister to whom she was
devoted. But he knew that if he ever
took a little evidence of his disbelief
home, there would be hell to pay. No, he
had never discussed the matter with
her, had never told her his own honest
ideas on religion. But he knew hers, and
that was enough to kill any intention of
taking a single word of Atheism home
into his own house, the one that he had
worked for his entire life. He could not
trust the woman with whom he had lived
a lifetime to tolerate his ideas on the subject of religion.
Thinking about this man on my way
home in the black Texas night, rushing
through the highways that make every
American city seem the same, I realized
the true importance of the Rushdie case.
I had worked on this issue for months,
negotiated for and edited articles from
the United States, Great Britain, Austria, and West Germany, researched illustrations, contracted for photographs,
double-checked facts and statistics. I
could recite the number of people killed
over Rushdie's book, list the cities in
which the hundreds had been wounded,
enumerate the countries which had
banned it. I had read hundreds of newspaper articles which dealt with the importance of the controversy for the issues of freedom of speech and the
press. Our own authors dwelt on the
geo- and theopolitical importance of the
conflicts which arose from Rushdie's
novel.
But what does freedom of speech,
and the First Amendment, and the need
of religion to define its rights within
society, and last -ditch efforts of the
churches to save their place in the world
mean to our visitor? Whether two hundred poets read The Satanic Verses
September 1989

aloud in unison or not in some big city,

he will still be without the right to freedom of thought in his own home.
The fact is, the Rushdie case occurs
millions of times every day in these
United States. Every time someone
goes home and has to keep his mouth
shut tight to avoid upsetting a spouse,
or parent, or sibling, or child - the
Rushdie case occurs. Every office coffee
break at which someone bites his lip
rather than anger his religious coworkers - the Rushdie case occurs. Every
time an Atheist gets married in a church
rather than simply saying to his beloved
that he knows a wedding mass is nonsense - the Rushdie case occurs.
Every time a city council convenes, and
a citizen bows his head rather than announcing that he knows prayers are
nonsense - the Rushdie case occurs.
Every time a parent who rejects religion
enrolls his child in a youth group that
requires obedience to god - the Rushdie
case occurs. Each time a nonbeliever
swears to a god rather than admitting in
a court of law that he is divorced from
religion - the Rushdie case occurs. For
we all in the Western world live in fear of
what religionists might do.
Yes, Americans made fun of rioting
Moslems in London and Tehran, in all
their funny costumes, burning effigies of
Rushdie. But every day, Atheists shut
up and let their freedoms be burned as
effectively as if fire were used by people
in business suits, judges' robes, housecoats, and jogging pants. We shouldn't
call it the Rushdie case; we should call
it the Rushdie syndrome, for just as dozens of publishers and distributors selfcensored rather than face an argument,
so do we. We are afraid to exercise our
rights, and this inducement of fear is a
far better control mechanism than actually outlawing dissent. Atheists and
other dissidents have no thought-patrol
to fear; instead we fear the reactions of
our spouses, children, bosses, and best
friends. And as long as any man is afraid
to bring a book to his own home, the
Rushdie issue will be fresh. ~
Page 3

Director's Briefcase.

The right to disrespect

he subject matter which occupies
ucation at all, the church could coerce
the majority of the pages of this physically, by intimidation from the pulissue of the American Atheist is pit or from the government which it had
the reaction, by Moslems around the captured. Prior to the founding of our
world, to Salman Rushdie's book The own nation, every nation was a theocSatanic Verses. That story has been . racy. America's founders pioneered the
covered with professional detail from a concept of separation of state and
variety of points of view,so I need not go church. Blasphemy laws stopped all
into any of the particulars about the criticism of religion before it began, and
author, the book, or the Moslem or gen- we still have the vestigial remnants of
eral public reaction.
those laws today.' The Inquisition, the
What I do want to do is discuss ques- Crusades, and religious wars were
tions concerning the place of religion in physical instruments used to keep peosociety that have been brought to the ple within a religion either by uniting
forefront by the events of the Rushdie them against a common "spiritual" eneaffair.There are three points which have my or directly torturing them. When
been raised by the confrontation over learning first began, the church capThe Satanic Verses. The first of them is tured it so that it could teach, logically,
that religion, in general, is attempting to the reasons for religion.The only degrees
retain respect for its ideas and the insti- were doctorates of philosophy, and philtutions it has built thereon. The second
osophy was the discipline which first
point is the question of whether or not theorized and then apologized for reliit is in the best interests of religion, in at- gion. There were no courses in science,
tempting to retain respect, to opt for in real medicine, in real law - they were
cultural isolationism for its most vehe- all interpretations of religious ideas. The
ment adherents. The third considera- Bible was the textbook, as the biblical intion is the future of the sociopolitical errancy forces wish it to be once again.
concept of "freedom of speech," in vari- Carefully drawn arguments to reinforce
ant forms, as the cultural norms of religious ideas were the crux of any
"East" and "West" clash.
curriculum.
Religionhas not had much difficulty in
People were murdered, tortured,
years past coercing respect and confor- jailed, but only to keep them within the
intellectual
boundaries
of Judeomity to its ideas because it dominated
each successive culture completely. Re- Christianity. This is also why in the Unitligion created a climate of systemic dis- ed States the various religions went into
crimination against those who would the business of "colleges" - because
not conform to its theory or social prac- they each wanted to mold the mind-set
tice. Its ideas and its influence were of their people well into adulthood. The
paramount since it jealously guarded all adults turn the children over to the old
ability to educate and would, in fact, faith. This realization also caused relionly educate into its ideas. Education gion to concentrate on the indoctrinahas, in historically recent times, arisen tion of the female more than the male.
everywhere in spite of religion, so that Women were the child bearers and child
religious leaders no longer have a mo- rearers who would bring up the next
nopoly on the system and can no longer generation of the faithful.
But with the bursting forth of enordirect complete endorsement of ideas
religious. Religion needs now to rely for mous populations, the church could not
its implementation on persons from keep up. When reading was introduced
prior generations indoctrinating their
children into that into which they themselves were indoctrinated.
ISee "Forbidden Words," American Atheist,
In earlier times when there was no ed- March 1989.

One set of ideas religion - cannot

be isolated into a "safe
zone" where it can
never be challenged.

A graduate of the University of Texas

at Austin and a second generation
Atheist, Mr. Murray is a proponent of
"aggressive Atheism." He is an
anchorman on the" American Atheist
Forum" and the president of American
Atheists.

Jon G. Murray
Page 4

September 1989

American Atheist

to the world in general, instead of being

kept in theological bounds only, that
was the beginning of the end of religion.
To maintain the exalted status of their
religion, the Christian theologians kept
its works in Latin and Greek for centuries. Only in the last twenty-five years
has the Roman Catholic church given
up Latin." The first native tongue translations of the Bible spelled doom for
Christianity.
But education has arrived, willy-nilly,
without a real basic program - except
that in the United States it was supposed
to be secular. In England the solution
was only to have excellent education for
the ruling class, in such institutions as
Rugby and Oxford. In the United States
that was the so-called "Ivy League"
colleges and universities of Harvard,
Princeton, and Yale. The upper classes
would not rock the boat; they needed
religion to control the lower classes. It
was Germany which broke through and
decided to try to educate whoever had
any potential, from whatsoever class,
opening its universities to all.
Religion tried to retain at least Sunday
as its day, through blue laws, with required church attendance for followers
and a shutdown of activities for all other
persons. It has been a long drawn out
fight, with reason winning only small
gains along the way. However, in several
hundred years gains must slowly pile up
and they have. A loss of respect for Sunday, the "Sabbath" day, was heralded by
the repeal of most of our nation's blue

laws. A loss of respect for church attendance has the count of those in the pews
each Sunday on a continuing decline. A
loss of respect for the clergy has been
hastened by the scandals surrounding
Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, and all the rest. A loss of respect
for church schools has many Roman
Catholic families now sending their children to public schools when the parents
had been products of parochial schools.
But each step of the way the churches
- religion - have hung on to the point
of house-to-house street fighting to retain their members. A graphic extrapolation of that die-hard position can be
seen in Northern Ireland today.

20n November 14, 1962, 2,162 fathers of

Religion loses its force

It has only been since World War II

Vatican Council IIvoted in favor of adoption

of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,
with only forty-six negative votes. It was
officiallypromulgated on December 4, 1963.
Section 36, paragraphs 1 through 4 spoke to
deviation from Latin as the official language
of the Roman rite into the vernacular, leaving the amount of that translation to the
discretion of bishops. (The Documents of
Vatican II, Walter M. Abbott, S.J., gen. ed.
[New York: Herder and Herder/Association
Press, 1966], pp. 150-51.)

that the great grip of religion has begun

to unclench its hold on society. As recently as the childhood and young adult
years of my parents, religion was all that
people knew. The church was the largest edifice in every town, followed by the
town hall, and then perhaps the school.
The clergy of any community were revered as leaders and were given either
official or ceremonial places on every
decision-making body. My grandmother

Austin, Texas

September 1989

was proud, in her generation, to have

graduated from the sixth grade. A woman, under church directive, dared not
achieve more in those days before taking her proper place under the control
of a husband. Church attendance was
almost mandatory, particularly in small
towns. If you weren't seen at church on
a given Sunday, you would have to answer all week long, as to "where were
you?" A morning at church, in those
special "go to meeting" clothes, followed
by that special Sunday dinner, was a real
tradition in American homes. Family devotional evening get-togethers to have
the patriarch read Bible stories were
common. Confirmations, baptisms, and
christenings were major social events,
as were funerals. None of these rituals
demand the respect they once did. If
you don't show up at church one Sunday,
so what?
Then slowly each generation began to
know more: history, the social sciences,
biology, physics, natural sciences, medicine. It was only in the last forty years
that any of these subjects have been
taught with any regularity or uniformity.
I had more advanced subjects and better information presented to me in my
high school classes than my mother had
Page 5

It is a basically absurd doctrine that ideas should be respected

just because they are sincerely held.
Respected ideas should be those which are logical
and can stand up against intellectual scrutiny.
available to her in her undergraduate
college days. That is as it should be. Religion had, though, hung on to philosophy and to mathematics because mathematics did not matter in the real world
except for certain disciplines (architecture, which religion had captured, engineering, and some of the specific applied sciences).

An old dog
remembers old tricks
As people learned more, it was inevitable that they would come to repudiate
religious tenets. As this problem grew,
the church finally - hanging on to the
last thing it dared to give up - demanded
respect for its ideas. Having lost respect
for many of its institutions, religion had
to attempt to fall back on time-tested
kernel dogmas. They disguised the
ideas when they could: "loving Jesus is
loving mankind," for example. But that
is not true; originally loving Jesus was
hating mankind, finding life as unfulfilling, longing for death and reunion with
god. In this way the ideas themselves demanded respect on the surface, but
when people looked behind the facade
after traveling the yellow brick road and
finding that it was simply a man bellowing behind the curtain, they refused to
render respect.
It is a basically absurd doctrine that
ideas should be respected just because
they are sincerely held. Respected ideas
should be those which are logical and
can stand up against intellectual scrutiny. The idea of slavery was most sincerely held by its proponents. So sincerely, in fact, that they were willing to
die to uphold it as part of the basis of
their agrarian culture. Yet the idea of
slavery was eventually, intellectually as
well as militarily, defeated. It could no
longer be logically justified. The idea
that women could not vote or hold property could not be logically justified beyond a certain point in history. Mindsets on these and other issues changed,
despite the sincerity and tenacity of
their proponents, and so too have ideas
Page 6

with regard to religion.

The fact that I, as an Atheist, have no
respect for the institutions of religion or
its core dogmas today, simply means
that I am just ahead of my time. In the
future, more and more persons will
come around to the same position. Had
Ibeen able to sit in a tavern, my clay pipe
lit, to converse over a flask of ale with
Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Madison
and the rest and had suggested that voting rights for women be included in the
new Constitution, they would have
laughed at me. So, today, when I refuse
to shake the hand of a clergyman at a
public forum, thus denying him my respect, people scoff at me. I discount that
scorn because I know that my disrespect
for ideas religious will one day become
their lack of respect as well.

Should disrespect be legal?

The publication of Salman Rushdie's
book rekindled the debate over retention of respect for religion. Can an author be allowed to write disrespectfully
about the tenets of a particular religion
or religion in general? The answer to
that question has to be "yes," but then
that puts the church into a compromised
position. If ecclesiastical authorities
allow unbridled disrespect for religion,
they hasten the breakup of the church's
infrastructure, centuries in the making.
On the other hand if they sanction the
suppression of the expression of that
disrespect, then they brand the church
as authoritarian, regressive, and undemocratic. The church cannot afford
that image in a world gone ape over
"democratization. "
Organized religionis trapped by its own
image. It wants to be known now, in the
words of George Bush, as a "kinder,
gentler" institution. The rapidly emptying pews cannot be filled by making the
church a more harsh, rule-bound environment true to its history. The faithful
willnot go along with that. Religion can
now only retain respect by tolerating
disrespect. That is indeed an awkward
position into which to place itself.
September 1989

Isolation as a cultivation
technique for religion
One possible solution to this dilemma
is for the church to foster cultural isolationism among its expanding immigrant
constituency. Let me digress for a moment to explain what I mean. In England,
from whence most of our colonial ancestors came, there is a multicultural
approach to the population. This has
been true of England for centuries and
for some of the major hub cities of
Europe as well. Each ethnic group has
its own quarter of a city; has its own language papers; has its own schools and
churches in its own native tongues, to
wrap people in a cocoon of ignorance
with regard to those who live around
them. They might learn by assimilation
into the general culture, and some do,
but many remain culturally isolated.
In the United States the immigrants,
at first, did the same but in the second
and third generation they assimilated
into the U.S. culture. When my parents
were small, their parents used to drive
to the Greek, German, or Italian quarters to buy their food. I can even remember going into the Italian section of Baltimore, as a boy, to get great submarine
sandwiches at a particular little delicatessen. There are still Chinese sections
in San Francisco. There are high-class,
but nonetheless Jewish, sections in New
York and Miami. The Indians are kept
on reservations deliberately to keep
them ignorant and controllable.
My point is that the purveyors of any
religion can foster great adherence to its
doctrines, and therewith respect, within
tight-knit communities of persons whose
ethnicity binds them more closely to
one church than another, with more
ease than they can even attempt to do
among the general population. The
Roman Catholic church has been particularly adept at this practice. Through
the isolation of Hispanic and Vietnamese immigrants into communities that
are physically, culturally, and linguistically separated from the mainstream
American culture, the church can bind
American Atheist

The name of the game with religion is to "keep them ignorant."

Part of that game is to discourage
the individual from broadening his outlook on life
through interaction with other cultures.
these persons into their Roman Catholicism to insure a future of less than empty pews and collection plates. The assimilation of the largely Roman Catholic
groups in key areas of the country into
mainstream America might mean their
loss to Protestantism or, worse yet, to
the church altogether.
This phenomenon is not limited by
any means to the Roman Catholics. The
"home teaching" of fundamentalist religions shows where the battle is, as does
ACE3 teaching in small churches and in
religious schools. The "fundies" cannot
allow their children to be educated in a
public school environment because the
combination of secular subjects and
peer pressure could wean those youngsters from the narrow faith of their
home life.The Amish are able to remain
as Amish only by isolating themselves.
The modern, sophisticated, outside
world has lured more than one young
Amish person from the fold. The fight of
the Roman Catholic church for money
for its schools is a manifestation of this
current battle plan. A young Roman
Catholic who is educated in a church
school is more likely to remain Roman
Catholic longer than one who has a secular education. The fight to make Texas
and California bilingual(Spanish/English)
is to lock the new immigrants into their
Roman Catholic culture, in part through
their language. My ancestors came to
the United States from Germany and
Ireland. They had to adapt to English
from German and Gaelic. The Hispanic
immigrants must do the same. The
name of the game with religion is to
"keep them ignorant." Part of that game
is to discourage the individual from
broadening his outlook on life through
interaction with other cultures. It is a
form of cultural racism which is being
promoted by religion in its own selfish
best interest.'

a particular religion, have self-identity

In the past people were murdered,
tortured, jailed, but only to keep them only through that religion. A man may
within the intellectual boundaries of be a carpenter, but ifhe has been reared
in a Baptist environment he is a Baptist
Judeo-Christianity. Modern methods
are more subtle but nonetheless effec- carpenter rather than a carpenter Baptive. An emphasis on the community as tist. The faith system comes first as his
family, a large but nevertheless close cultural identifier. He is part of a larger
grouping of the culturally narrowly iden- group, the body of the faithful, that is
tified, peer pressure, economic stress,
larger than life for him. His own life, acand closed educational systems have complishments, skills, are secondary to
replaced physical coercion.
the church and its doctrine. His religion
The answer to the second question is gives him more identity, or ego if you
yes, it is in the best interest of religion to like, than his family,education, skill,job,
isolate the cultures of those who contin- or even any relationship with a female.
ue to adhere to the core dogmas the If someone scoffs at that religion, the
most vigorously. This separatism will persons involved take that for personal
lengthen the lifeexpectancy of each iso- scoffing at them. They cannot separate
lated group as regards remaining within themselves from the ideas which they
have been taught to hold. They are the
the church.
To consider the point of the retention
personified ideas. To save their belief
of freedom of speech as a cultural norm, system, which is their personality, their
being, they must fight against the chalone must consider the psychological
makeup of the religious person. Reli- lenger in whatever way they need to
gionists are, after all, in the majority and fight: stop those ideas from being known
if they turn from freedom of speech as so that others cannot be convinced of
a viable social construct, they will drag them. The ideas are threatening; the
the rest of us with them, like it or not.
holder of the challenged beliefs can
come unglued ifhe has no security blanBaptist carpenters
ket to hold onto. I have witnessed this
and carpenter Baptists
phenomenon over and over again. The
Religious persons, carefully and over thing that upsets religionists most about
a long period of time indoctrinated into an Atheist is that the Atheist is in control

3Accelerated Christian Education. See "The

Ace in Its Hole," American Atheist, August
1983.
Austin, Texas

September 1989

Page 7

FREEOOM
OF SPEECH

of his own lifeand is content in that position. The religionists find i~strange that
the absence of a faith system does 110t
render the Atheist helpless to conduct
his daily life, as they suppose would be
the case if they allowed their faith to
lapse. The religionists look at the Atheist and the Atheist seems normal and
well adjusted without any reference to
religion. The individual religionist is
basically afraid to try to live without his
faith, to take the Atheist challenge, to
live the Atheist experiment, if you will.
He is afraid that if he drops religion, he
will find out that it is irrelevant to life.
That risk seems to be too much for
most.
So, what can the religionist do? Remove the challenge, the temptation, the
example of lifein the intellectual fast lane
without religion. How to do that: killthe
source, kill him. That has been the classic approach. Second line of attack: kill
the ideas which have emanated from
him, burn the books, destroy the films.
Third line of attack: forbid the distribution of the ideas: prohibit the sale of the
book. Fourth line of attack: demand that
the authorities in control of the culture
of the nation prohibit the utterance of
such ideas: censor, pass laws of blasphemy, extend existing laws of blasphemy.
Fifth line of attack: if the governing
forces will not respond, intimidate the
distributors: blow up the bookstores,
frighten the owners, keep customers
away. Sixth line of attack: draw other
(unthinking) people with other such beliefsystems into the fight: boycott in the
principle "first us, then you." For example, in this particular battle, the Rushdie
case, the Jews say that all religions
should be respected; the Roman Catholics say that each religion is entitled to
respect.

Why Rushdie upset

all the religious communities
So let's review the three points of controversy that the publication of The
Satanic Verses has stirred up. The first
of those is that religion, in general, is atPage 8

tempting to retain respect for its ideas

and the institutions it has built thereon.
That respect had been a given, a rocksolid part of the culture. It has now
slipped from that pedestal, chiefly because the upcoming generations don't
respect anything any more, even themselves. The second point is the question
of whether or not it is in the best interests of religion, in attempting to retain
respect, to opt for cultural isolationism
for its most vehement adherents. The
answer to that question is yes. The wagons must be circled, from the point of
view of organized religion, and one very
September 1989

effective way to do that is to isolate the

groups of persons who still retain the
greatest dose of church dogma: the
poor, the Hispanic, the immigrants, the
women, the Blacks. The third consideration is the future of the sociopolitical
concept of "freedom of speech," in variant form. I see that future as being a
limited one. Freedom of speech must be
absolute to survive. Limited free speech
is not free speech. In a free speech environment, the speaker is certain to offend someone with his or her opinion in
whatever form it is presented. If I speak
my mind freely as an Atheist, I cannot,
American Atheist

If we are to have a society in which no idea can be offensive

to any other idea, then we can only have
one idea on which everyone agrees, and
you can bet your bronzed baby booties that that one idea will be a god idea.
axiomatically, do so without offending
theists. If we are to have a society in
which no idea can be offensive to any
other idea, then we can only have one
idea on which everyone agrees, and you
can bet your bronzed baby booties that
that one idea will be a god idea.
Rushdie's book is simply a precipitant, forcing the settling out of the
hatred which has been in the liquid solution of human culture. There are demands that the absurd (religion) be respected. It has nothing left of its dogma
which can be supported through logic,
only the false, un-thought-about respect
which it has built for centuries.

Not all ideas are equal

The Atheists have fallen for this now.
I was just in the Soviet Union and Europe in September of 1989.While in Belgium, I visited the humanist, ethical culture bunch in that country. They are a
prime example. In order to acquire a
share of state funding for religion in that
country the Atheists, humanists, agnostics, etc., are perfectly content to define
themselves as just another religion. "We
are all alike - religious persons have a
right to their ideas - divide the money
equally," is what I heard. "My idea is as
good as your idea" - the false equality
of man. Persons are not equal; there
have always been and always will be
"levels" of persons, some more intelligent some less intelligent, some stronger
some weaker. Every idea is not as good
as every other idea. The opinion of a
doctor with regard to disease he is treating is not the equal of the opinion of a
construction worker who has never had
or seen someone who has had the disease in question. The persons promoting this sudden "equality of ideas" have
mistaken "political equality" (one man,
one vote) for "intellectual equality."
Gorbachev has fallen for it: "We must
respect religious people." No, we don't
have to respect religious people, because their ideas are logically flawed.
Many American Atheist members have
fallen for it: "My wife is a fine woman,
Austin, Texas

she's Roman Catholic." (How an Atheist

and a religionist can live together is beyond me.) Had these ideas been current
in 1860,there would have been no Civil
War. "My idea that slavery is good is as
good as your idea that slavery is bad."
Both must live side by side, the one idea
respecting the other idea!
None of this can come to pass. Either
religion or dissent to religion has to win
out. Irrational ideas must give way to
rational ideas. The only way that the irrational ideas can remain on top is
through censorship, brainwashing, intimidation, indoctrination.

The basic question behind

the Rushdie controversy
The basic question presented in this
issue is: Is it going to continue to be possible for persons to express themselves
through the written or spoken word,
art, film, posture in a way that might be
offensive to the faith system of another?
The answer to that question has to be a

big YES. Why allow censorship in the

name of religion that you would not tolerate in the name of government, business, nationalism, sexuality, education,
or race? Religion wants to be set aside
as a special category of ideas that
cannot be challenged or investigated.
Religion cannot be allowed to have that
distinction. If I can be critical of government officials, of a book I might read, of
a film I may see, of a piece of artwork
that I have viewed, of a speech I have
heard, then why should I be told that I
cannot be critical of religious ideas? One
set of ideas cannot be isolated into a safe
zone where it cannot be probed. Religion is attempting to make an island for
itself where it cannot be challenged. We
must not allow that to occur. Allareas of
humanity are open to scrutiny. Legislation that would say that a person's religion cannot be held up to ridicule would
place religious ideas above all others in
a position in which they simply don't belong.~

Jon G. Murray's

Essays on American Atheism

This two-volume set contains all of Jon Murray's articles which
appeared in the American Atheist between March 1976 and May 1986.
In it are his surprising exposes of movie ratings. religious child abuse.
the packing of the federal judiciary. Accelerated Christian Educationto name just a few topics under fire. Included are his impressions of
religion and Atheism abroad - in Europe. in the Soviet Union, and in
China. From his "Reply to a Small Town Atheist" to his "The Need for
New Directions." Murray even examines Atheism and Atheists.
Volume 1: Stock #5349. $10.00. Paperback. 350 pages. 1986. Volume 2:
Stock #5350. $10.00. Paperback. 284 pages. 1986. The price for the set (Stock
#5351) is $19.00. Autographed sets (Stock #5353) are available for $23.00.
. Postage and handling is $1.50 for orders under $20.00; $3.00 for orders over
$20. Texas residents please add 7% percent sales tax. VISA and MasterCard
orders accepted by telephone or FAX; just call (512) 467-9525.

American Atheist Press

P. O. Box 140195

Austin, TX 78714-0195

September 1989

Page 9

Ask A.A.

Dope and religion

::"A~~,,;;bliO'
"no e . us,"

In "Letters to the Editor," readers give

their opinions, ideas, and information.
But in "Ask A.A.," American Atheists
answers questions regarding its
policies, positions, and customs, as
well as queries of factual and historical
situations. Please address your
questions to "Ask A.A.," P. O. Box
140195, Austin, TX 78714-0195.

What is the religious connection with

the American dope problem? I feel cer
tain there has to be one based on all the
obvious evidence, and yet no one has in
any way ever referred to such an idea.
Nearly all the dope, cocaine, and marijuana come from Colombia and Mexico
and other South American countries.
The entire population is baptized Roman
Catholic and rigorously indoctrinated in
the Roman Catholic value system. The
United States, still essentially a Protestant country, is actually being flooded
with dope from Roman Catholic countries, but no one sees any connection
between the two facts.
The pope, for example, is in South
America as I write. He has never said to
his people in Mexico, Central America,
or South America, "My people, why are
you flooding Protestant America with
dope?"
Knowing the Roman Catholic church
as I do, I feel certain much of the money
from dope must be going into the coffers
of the church, and the concept of flooding America with dope may well be part
of the plan to cause America to fall under the weight of such a burden.
In addition to that, I see many of the
"halfway houses" and treatment centers
for substance abuse are "spiritual" and
tax-free in nature and I suspect these
are Roman Catholic organizations which
are playing "catch" when money is
thrown at America's drug problem.
Certainly in the Roman Catholic
countries which supply America with
dope almost entirely, if the pope spoke
out against such action to condemn it
and the Roman Catholics who are dealing in such activities, it would, perhaps,
go a long way toward helping the problem: America does supply the Vatican
with 50 percent of its funds.
Herbert G. Ault, Jr.
Florida
Religion seeks an escape from reality.
When, from childhood forward we are

Page 10

September 1989

educated to accept fantasy as fact, when

we are taught unreal solutions (prayer)
to the problems of life, when illusion is
constantly substituted for substance,
this is allprecursory to the use of drugs.
We are taught that our bodies are evil;
that only our souls are "pure." We are induced to look forward to death and "a
hereafter" as preferable to Ii/e. It is a
beautiiui lead-in into drug use.
We agree with you that the pope is an
alleged "moral" leader. For many years
we have stated that if the pope would
just decree that excommunication would
be automatic for anyone who involved
themselves in the manufacture of nuclear
weapons there might have been a possibility of peace. The church received
too much money from the munitions
makers for the pope to ever cut off dehumanizing conditions anywhere in this
world, for he is not really related to or a
part of it. He lives in a fantasy land of excessive wealth, power, and illusion. He
does not give a damn about the human
condition. American Atheists through
the years have often suggested that he
be indicted for crimes against humanity
- especially, for instance, on his call to
women everywhere, but especially in
the impoverished countries of Central
and South America, and Africa, to continue to bear children, willy-nilly,whether
or not those children had sustenance to
continue life.
American Atheists is convinced that
the growth and distribution of drugs is to
neutralize elements in our society which
might rock the boat of the status quo.
The traffic in drugs would be impossible
without the involvement of government
officials at all levels in every country. We
suspect governors, mayors, congressmen, police supervisors, judges, et al., of
being in on "the take." Easy money corrupts, and corruption and greed is the
substance of American culture. All the
more basis to insist there be a turning toward analysis of the wheres and whyfors with deliberate attempts at solution
based on reason and logic.
Thank you for your disquieting letter.
American Atheist

What would an Atheist leader want as

an epitaph? Charles C. Moore (18371906), publisher of the Atheist-prohibitionist newspaper The Blue Grass Blade,
requested that the phrase "Write me as
one who loved his fellow man" be written
on his headstone.

As we gather strength and power we

will try to do what we can in the situation.

Churches and taxes

I heard a preacher say he supports
the separation of church and state, because this allows churches tax-free status. Is it hypocritical for Atheists to say
"tax the churches!" and work for state/
church separation too?
I remember seeing full-page anti-war
posters in American Atheist magazine,
but not lately. Since we know there is no
god around who can snap his/her/its fingers and create a new world after we
blow it to pieces, should Atheists regularly work for peace? Why did you discontinue the posters?
I was proud to see American Atheist
advertisements that Hustler magazine
ran. Whatever became of Larry Flynt's
infatuation with our organization?
Robert Bandonis
Pennsylvania
American Atheists, fully recognizing
that when we are dead we are not going
anywhere, is constantly on the side of living. Therefore, it has been anti-war in a
continuous manner from its inception.
During the 1960s, it was in the front of
the call to stop the war in Vietnam. Dr.
O'Hair insisted that there must be much
emphasis on the need for peace and
every possible outreach against war.
American Atheists condemned the United States action in Grenada. Its official
position was against United States aid
to the Contras in Nicaragua. It has consistently opposed aid to Israel in its terrorist tactics against the Palestinians
and Lebanon; and it has actively criticized the CIA's war in Afghanistan.
American Atheists is a United States
based, native organization and speaks
first to its own nation's problems and international involvements. This has not
precluded its caustic criticism of England's invasion of the Falklands and
other military action throughout the
Austin, Texas

world.
American Atheists have long championed unilateral disarmament and the
total destruction of all nuclear weapons.
Recently other factions of the nation
have taken up the fight for peace and for
disarmament so that American Atheists
has not been so involved; it needs to cultivate its own garden, you know.
American Atheists saw a fallacy in the
cry "Tax the Churches" and has changed
its callfor equitable treatment in the following manner.
Ad valorem tax runs with the land. Inheritance taxes, income taxes, sales
taxes are all placed upon transactions.
American Atheists' theme now is simply
"Any person(s), group(s), institution(s)
must be put on notice that taxation is an
incident of all such transactions and engage in them at the peril of being taxed.
Since the First Amendment specifies
that the state 'shall make no laws' in
support of religion, no laws exempting
religions or religious institutions can be
permitted. "
Churches and religious institutions
can purchase as much land as they desire to purchase so long as they pay the
ad valorem tax on the land. They may
buy as much stock, as many bonds as
they desire, so long as they know they
must pay the tax on the transactions
and the incomes from the stocks and
bonds. They may solicit as much income
as they desire so long as they pay income tax. This then is not a cry to "tax
the church" but rather a demand that
the church (and religious institutions)
September 1989

not be exempted from their "fair share"

of ordinary taxes which run with ordinary transactions.
Larry Flynt continues to run, free of
charge, advertisements for American
Atheists in his Hustler magazine. He is
a good Atheist, and we are in continuing communication.

A question for Madalyn O'Hair

How would you like the title of The
High Priestess of Atheism?
Second Question: What would you
like your epitaph to read after you leave
this world?
B. Serrotti
New York
I would not like to be known as "The
High Priestess of Atheism." A number of
the members of the Board of Directors
of the various American Atheist organizations, and some of the media, have
dubbed me, "First Lady of Atheism." I
think I will settle for that.
What do I want as an epitaph - if
anything is carved on any stone anywhere - which is unlikely:
Madalyn O'Hair
Woman, Atheist, Anarchist
I have enjoyed my role as a woman
and a mother more than anyone will
ever know, except the two prides of my
life: Jon G. Murray and Robin Murrayo 'Hair.
- Madalyn O'Hair
Page 11

n July 18, 1988,the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the

Islamic Republic of Iran, accepted
a United Nations resolution calling for a cease-fire in the eight-year-old
Iraq-Iran war. His nation had been
brought to the edge of chaos by the
costs of that war and desperately needed to be revitalized. Although Khomeini
felt that dealing with the Western powers represented a corruption of his Islamic revolution, everything signaled
that Iran must break out of its isolation
for improved relations with both the
Soviet Union and the Western powers.
YetKhomeini could not do it. He was opposed to any borrowing from the West.
He simply wanted returned the money
which the United States had frozen
when the shah tumbled. His legalist
scholars and he wanted scrupulous observance of the Koran and the whole
body of Islamic tradition, theological
and legal. The decadent West was the
enemy; the hostage situation had not
been resolved.
Iran's leaders, particularly the ayatollah, desired their world to stay fixated in
. the seventh century. But West Germany is Iran's biggest trading partner and
ahead loomed the Open Market of a unified Europe. Unable to overcome their
abhorrence for the West, these leaders
could only long for unification of all Moslems against the great Satan: modern
civilization, Iran, however, was basically
a Shiite nation, representing at most a
mere 10 percent of the Moslems of the
world. Khomeini, eager to unify all the
Moslems in support of his reactionary
revolution, preferably under his sole
leadership, had to make his reputation
and his word felt. He had not done this
through war with Iraq; he proposed to
do it by fiat. He felt that he did not need
an economic rebuilding of his nation's
economy; he needed only devotion to
Islam to effectuate his miracle of faith.
It was obvious to the world that with
the end of the war with Iraq, certain illdefined factions were forming in Iran.
After all, the imam was now eighty-eight

In the attempt to again saddle

the world with restraints
against reason, any book, any
author is a good excuse.

Madalyn Q'Hair
Page 12

September 1989

American Atheist

years old. A clear succession of power

had to be structured and the nation
needed to be able to face the inevitable:
modern technology and the culture
erected around it were here to stay. In
the latter part of 1988,Iran reestablished
diplomatic relations with France and
Britain and somewhat improved its relations with the Western world in general.
The hostage release problem - that
cultural lag into example - until then,
however, remained completely unresolved.
It was just at this propitious time, that
in September 1988,Viking Penguin Inc.,
in London, England, published a novel
titled The Satanic Verses, written by a
well-known English literary figure, Salman Rushdie, a scholar and member of
the elite, the recipient of the most prestigious literary awards in that country.
The book just issued had, in fact, won
the "new novel section" of Britain's respected Whitbread Prize ($36,000) for
1988and was runner-up for the prestigious Booker Prize.
It takes only a half dozen fanatics to
set the world on fire.They are unopposed
by the genteel, who do not want to lower
themselves to get into "a street fight,"
an ugly brawl in which they might necessarily need to wrestle with life. They
are also supported by those in political
power, as they are ballasts to maintain
existing order. But, hearing about the
book, in this case these classic half dozen fanatics began their work, aided by
the new technologies of communication
and the interest of balanced state power
structures.
The book was rumored to hold Islam
in disregard. The specifics of the alleged
insult were not in the fall of 1988 yet
abroad in the world but an insult to the
sensibilities of the Moslem religion was
a sufficient fuse to light.

October 5, 1988
The book was banned in India by direct order of Rajiv Gandhi, after a successful fight against the book by Sayed
Shahabuddin, an Indian Moslem. This
Austin, Texas

man, who claimed he would never read

the book, told the New York Times in
October 1988that:

protest. It is instructive to look at the

events as they occurred.

January 14
You must look at this in the context of how the Moslem regards
the Prophet. As far as the Moslems
are concerned, there is no divinity
about the man. He is a man. But
he is the messenger of God, and
the entire Islamic faith is based on
this notion: that he is the Prophet
and that what you find in the Koran is the word of God.
We also regard the Prophet's
own life as the model for the rest
of humanity, and for all times. To a
believing Moslem, you can jest
about a lot - but you cannot jest
about the person of the Prophet.
When the book was banned in India,
Salman Rushdie wrote a letter to Rajiv
Gandhi, which was printed months later
in the February 17, 1989, issue of The
New York Times under the title "My
Book Speaks for Itself." In the letter he
noted that India banned his book from
that country under Section 11of the Indian Customs Act at the behest of two
fundamentalist Moslem members of the
Indian Parliament, Sayed Shahabuddin
and Khurshid Alam Khan, neither one
of whom had read the book. He challenged Gandhi to rise to a higher stature
than agreeing with them.

In Bradford, West Yorkshire, northern

England, the city with England's largest
Moslem population (10 percent), 1,500
Moslems held a demonstration called by
the Bradford Council of Mosques. Copies of the book were nailed to a stake
and burned outside the town hall and a
police station. Rushdie was burned in
effigy. The organizer behind the rally
was the secretary of the organization,
Abdul Quddas. Had the demonstration
not taken place in Bradford, with its attendant media coverage, it is improbable that the Ayatollah Khomeini would
have ever heard of the book.
Just several days after the widespread news of the riot, a count was
taken of the books sold in England: forty
thousand copies. And the New York
Times was reporting that there were
two million Moslems in Britain.

January 28
More than 8,000 Moslems demonstrated in Hyde Park in London. The
person responsible for the local thrust
against Rushdie in London was Ali
Mugram al-Ghamdi, director general of
the Islamic Cultural Centers in Regent's
Park. He called the novel, "the most
offensive, filthy and abusive book ever
written by any hostile enemy of Islam."

1989
In 1989, the reactionaries had the
most sophisticated of all weapons: instant communication. So they went to
work with it, knowing that the governments of states having sizable Moslem
populations did not want any quarrel
with their undisciplined inhabitants. By
the end of that month, the controversy
had surfaced everywhere: in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, India, and South
Africa, every country or city with an expansive Moslem population, including
London, as Moslem masses were inspired to take to the streets to show a
September 1989

Born on April 13, 1919,Dr. O'Hair initiated

the United States Supreme Court case
Murray v, Curlett, which removed reverential Bible reading and prayer recitation
from the public schools of our nation in
June 1%3. She founded American Atheists in the same year. Together with
GORA she founded the United World
Atheists, sponsor of the triennial World
Atheist Meet. A champion of freedom of
speech, freedom of assemblage, freedom
of conscience, and the right to be free
from religion, she is known nationally
and internationally as an Atheist spokesperson.
Page 13

A Pakistani protestor carries a wounded

comrade during a violent demonstration
against the The Satanic Verses outside
the U.S. Information Center on February
12,1989.

February 12

In Egypt, the prominent feminist,

Nawal El Saadawi, a member of American Atheists, abandoned a novel in
progress titled The Book of Satan which
would have imagined Satan's views on
issues in the Bible and the Koran. But
even though she backtracked, she received so many death threats that the
police had to provide her with roundthe-clock protection.

Early February 1989

At this time, about 3,000 Moslems
demonstrated in the city of Birmingham, England, where the government
did not even slap a wrist.
The Pakistani National Assembly voted unanimously to condemn the book
and its author. In fact, a Pakistani senator proposed formally from the senate
floor that the government send two assassins to kill Rushdie.
An early February issue of Newsweek
was banned in Pakistan because it contained a detailed account of the book.
Leaders of Islamic groups attended
the annual Conservative Party convention in Brighton and called on the
Thatcher government to ban the book,
but Thatcher never issued a word on
the matter. The attorney general of England was asked to begin criminal proPage 14

ceedings against Rushdie under the archaic blasphemy laws. The current law
says that blasphemy occurs:
when there is published anything
concerning God, Christ, or the
Christian religion in terms so scurrilous' abusive or offensive as to
outrage the feelings of any adherent of or sympathizer with the
Christian religion and would tend
to lead to a breach of the peace.
The protest was put into process.
A Moslem delegation then went to the
British government to demand that the
Blasphemy Act be rewritten to protect
Islam, Judaism, and other religions.
Church of England leaders (including
Robert A. Runcie, the archbishop of
Canterbury) and members of Parliament echoed that demand. Pentecostalist and Jewish organizations also agreed
that the law should be expanded. The
archbishop of York opined that expanding the law was worth the effort, while alternately abolishing the law altogether:
would be to signal ... that our society holds nothing sacred, apart
from the freedom of writers to
write whatever they like.
September 1989

The Pakistani Maulana Kausar.Niazi,

in Islamabad, a former senator in Pakistan, reported that Islamic fundamentalist hit squads had been sent to killSalman Rushdie. He then organized a protest of about 8,000 young male demonstrators (the United States Center report estimated 10,000)in Islamabad outside the American Center, a United
States government information office,
combination library and cultural exchange building. The demonstration left
six people dead and sixty-five (or eighty)
wounded when riot police fired into the
stone-throwing crowd. At first tear gas
canisters had been utilized, but the protestors picked them up and hurled them
back at the police, occasioning the
shooting into the crowd. This all went
. on for a chaotic ninety minutes. Niazi
had formed a "Movement for the Protection of the Honor of the Prophet" and
staged the demonstration in its name.
At least twenty-five of the protestors
were arrested. Two opposition National
Assembly members and prominent politicalleaders participated in the protest.
Allegedly the rally was called to protest
the release of the book in the United
States (scheduled for February 22), but
the march quickly took on an antiAmerican political tone. Marchers carried signs in both English and Urdu
which read, "American Imperialism Out
of Pakistan" and yelled "American
Dogs" and "God is Great." Niazi had
been scheduled to present a petition to
United States diplomats who were
standing outside the building waiting to
receive it, but the chaos surrounding
the shootings prohibited that The modern building sustained substantial damage. Every window was smashed, as
were some doors; two fires were set inside the building; the United States flag
was torn down and burned (without a
murmur from President Bush); and the
satellite dish was damaged. But since
the office held only six employees at the
time, no one was injured (other media
reported three Americans and fifteen
American Atheist

1
\

Pakistani employees). Several motorcycles, however, were burned. By the

end of the day, the Pakistani government announced that the publishers of
the Rushdie book, Viking Penguin, must
destroy all copies of the book. If it did
not, all books by Viking Penguin would
be proscribed in Pakistan.
The amazing part of the uprising in
Islamabad was that The Satanic Verses
had not been translated into Urdu,
which is the Pakistan language, had not
been distributed in Pakistan, was banned
from being sold in Pakistan, and had,
consequently, not been read in Pakistan.
It could only be surmised by informed,
concerned Pakistanis that this was another effort for a retrogressive uniform
Islamic state and that Prime Minister
Bhutto would try to forestall the Islamic
campaign by giving in to the fanatics on
certain issues - such as the banning of
the book. Her election to office in 1988
had been a political setback for the reactionaries, but her position was, in fact,
tenuous.
United States officials at the Cultural
Center then invited Niazi to return on
February 15, but he did not appear. He
was too busy organizing a half-day afternoon strike by merchants and businessmen to protest the police clampdown on
the protest the day before. More than
4,000 people marched in a funeral procession for the five (other reports said
six) persons dead. Interviewed in London by the Guardian, Rushdie was
quoted as being "very upset" at the
deaths in Islamabad.
Prior to this large eruption the book
had touched off protests at the American center in Lahore, Pakistan, but
those demonstrations ended peacefully.
On the same day a Moslem protest
erupted in a second Pakistani town,
Rawalpindi, where again a strike had
been demanded. Some of the marchers

Austin, Texas

stoned shops, banks, and hotels which

had not observed the strike, forcing
them to close.

February 13
In a sermon in Teheran, broadcast by
the Islamic Republic News Agency
(monitored in Cyprus), Iran's Parliament speaker, Hashemi Rafsanjani,
made the statement that:
The ground has been laid for a
vast battle between Islam on the
one hand, and paganism and arrogance on the other.
Rafsanjani wanted to know ifWestern
governments supported what the book
said about Islam:
so that we know what our duty is
regarding those who are partner in
cursing the prophet.
The willingness or the unwillingness
of these Western governments to turn
Rushdie over to the Moslems seemed to
be implied in his statement.

I call on all zealous Moslems to

execute them quickly, wherever
they find them, so that no one will
dare to insult Islamic sanctity.
Whoever is killed doing this willbe
regarded as a martyr and will go
directly to heaven.
Apparently behind Khomeini's order
was the intenseness of Iran's Interior
Minister AliAkbar Mohtashami, a former
ambassador to Syria, and ProsecutorGeneral Musavi Khoeiniha, a cleric.
Also some media reported that Khomeini's son, Ahmad, and "three hardline ministers" (unnamed) had persuaded Khomeini to make the death call in
order to undermine his, and their, political rivals.
Concerning the death threat, Rushdie retaliated:
Obviously, at a personal level,
it's very worrying. But I think beyond that. It shows that this is the
latest stage in a campaign that began with smears and vilifications
. and distortions of the book, which
has escalated through all sorts of
levels of violence.
To the BBC, he commented:
It's horrifying that people are
willing to proceed in this way
against what is - after all - one
novel in the face of the entire history of Islam.
Simultaneously, the Moslem who had
initiated the rioting in Bradford, West
Yorkshire, England, in mid-January,
Abdul Quddas, vowed that he would act
on Khomeini's order.
Every good Moslem is after his

September 1989

Page 15

sacrifice mine.
On the same day, James Baker, the
secretary of state of the United States,
issued a feeble response that the edict
was "regrettable" and Bush, characteristically, said nothing.
Plans to issue a French version of the
book were dropped that day and a
Spanish version was indefinitely postponed.

February 15
The senior Iranian cleric, Hojatoleslam Hassan Saneie, said the charity he
leads, the June 5th Foundation, would
pay $1 million to whatever non-Iranian
would kill Rushdie and 200 million rials
(the equivalent of $2.6 million) to the
killer if he were an Iranian.
Teheran Radio reported that the Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, told
diplomats in that city that his government would order the closure of cultural
centers belonging to nations that permitted publication of the book.
About 2,000 Iranians protested outside the British Embassy in Teheran
chanting "Death to England" and "Death
to America." The official Iranian press
agency quoted Fakhreddin Hejazi, a
member of the Iranian Parliament, as
telling the demonstrators that Britain
was the enemy of the Koran and
Islam and the manifestation of all
things evil.

September 1988and up to February 15,

1989.
Wallowing in money, Viking had
Rushdie issue a statement about the
book which said, substantively, that the
book
is not an attack on Islam or any
other religion but an attempt to
challenge preconceptions and to
examine the conflict between the
secular and religious views of the
world. Ironically, it is precisely this
conflict that has now engulfed the
book.
The fury of Khomeini, some media
suggested, was directed toward a dream
sequence in the book wherein prostitutes take the names of Mohammed's
wives. Also The Satanic Verses insinuated that Mohammed wrote the Koran
himself rather than received it from god.
Interviewed by the "CBS This Morning" television show, Rushdie added:
Frankly, I wish I had written a
more critical book. I mean, religious leaders ... who behave like
this, and then say that this is a religion which must be above any
kind of whisper of criticism, that
doesn't add up.
It seems to me that Islamic fundamentalists could do with a little
bit of criticism right now.

February 16
Whereupon the crowd began to chant
"God is Great."
Subsequently, February 15 was declared by Iran to be a day of national
mourning for the novel's
... poisonous and insulting subject matter concerning Islam, the
Koran and the blessed prophet.
From Britain came the announcement that 100,000 hardback copies of
the book had now been sold from the
time it had been published in Britain in
Page 16

An Egyptian Islamic theologian opined

that Khomeini had erred in sending
death squads after Rushdie without first
giving him a chance to repent. Sheik
Mohammed Hossarnel-Din said the
book should be banned and burned, but
executing its author would be "virtually
impossible" under the tenets of Islam.
Threats to Britain's airlines caused
London's Heathrow Airport and British
Airways to tighten security with bag-bybag searches on its evening flights to
India and the Far East.
Iran's lone diplomat, a charge d'affaires,
September 1989

summoned to the Foreign Office in London, told reporters that the "decree or
verdict" had been delivered "after careful consideration" and "it has nothing to
do particularly with your country."
Viking Penguin cancelled Rushdie's
projected U.S. tour after becoming the
target 'Ofa bomb threat. It was forced to
vacate its headquarters on the fifth
floor, 40 W. 23rd Street, in Manhattan
about 2:30 P.M. after a telephone bomb
threat was received. Two hundred employees from the building shivered in the
cold outside for over an hour while the
building was searched. Three similar
threats against the publisher had occurred in January and three in December.
In December the firm had been forced
to vacate the building twice; therefore,
the company hired plainclothes security
officers who were posted at the front
and rear entrances of the building. The
formal announcement said that threats
have led us to conclude that the
current climate is not appropriate
for a promotional tour in the United
States as previously planned.
Rushdie himself then cancelled the
three-week speaking and promotional
tour which was to begin February 24 in
the United States.
The head of an American Moslem organization, Dawud Assad, president of
the Council of Masajid of the United
States, announced that he welcomed
the cancellation.

February 17
Iran's ambassador (charge d'affaires)
to Britain, Mohammad Akhoond Zadeh
Basti, reiterated that Khomeini's order
to kill Rushdie was a purely religious
statement and was not interference in
Britain's internal affairs.
If the purely religious-based
opinion of a religious head is going
to be interpreted politically, it is
very unfortunate. We think we
have to make a line between the
American Atheist

religious beliefs of the people and

their political activities.
But the situation was that by this time
the bounty on Rushdie's head, placed
by religious leaders, had risen to $5.2
million.
February 17marked the beginning of
a "Freedom to Read Week" in Canada,
a national campaign against book censorship, but it was on this day that Canadian customs officials ordered that any
copies of Rushdie's novel must be impounded at the border under provisions
of Canada's hate literature law. This is a
federal statute which outlaws publications that advocate genocide or "hatred
against any identifiable group." It had
been used heretofore against pornographic and anti-Semite materials. Yet
the law does contain specific exemptions for opinions expressed "in good
faith" about religious subjects. One private citizen, however, about February 3,
had asked that any further shipments of
The Satanic Verses be detained until
customs inspectors had examined the
book. At the time, the Canadian Booksellers Association estimated that more
than ~,OOO copies had been sold in Canada. It soon developed that Mohammad
Ashraf, the director or the Islamic Society of North America, had been the person who lodged the complaint.
Later the same day Canada's Department of External Affairs expressed its
official concern over Khomeini's death
threat to the Iranian charge d'affaires in
Ottawa, Ontario. The prime minister of
Canada, however, has never been heard
on the subject.
In Chicago, Judith Krug, director of
. the American Library Association's
Office for Intellectual Freedom, reported
that she was besieged by calls from
librarians seeking advice as to what they
should do concerned with Rushdie's
book. Her advice was, she said, "Treat
the book as you would treat any other.
You acquire it and make it available."
The Chicago Public Library then disclosed that it had ordered, on February
Austin, Texas

"When the news got

around Jahilia that
the whores of The
Curtain had each
assumed the identity
of one of Mahound's
wives, the clandestine excitement of
the city's males was
intense .... The men
of Jahilia flocked to
The Curtain, which
experienced a three
hundred per cent increase in business.
For obvious reasons
it was not politic to
form a queue in the
street, and so on
many days a line of
men curled around
the innermost courtyard of the brothel,
rotating about its
centrally positioned
Fountain of Love
much as pilgrims
rotated for other
reasons around the
ancient Black
Stone."
- "Return to Jahilia"
The Satanic Verses
September 1989

8, seventeen copies for its permanent

collection.
There were some problems brewing
for Iran. On this day, West Germany
became the first nation in the economic
alliance to recall its charge d'affaires
from Teheran.
Publishers in France (the Christian
Bourgeois press), West Germany,
Greece, and Turkey decided not to
issue the book. Greek publishers said
they would postpone its release out of
fear for their lives. The publishers of Finland, Norway, and Italy (Arnoldo Mondadori Editore Spa) remained unswayed.
The book chains B. Dalton and Barnes
& Noble through their chief executives
made the initial decision they would
block the sales of the book in about
2,200 of the United States' roughly 7,000
general-interest bookstores. B. DaltonBarnes & Noble operate about 1,000
stores, Waldenbooks (a unit of K-Mart),
about 1,200, with 8,500 employees, and
Crown about 200 stores; and account
for nearly 45 percent of the generalinterest fiction and non-fiction works
known as trade books.
The book had just risen from ninth to
sixth place on a major best-seller list and
gone into an eighth reprint in the week
preceding the book burning. After considerable criticism of W H. Smith, by
January 18the book was back on sale in
the Bradford stores - albeit under the
counter, rather than on display.
The media had now discovered that
Rushdie received $850,000 for Englishlanguage rights to his book. From the
continuing stories it became apparent
that Rushdie had not written a critical
analytical attack on Islam, but rather with profits in his eyes - had simply
issued another of his fantasy novels
which sniped at the heels of religion, in
this case Islam. In none of his rejoinders
to the attacks did he speak of either
freedom of the press or freedom of
speech.

February 18
The 6,500-member

Authors Guild
Page 17

and the National Writers Union demanded that President Bush publicly
condemn the threats by Iran against
Rushdie and his publisher and warn that
the United States would. respond if any
harm came to any American citizen.
The Guild's telegram to Bush asked for
a "forceful statement" - but, of course,
for that it asked the wrong man. Also
the Guild adopted a resolution calling on
all authors to request their publishers
not to distribute their books to the chain
stores which were saying that they
would not sell the Rushdie book. The
resolution also called on the public to
"not patronize those stores until the ban
is lifted."
Cody's Books, Berkeley, California,
was firebombed about 4:30 A.M. when a
pipe bomb was hurled through a back
window just thirty seconds before a similar attack occurred at a nearby Waldenbooks store. One of the world's finest
general bookstores, Cody's was bombed
just fourteen days after Khomeini sentenced Rushdie to die. There was about
$1,000 worth of damage. During the
cleanup another bomb was found on the
floor in the poetry section of the store.
The owner of the store, forty-two-yearold Andy Ross, stood across the street
while the bomb squad worked with the
bomb and as it exploded. His later, total
sale, was of 1,200 volumes.
Firebombs damaged two bookstores
in Berkeley, California, and heavily damaged the office of a small newspaper, the
weekly Riverdale Press in Upper Manhattan, New York, which had defended
Rushdie's right to publish.
As the media checked independent
rather than chain stores, it found that
the book was selling well in Lemuria
Bookstores in Jackson, Mississippi, and
in the Zion Book Stores in Salt Lake
City. The owner of the Bookland stores
in Yuba City and Marysville, California,
received five personal death threats
during the week before the Cody's
bombing. The Tattered Cover bookstore
in Denver, Colorado, sold 950 copies,
although the store received three anonPage 18

ymous threats. The furious owner spent

$100 on an ad in a Denver newspaper
supporting freedom of speech. Powell's
Books in Portland, Oregon, received
five telephone bomb threats.
At this time, the reports in the American media became so jumbled that it
was difficult to sort out the sequence of
events, or what event actually occurred.
The following is an approximation.
About mid-February,
President Ali
Khomeini gave a sermon at prayer at
Teheran University reported
by the
Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA)
and broadcast
by the official Iranian
media that:
This wretched
man has no
choice but to die. Of course he
may repent and say "I made a
blunder" and apologize ... Then
it is possible that the people may
pardon him.
Later, allegedly an Iranian official said
the reward for killing Rushdie might be
cancelled if Rushdie apologized.
On
February 18, Rushdie actually did express
"regret" but didn't specifically apologize. His exact statement was:
I profoundly regret the distress
that publication has occasioned to
sincere followers of Islam.
I recognize
that Moslems in
many parts of the world are genuinely distressed by the publication .
of my novel.
Living as we do in a world of
many faiths, this experience has
served to remind us that we must
all be conscious of the sensibilities
of others.
The publisher considered labeling the
unsold copies with the apology in order
to defuse the protests. But in Londora
senior Viking Penguin editor attending
an emergency meeting uf the Writers'
Guild of Great Britain said that the hardback copies were selling so well that the
paperback edition due out in August
September 1989

might be delayed for "crude commercial"

reasons.
Meanwhile, back in Iran, at first the
IRNA criticized
Rushdie's
remarks.
Hours later, it said that Rushdie's
statement, although far too short
of a repentance, is generally seen
as sufficient enough to warrant his
pardon by the masses in Iran and
elsewhere in the world.
Then, late in the evening of the same
day IRNA released a "clarification" saying the earlier pardon was a "personal
observation" by one of its writers and
that it did "not allow for any specific interpretation
whatsoever."
Later again
the same evening, the Iranian response
was that the nation was not appeased.

February 19
The following day the Ayatollah Khomeini declared:
The imperialist foreign media
are falsely alleging that the officials
of the Islamic Republic have said
that if the author of The Satanic
Verses repents the execution order
against him would be abolished.
This is denied 100 percent. Even
if Salman Rushdie repents and becomes the most pious man of time
It is incumbent on every Moslem
to employ everything he's got, his
life and wealth, to send him to Hell.
If a non-Moslem becomes aware
of his whereabouts
and has the
ability to execute him quicker than
a Moslem, it is incumbent on Mos
lems to pay a reward or a fee in
return for this action.
Immediately, in London, trying to get
in on the publicity, newspaper magnate
Robert Maxwell pledged $10.6 million to
anyone who could "civilize" Khomeini,
one of his papers, The People, a London
tabloid, stated. The money was to be
paid to anyone who could persuade the
Moslem leader to repent "his wicked
American Atheist

ways" by persuading him to publicly

recite the sixth and ninth of the Ten
Commandments: "Thou shalt not kill"
and "Thou shalt not bear false witness."
The reward was double that put on
Rushdie's head.
Meanwhile the Canadian Customs
had decided that The Satanic Verses
contained no hateful propaganda and
that copies could continue to be imported.
In Yugoslavia, the leading Communist
Party daily newspaper Borba began
printing excerpts of the book on the
date that Iranian president AliKhomeini
arrived for a three-day visit to that
nation.

February 20
The European Community foreign
ministers, meeting in Brussels, Belgium,
decided to withdraw their ambassadors
to Iran "for consultations," but no heads
of state anywhere issued any statements
in respect to either freedom of speech
or freedom of the press. Britain went
further by shutting its embassy in Teheran
entirely, but the problem of Terry Waite
and other British hostages still held by
Moslems is well known. Britain had just
three months prior to this, in January,
opened its Iranian embassy for the first
time since 1979and had three diplomats
stationed there. Now it recalled them all.
Mehdi Karrubi, the deputy speaker of
Iran's Majlis (parliament), on this day
told an assembled crowd:
Salman Rushdie and others
who think in the same way willdefinitely have no fate but death,
annihilation, and eternal hell.
The crowd broke out into cries of
"Allah-o Akbar (God is Great}."
Back in the United States a spokesman for New York's John Cardinal
O'Connor criticized both The Satanic
Verses and those who threatened its
author, but seemed to imply that Roman
Catholics should avoid reading the
novel in that he
Austin, Texas

"IfMahound recited
a verse in which God
was described as allhearing, allknowing, I would
write, all-knowing,
all-wise. Here's the
point: Mahound did
not notice the alterations. So there I was,
actually writing the
Book, or rewriting,
anyway, polluting the
word of God with
my own profane language. But, good
heavens, if my poor
words could not be
distinguished from
the Revelation by
God's own Messenger, then what did
that mean? What did
that say about the
quality of divine poetry? ... It's one
thing to . . . have
half-suspicions about
funny business, but
it's quite another to
find out that you're
right."

encourages everyone not to dignify

the publication of this work, which
has been viewed by Moslems as
highly sacrilegious and offensive.
The Vatican, at this point, remained
silent.
The Japanese had an unnamed official
issue a remark that the Rushdie death
threat was "not something to be praised."
But then the estimated reconstruction
contracts for Iran and its war-torn economy are estimated at $190 billion and
Japan wants a sizeable bite of it; the
country could not afford to offend the
ayatollah. But two Japanese foreign
book dealers did stop selling the book
"for safety reasons" until the controversy blew over.
On February 20, Imam Abdullah Ahdal, the Saudi leader of Moslems in
Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, appeared on a television program
of the government French-language
television network in Brussels (the
RTBF), to criticize Khomeini's call for
the death of Salman Rushdie. Ahdal had
lived in Brussels for six years, heading
the Moslem community of 225,000 persons living in the three nations. He
directed the Islamic Cultural Center, set
up by the late Saudi ruler, King Faisal, in
an effort to unite the Moslems in that
area. It is sponsored by the Moslem
World League which is based in Mecca,
Saudi Arabia. On the show he spoke in
Arabic and his own translator spoke in
French. He criticized Khomeini, saying
that Rushdie should have been given a
trial and an opportunity to explain himself and to repent. Four days after the
show, Ahdal received a telephone threat
because of his disagreement with the
ayatollah. He still, however, told a Brussels daily newspaper that he would not
oppose the book's publication in Belgium.

February 21
- "Return to Jahilia"
The Satanic Verses
September 1989

. Spain announced that the European

Community cultural ministers would
boycott an international book fair openPage 19

Abu al-Qasim Muhammad ibn 'Abd Allah ibn 'Abd al-Muttalib ibn Hashim
Arab prophet and founder of Islam
Mohammed, of the semitic tribe of Qureyh, was
born at Mecca, in Arabia, ca. 570. He grew to manhood riding merchant caravans to Syria, during which
time he married a wealthy widow old enough to be his
mother. With her fortune, he remained a rich merchant until about age forty when he began, in a series
of trances or seizures, to
receive revelations from
the angel Gabriel which
informed him that he was
a prophet of god. In his
own words, he then became "The Slave of
Allah." Being himself illiterate, another needed to
record the words he received from god through
Gabriel.
His ministry and role as a prophet were not at first
accepted. As acts of vengeance were visited upon him
and his converts, he found it necessary to flee to
Medina, where he formally inaugurated the Moslem
Era as the ruler or head of state. This state, a theocracy, established public worship based upon the

ing on May 27 in Teheran. Libya announced that it had taken measures to

"confront publication" of the novel. The
dispatch by the official Libyan JANA
agency did not elaborate.
The archbishop of Canterbury, Robert
A. K. Runcie, appealed to leaders of the
estimated 1.5 million Moslems and the
25,000 Iranians in Britain to "contain
their anger within the bounds of the
law."He had nothing to sayan Rushdie's
behalf.
February 22, 1989
H. Morsi of the Islamic Cultural Center of Chicago came forward to announce:
One can only blaspheme against
God. Prophet Mohammed was a
human messenger of God and not
a deity to be worshiped by Moslems.
Islam, however, calls for the complete
acceptance of god's law. The way of life
is the attainment of peace, both inner
and outer peace, by the submission of
oneself to the will of the one and only
god.
Page 20

Koran, Mohammed's interpretation and additions to

the Old Testament. By force of arms, Mohammed
enlarged his territory, finally capturing Mecca and
converting its citizens. At this time, he ordered his followers to change the Qiblah (the place toward which
they turned their faces in prayer) from Jerusalem to
the Ka'bah at Mecca.
Mohammed enlarged
the religion (Judaism) of
Abraham to designate it
finallyas the only true religion - Islam - that religion that consists in the
surrender of Man's Will
and Purpose to the Will
and Purpose of the Lord
of Creation, as manifested
in his Creation and as revealed by way of guidance
through successive prophets.
Mohammed died in 632, after which time the
fragments of the Koran were put together into whole
cohesive form to be used as the foundation for the
Islamic religion, begun as a political force and taken
over by his successors.

The fight, it appeared, is for the Moslems to retain their faith intact; their fear
is that they may lose their moral environment, that is, their self-protection.
The book was an assault as to how they
perceived themselves and it was incumbent on them to eliminate the threat.
The book was a catalyst - the perceived
menace of all that they believe. To kill
Rushdie was to kill their self doubt and
in this sense it was an assertion of their
orthodoxy, an attempt to regain self
regard.
With the advent of international uproar in progress over The Satanic Verses, and faced with complaints within
their ranks that they had been slow to
support Rushdie, several authors' organizations scheduled supportive "readings" of the book in several cities across
the United States. There were twentyone in attendance in New York, including Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, E. L.
Doctorow, Larry McMurtry, Diana Trilling, and Susan Sontag. Rallies went on
at the same time in Boston, Washington,
Chicago, Minneapolis, and San Francisco. The meetings were suggested by
John R. MacArthur, the publisher of
Harper's magazine, and jointly sponSeptember 1989

sored by American Pen, the Authors'

Guild and Article 19,a newly created organization based in London that keeps
track of censorship around the world.
The meeting was under tight security
in the loft of a downtown Manhattan
building that is the home of several art
galleries. Police used dogs to sweep the
hall of bombs before the meeting. Only
five hundred persons were given entry
to the event and these turned out to be
mostly media. How brave can one be?
Three thousand other persons stretched
up Broadway and around the block.
Early in the morning about three hundred members of the National Writers
Union, made up principally of freelance
writers, demonstrated in front of the
Iranian Mission to the United Nations
on Third Avenue between Fortieth and
Forty-first Streets. The participants
tried unsuccessfully to deliver a letter to
the Iranian Mission which declared, in
part:
The attempt by Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini and others to
force withdrawal of Rushdie's
book is repugnant to Americans
and, more important, in violation
American Atheist

of our rights.
Those involved included Abbie Hoffman, onetime anti-Vietnam War activist, and Norman Mailer.
There are an estimated 250,000 Moslems in Los Angeles. The Islamic Center
of Southern California held a press conference to indignantly note that the
media was concentrating on what Khomeini had said rather than on the insult
which Rushdie had inflicted upon Moslems with his book.
Sometime after the bookstore bombings, President Bush directed Attorney
General Dick Thornburgh to use the resources of the FBI to identify and prosecute the bombers if it was determined
that federal laws were being violated.
Bush emphasized his "realization that
the book offends some Moslems," but
added:
I can be sensitive to that. But we
cannot and willnot tolerate and ...
condone violence and lawlessness
in this country.

quiet - except, of course, Patrick J.

Buchanan. In his column of February 19,
he wrote:
Sal has written a defamatory
novel, a blasphemous assault on
the faith of hundreds of millions....
The Satanic Verses is an act of
moral vandalism by an artistic delinquent. ... the moral equivalent
of an anti-Semitic book.
As usual, Buchanan had his Roman
Catholic blinders on. As far as he was
concerned, Salman, a moral barbarian,
had provoked the retaliation against
himself - a classic inquisitional stance.
The formal issue date in the United
States was February 22, but the book
was available in stores for several weeks
before that. The initial printing for the
United States was to be 50,000; but by
February 16, there were 72,500 copies in
print. Sister companies had published
the novel in Britain in September and
Canada in October.

February 23
It was the usual Bush wimp-out. After
that what could one expect of others?
Only three United States lawmakers
had anything to say: Senator Patrick J.
Leahy (D-Vermont) called the death
threat against Rushdie "an act of international terrorism" and Senator Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.)denounced the threat
generally. Senator Arlen Specter (RPenn.) opined that any Iranian-directed
action against the novel in the United
States "could well fall into the category
of an act of war" and said that the
threats against Rushdie and others were
"open brazen aggrandizement" which
could not be tolerated. Our other 432
representatives and senators said nothing;not one governor opened his mouth;
and most men of opinion were equally

Austin, Texas

In France, Cardinal Albert Decourtray, head of the French Roman Catholic church, noted, "Once again believers
have been offended in their faith." Elsewhere in France, the daily newspaper
Liberation and two weeklies, L'venement du Jeudi and Le Vouvel Observateur, announced jointly that they would
each publish a chapter of Rushdie's novel on February 23.
By this time, Chicago had finally
come alive and most of that city's most
prominent writers met in the Chicago
Public Library's Cultural Center to protest against the death threat.
On the same day, Waldenbooks announced that it would reorder the Verses and would sell it to customers who
asked for it, but would not put it on dis-

September 1989

play. Its executives spoke about the

"protection of our employees" and insisted that they had "fought long and
hard against censorship," that theirs
was not a freedom of speech issue, but
an employee protection issue.
Next, a spokesman for the company
that operates B. Dalton and Barnes and
Noble announced:
At the urging of an overwhelming majority of its store managers
... and in light of the statement
yesterday by the president of the
United States, B. Dalton willresume
sales of The Satanic Verses.
However, the spokesman asked for anonymity.
The incident emphasized that chain
bookstores have the power to sentence
a book to extinction. In this case, and by
this time, the chains had discovered that
support for Rushdie was a virtually riskfree token of intellectual and physical
gallantry, bound by special precautions
as they were.
At the same time Cat Stevens, who
gave up a successful music career in
1977 after becoming a Moslem, gave a
statement of support for Khomeini to
Reuters News Service in London:
The Koran makes it clear. If
someone defames the prophet,
then he must die.
Subsequently WCXR-FM, a radio
station outside of Washington, D.C.,
that plays old rock music, pulled albums
by the former pop singer. The station
said it could not "in good conscience
program the music of any artist who
advocates the taking of a human life."

February 24
Retaliatory words and phrases re-

Page 21

bounded across the nation. In San Francisco there was a demonstration and
march from M. Justin Herman Plaza to
the British consulate on Sansome Street.
At this, the secretary general of the
Council of Muslim Associations, Shamin
H. Zaidi, called The Satanic Verses "the
greatest injury in the history of Islam
from the days of the Prophet Mohammad
until today."
The Soviet ambassador to Britain,
Leonid Zamyatin, said the controversy
"clearly shows the need for respect for
religious feelings and traditions as well
as tolerance for the politics and values
of others." Gorbachev failed to open his
mouth.
Two thousand Moslems rallied in
Manchester, England, and called for
Rushdie's book to be withdrawn from
library shelves.
On the other hand Japan's Foreign
Minister, Sousuke Uno, finally criticized
the death threat saying, "Such suggestions of murder cannot be accepted
among modern society." But Japan did
not follow the European countries with
a withdrawal of its diplomats.
In Bombay, India, 5,000 people, following prayer services, staged a march
in the violence of which forty persons,
including eleven police officers, were injured and three hundred arrested. The
protestors ignored a ban on the assembly of more than five people in public
places on Friday, Islam's holy day. They
set fire to several state-run buses and
other vehicles and attacked the police.
Press Trust reported twelve killed;
United News of India put it at ten, but
the police commissioner estimated
eight had died. Simultaneous demonstrations broke out in New Delhi, Calcutta, Darjeeling, Varanasi, Patna, and
Siliguri, India. In New Delhi the head of
the seventeenth-century Jama Masjid
Mosque, Syed Abdullah Bukhari, the
nation's most powerful Moslem leader,
publicly congratulated Khomeini on the
death sentence and added, "No leniency should be shown him [Rushdie]."
After his holy day service, the police
Page 22

stopped about four hundred Moslems

from marching on the British High Commission.

February 26, 1989

Iran's Cabinet declared that it was
united behind Khomeini in respect to
the international furor over Rushdie.
During the period from Valentine Day
forward, Rushdie and his wife were put
into a series of houses operated by the
Special Branch and MIS, units of Scotland Yard, being moved every several
weeks. They were not permitted telephone calls, and mail had to reach them
via the police. They could not have expected many calls, since few prominent
politicians, clerics, and intellectuals rallied to the defense of Rushdie.
A number of Islamic scholars had, at
this point, pointed out that anyone accused of apostasy must first be brought
to trial and be found guilty or confess to
the crime "before there's any question
of execution."
Yet, thousands of demonstrators appeared in the holy city of Qom on February 26 chanting slogans declaring
their readiness to carry out the ayatollah's edict and kill Rushdie. A senior
cleric, Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, told the
demonstrators that Iran preferred the
sanctity of its religion to relations with
countries that failed to respect Islam.

February 27
The 2,200-member PEN American
Center issued a statement in support of
Rushdie.
In Karachi, Pakistan, a bomb blast
rocked the British Council library, killing
a Pakistani guard.
Rushdie was burned in effigy on Fifth
Avenue in New York.
In France, Prime Minister Michel
Rocard formally warned that "appeals
for murder, under whatever form, willbe
prosecuted."
Britain's Home Office minister, Douglas Hurd, warned Britain's Islamic community that violence or the threat of
violence in protest against Rushdie's
September 1989

writings was intolerable.

Rushdie's eighty-year-old mother,
who lived in Karachi, had to be flown out
of Pakistan because authorities could
not ensure her safety.
Nazia Hassan, the demure female
star of the television show, "Music 89,"
was so harassed by the Moslem fundamentalists and the television authorities
that the program was gutted in April and
she was removed. Miss Hassan, although
a rock singer, had always covered her
hair and showed only her hands and
face. Her only distributed remark about
the episode was
Everything in Pakistan, even the
way you sing a song, is highly politicized now.

March 1
French singer Veronique Sanson
pulled a pop song titled "Allah" from her
repertoire after bomb threats to the
Paris concert hall where she was performing. "Allah" was a protest song
against intolerance and religious fanaticism. But by the time she pulled it from
her repertoire, many record stores had
already pulled the song.
Two hundred university students in
the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur
rallied against the book, carrying banners with the message, "Kill Salman
Rushdie."
Swedish publisher Bonnier said it
would advance the Swedish-language
release date from autumn to summer.
Britain, after Khomeini's 100 percent
statement, pulled its five diplomats in
Teheran and expelled two Iranian diplomats from London, making the threatened break a formality.
Undaunted the Majlis Resolution said
that ties with Britain would be cut within
a week unless London
declared its opposition to the unprincipled stands against the world
of Islam, the Islamic Republic of
Iran, and the contents of the antiIslamic book, The Satanic Verses.
American Atheist

::~~~~~~~~7i~~;;~t~~j~~~g~C;a:s:u:al~ti~e:s~
controversy

Countries which banned the book: India,

Iran, Indonesia, Singapore, Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bangladesh,
and South Africa.
Bombings and arsons: Berkeley, California (two instances); Riverdale,
New Jersey; Reggio Emilia, Italy;
London, England; York, England;
.Rome, Italy.

Two telephone calls were subsequently made to the British Foreign

Office to deliver the resolution. But Britain said it would refuse to meet the Iranians until Iran and its leader, Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, withdrew the death
threat.
Next, the Iranian Majlis (parliament)
voted overwhelmingly (100 out of 270
members for a total breach) to break
diplomatic ties unless the British government would denounce Rushdie's
book and withdraw its condemnation of
Khomeini's judgment.
Widening the rift, Iran's Foreign Ministry said in a statement declaring the
end of the relations:
In the past two centuries, Britain
has been in the front line of plots
against Islam and Moslems.
The Iranian daily Abrar newspaper
opined that the decision by the Iranian
Parliament to sever ties with Britain
should also apply to West Germany
since West Germany was among twelve
European Community nations to recall .
their top diplomats and their ambassadors from Teheran. The move was taken at Britain's urging. Canada and Sweden also ordered their diplomats home
from Teheran. Britain stated that to resume normal relations with the nation,
Iran must
Austin, Texas

"At the centre of the

storm stands a novel, a
work of fiction, one that
aspires to the condition of
literature. It has often
seemed to me that people
on all sides of the argument have lost sight of
this simplefact. The
Satanic Verses has been
described, and treated, as
a work of bad history, as
an anti-religious pamphlet,
as the product of an international capitalist-Jewish
conspiracy, as an act of
murder ("he has murdered
our hearts"), as the product of a person comparable to Hitler and Attila the
Hun. It felt impossible,
amid such a hubbub, to insist on the fictionality of
fiction."
- Salman Rushdie
Essay in Newsweek
September 1989

declare its respect for international

obligations and renounce the use
or threatened use of violence.
In a joint resolution the European
Community member nations further
said that Khomeini's death edict represented
unacceptable violation of the most
elementary principles and obligations that govern relations among
sovereign states.
Does any of this sound as if the member nations were interested in anything
other than their own sovereignty?
Forty people were injured when police
in the northern India city of Srinagar
clashed with stone-throwing demonstrators. (Other reports spoke of at
least fifteen being injured.) In India's
Bengal state, Moslem demonstrators
blocked roads and burned effigies of
Rushdie - fifty people were arrested.
In Stockholm, Sweden's Nobel prizeawarding literary academy defended
free speech but did not explicitly support Rushdie, although it had been under pressure from literary and other organizations to take a clear stand for
Rushdie.
The spiritual guide of the pro-Iran
Hezbollah, Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah
issued an attack on The Satanic Verses
Page 23

Dante, the author of the Divine Comedy,

died over six hundred years ago, but if
Moslem fundamentalists have their way
he will be on the current list of banned
authors.

March 3

in Beirut, Lebanon.
In Teheran, Iranian president AliKhomeini denounced the "West's cultural
aggression against Islam through its
support for The Satanic Verses." The
minister of Culture and Higher Education, Mohammed Farhadi, then urged
the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to condemn the book.

March 2
In a newspaper interview Egypt's
Nobel Prize-winning author, Naguib
Mahfouz, urged Moslem countries to
condemn the death sentence by Khomeini but proposed a boycott of Viking
Penguin.
Back in England, Britain's Foreign
Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, was
quoted in the media saying that Rushdie's right to free speech was fundamental ,but that the book is offensive, and
not just to Moslems.
Freedom of speech is important,
even in relation to a book which
has plainly caused offense in the
Moslem community, and is capable
of causing offense to others.
About this time in Britain, some people of influence and in the government
were reading the book and finding it not
palatable. They discovered that Rushdie
characterized Britain as a racist society
and referred to Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher as Mrs. Torture. Additionally
they felt that it compared Britain with
Hitler's Germany. Subsequently three
Labour Party members of Parliament,
all from constituencies with large numbers of Moslems, introduced a motion
callingfor the withdrawal of The Satanic
Verses.
Immediately, Salman Rushdie telephoned Paddy Ashdown, the leader of
the Social and Liberal Democratic party, an opposition member of Parliament,
worrying that Britain was backing out in
the diplomatic crisis over Iranian death
threats. It was not true, he argued, that
Page 24

he had compared England and Nazi

Germany and if even one sentence
could be found in the entire book, he
wanted to see it. Apparently these three
Labour members of the Parliament had
urged a ban that day on the "producing
of more or new editions of The Satanic
Verses."
Full-page advertisements appeared in
newspapers in sixteen countries signed
by more than one thousand writers
from nations around the world, supporting Rushdie. These included from the
United States
Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer and Elie
Wiesel
Ireland
Samuel Beckett
Soviet emigres
Joseph Brodsky and Andrei Sinyavsky
Soviet Union
Anatoli Rybakov
Mexico
Carlos Fuentes
South Africa
Athol Fugard and Nadine Gordimer
Great Britain
Graham Greene and Harold Pinter
France
Eugene Ionesco and Milan Kundera
Poland
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Hungary
Janos Kis
Egypt
Anis Mansour
Italy
Alberto Moravia
Canada
Mordecai Richler
September 1989

Surprisingly, one of the harshest criticisms of Rushdie came from honored

and acclaimed The Christian Science
Monitor, which printed a very lengthy
"opinion" letter of a doctoral candidate
in Islamic history at Princeton University. The thrust of this was that Rushdie
had abused his freedom by ridiculing
Moslem beliefs in a way which was certain to offend.
But for this he should be murdered?
The Moslems, the article holds, have
a reality which is founded on absolute
submission to the will of god, as it was
received through divine revelation and
elucidated through centuries of Islamic
jurisprudence. As to Rushdie:
To communicate
one's own
doubt is one thing, but to do so by
deliberately debasing and demeaning what others still cherish as
sacred is to cross an altogether different line.

March 5
L'Osseruatore Romano, the Vatican
newspaper, said that millions of Moslems had been offended by the Rushdie
novel.
The very attachment to our
own faith induces us to deplore
that which is irreverent and blasphemous in the book's content.
Pope John Paul II said nothing on the
subject even as late as this. L'Osseruatore
Romano did not mention the death sentence imposed on Rushdie by Khomeini. Criticism of Rushdie dominated
the article.
It is certainly fair to ask what
kind of art or liberty we are dealing
with when, in their name, people's
most profound dimension is attacked and their sensitivity as
believers is offended.
In Reggio Emilia, Italy, unknown atAmerican Atheist

tackers smashed the windows of four

bookstores that displayed the novel. A
fire broke out at a bookshop owned by
Mondadori, Rushdie's Italian publisher.
In Ravenna, Italy, a group calling itself
Guardians of the Revolution threatened
to blow up the tomb of Dante Alighieri
unless the mayor of the city disavowed
Dante's description of the Prophet Mohammed. In the Divine Comedy, Dante
had described Mohammed as condemned to one of the lower circles of
hell, split in two, for having promoted
schism.
The Akademie der Kunste in West
Berlin refused to allow a reading from
the book on its premises "for security
reasons."
People for the American Way took
advantage of the Salman Rushdie affair
to appeal for new membership with a
full-page ad in The New York Times.
Bush took weeks to get around to
acknowledging that something was
amiss and then only said, in a weakkneed fashion:
However offensive that book
may be, inciting murder and offering rewards for its perpetration
are deeply offensive to the norms
of civilized behavior.
Jimmy Carter, who studied the Moslem religion when he was preparing for
Middle East negotiations, wrote to the
New York Times that Rushdie's book "is
a direct insult" to millions of Moslems.
Another protest broke out in Rushdie's native land, India. In Srinagar, capital of Jammu on the Pakistani border,
and Anantnag, in northern Kashmir,
demonstrators threw stones at cars and
shops - with at least fifty persons sustaining injuries as the police used tear
gas and bullets to quell the uprisings.
Markets, stores, businesses, and offices

Austin, Texas

were shuttered as the clashes proceeded.

Ahmed Jebril, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of PalestineGeneral Command, who opposes Yasir
Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine
Liberation Organization, threatened, to
the British Reuters News Service, to
personally kill Rushdie, "... in defense
of religion, God and His prophet." The
State Department of the United States
immediately condemned this language
and called on Syria to make certain that
the Palestinian did not carry out his
threat. The group, based in Damascus,
is within the jurisdiction of the Syrian
government.
The British Library put Rushdie's
book on its "restricted" list, meaning it
could be read only on request, in a
guarded room.
The chief rabbi of Israel's Ashkenazim,
Avraham Shapira, announced that the
book, which he described as "an affront
to the dignity of religious belief," would
be banned in Israel because it "offends
religious sensibilities." The chief rabbi
cited
a law in Israel which states that it
is forbidden to publish books that
offend the sensibilities of believers
in any religion.
But an Israeli company, Keter Publishing,
had planned a Hebrew version, giving a
translator a sizeable advance for his
work. Nonetheless Shapira spelled out
his views in an article in the popular
Hebrew dailyMaariv about the "inhuman
and immoral" book.
Every religious person everywhere in the world feels personally
offended by its publication.

issue with Shapira, basing Rushdie's

right to write on the principle of freedom
of thought. Nonetheless, the new Flag of
the Torah Party's head Rabbi Avraham
Ravitz said he would be appalled if anyone would describe Moses as having
enjoyed the company of prostitutes and
he also condemned the book. Even Yael
Lotan, a left-wing literary critic and proponent of dialogue with the PLO, expressed opposition to the publication of
the book based on "local Moslem religious sensibilities." Only Aharon Amir,
whose works include both poetry and
prose, opposed any concession to religious orthodoxy - Islamic or Jewish.

March 6
The Revolutionary Justice Organization, based in Lebanon, announced that
it had completed plans to kill Rushdie.

March 9
Britain expelled about thirty Iranians
on security grounds because of the
death threat to Rushdie. That nation
also closed the Iranian consulate in
Hong Kong, which is still a British
colony.
The United States announced that
30,000 Iranian citizens are in the United
States on student visas, with some
10,000 to 15,000 being activists with
sympathies for Khomeini's fundamentalist Shiite regime.

March 10
In the Malaysian city of Kota Bahru,
an estimated 10,000 Moslems burned
United States flags and pictures of The
Satanic Verses. The gathering in that
nation was organized by the opposition
Pan Malaysian Islamic Party. There
were no reported disturbances.

March 11
Haaretz, a liberal Hebrew daily, took

September 1989

The speaker of the Iranian Parlia-

Page 25

Murders over The Satanic Verses were

not confined to Third World Countries:
Belgium was the scene of two killings.
Here the widow of the leader of Belgium's
Moslems threatens a journalist shortly
after the murders of her husband and an
aid on March 29,1989.

March 20
Rioters broke windows and spraypainted buildings in a Moslem neighborhood in Sheffield, England. Media reporters saw windows smashed, small
trees pulled up, paint sprayed on cars,
homes, and religious centers as well as
painted slogans demanding Rushdie be
left in peace. There were no reported
injuries. "Pecks die" was scrawled on a
mosque.
In Israel, Adnan Husseini, director of
the Supreme Islamic Council in Jerusalem, said,

ment, Hojatoleslam Hashemi Rafsanjani, opined that the furor over the novel
could be resolved by burning all existing
copies of the book and banning it forever.
His statement, made during prayers at
Teheran University, was that the solution to
the strangest and rarest crisis in
history is to issue a strict order to
seize all copies in the entire world
and burn them.
If it stays, it will remain forever
a source of rebellion and it would
be impossible that peace would
come between real Moslems and
the supporters of this book.
If those who ignited this flame
do not find a suitable solution, no
one knows where it willlead to.

March 13
The March 13issue of Newsweek was
banned in Malaysia, and the March 9 issue of the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern
Economic Review, for printing extracts
from the book.
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia refused
to support Iran's death order against
Rushdie. TwoIranian government envoys
had been touring Islamic states seeking
support for Iran's stance on the Rushdie
affair: Ahmad Jannati, who was in Bahrain on March 12, and Mohammad Yazdi, who was in Nigeria.
Page 26

March 14
Indonesia and Singapore banned the
book on this date.
Iran was unable to convince the fortysix-member Organization of Islamic
Conferences meeting in Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia, to uphold. Khomeini's death
sentence. Iran's foreign minister did not
attend. But Mohammad Khodadadi,
head of the Foreign Ministry's Islamic
Organization Affairs representing Iran,
said that Rushdie's book would be "the
most important issue to be debated by
the conference as far as we are concerned. We willaddress the conference
for their support for Iran's views on this
score." He failed completely in this task.

March 16
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto sent
police to protect the United States Embassy during a demonstration; rightwing political foes now cast her as a
westernized defender of Rushdie. There
was a demand for the resignation of Interior Minister Aitzaz Ashan who was
accused of ordering the policeto suppress
the march.

March 17
Fifty thousand Moslems left their
mosques and marched through the
capital city of Dhaka to the Bangladesh
government's headquarters to demand
the death of author Salman Rushdie.
September 1989

Islam is a giant which a small

book like this doesn't hurt. We
don't care about the book, really.
We understand Islam well. We are
proud of Mohammed and we believe what this man publishes
about Islam is not important.

March 29
Both Imam Abdullah Ahdal, the Saudi
leader of Moslems in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, discussed
above, and an aide, a librarian at the
Center, were shot to death, point blank,
twice, once in the head and once in the
neck from close range, in the Center in
Brussels, on March 29 by three hooded
men. Later an Islamic group in Lebanon,
Soldiers of Truth, claimed credit for the
death. The murderers were never found.
Subsequently W H. Smith, Britain's
biggest bookseller (430 stores), withdrew the book from the two Bradford
outlets.

April
William Collins Sons (the Londonbased division of Rupert Murdoch's
publishing empire) commissioned two
women to gather documents on the
Rushdie affair, but just weeks later, in
May, got cold feet and decided not to
publish the book in England for Viking.
The excuses were endless: the book
would not be a commercial success; the
book was not objective. Collins simply
wanted out anyway it could get out.
American Atheist

April 21
A Church of Christ minister in Pensacola, Florida, opined in a long newspaper
article that Rushdie was getting exactly
what he deserved, and he used chapter
and verse of the Bible to illustrate that:
King Jesus recognized a principle that Rushdie ... would do well
to remember, "Do not judge, or
you too willbe judged; for with the
measure you use, it will be measured to you."
In another place he said, "He
who lives by the sword willdie by
the sword." Paul chooses this
principle by writing, "For whatever a man plants, that is what he
willalso harvest."
The principle illustrated in all of
these sayings is, if you are looking
for trouble you will find it. . . .
Rushdie was raised around Moslems. He knew the teachings of
Islam condemn its opponents to
death. Rushdie knew when he
wrote his book he was shoving his
hand into a hornets' nest. A man
who does such things should not
complain that he is being stung.
He closed his remarks with a referral
to Leviticus 24: 16:
Whoever blasphemes the name
of the Lord shall be put to death.
The whole community shall stone
him.

May 2
The Austrian Students Association
had to hold its reading in a tent because
professors refused to allow the event to
take place on University of Austria
grounds.

May 8
Harper & Row (the New York-based
division of Rupert Murdoch's publishing
empire) signed a contract with Daniel
Pipes to publish his book, The Rushdie
Affair. The manuscript was accepted on
Austin, Texas

May 31 for publication. On June 23, May 11

President Ali Khomeini said that Iran
Harper & Row also discovered that
such a book would not be a commercial stilldemanded the execution of Rushdie:
success. Mr. Pipes will be published in
The decision made about Sal1990,instead, by the Birch Lane Press in
New York.
man Rushdie is still valid. As I have
already said, this is a bullet for
Meanwhile, the persons who book
which there is a target. It has been
television shows were complaining that
shot. It willone day sooner or later
prominent authors would not appear on
hit the target.
shows such as "The MacNeil/Lehrer
Newshour" or "Nightline" to discuss
Rushdie or The Satanic Verses.
Even the official Soviet news agency,
The bookstore at Wayne State Uni- Tass, defended the Ayatollah Ruhollah
versity in Detroit, Michigan, refused to Khomeini. It said that, as Iran's spiritual
stock the book. When there was an leader, he "had no choice" but to impose
attempt to have faculty members draw a death sentence on Rushdie.
up a petition calling for a boycott of the
.
store, a good number of professors re-',,),:
But perhaps Imam Khomeini,
fused to sign, being fearful of becoming
- the'supreme religious authority in
targets for fundamentalist Moslems.
Iran, had "no_choice proceeding
from Koran teachings other than
denouncing a man who has insulted
What does [The SaIslam. The denunciation was nothing more, by the way, than the
tanic Verses] dissent
position of a religious leader. The
Iranian government has not confrom? Certainly not
demned Rushdie to death.
0

from people's right to

faith, though I have
none. It dissents
most clearly from
imposed orthodoxies
0/ all types, from the
view that the world is
quite clearly This and
not That. It dissents
from the end of
debate.
- Salman Rushdie
Essay in Newsweek

September 1989

Tass, however, did not make any

statement until the U.S. State Department criticized the Soviet government's
silence on the issue, saying, "It is high
time the Soviets speak up." Actually this
was a case of the kettle calling the pot
black. The state department also asked
Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A.
Shevardnadze to raise the issue in his
talks with Iranian officials the weekend
of February 25/26. Britain also pressed
him to ask Khomeini to give a reprieve
to Rushdie. But subsequently the Islamic
Republic News Agency said that "there
was no mention of the affair in Shevardnadze's speech."
The Soviet Union's ambassador to
the United States, Yuri Dubinin, stated
that the furor over Rushdie's novel was
extremely dangerous and depended for
a solution on respect of everyone's religious feelings.
Yet,as the situation worsened between
England and Iran, the Soviet Union sugPage 27

gested it might be willingto mediate.

June 3
Khomeini died June 3,1989. Immediately Kalim Siddiqi, director of the Moslem Institute in London, issued a statement that:

himself said that the "new interview is

wholly false and, in the present situation, highly irresponsible," since it was
"lurid and sensational." It was billed as
Rushdie's calling the Iranian revolution
"a force for evil."

July 12
There is no hope for Rushdie.
There's no question of the death
sentence being lifted just because
the judge who passed sentence
has died.
This is not a political issue. This
is an Islamic law which Rushdie
has broken, and the punishment
for this crime is death.

June 17
Nonetheless a second demonstration
was held in Bradford, West Yorkshire,
England, on June 17.At that time young
demonstrators broke away from the
rally against Rushdie and ran through
the main shopping district assaulting
people and damaging cars and shops.
Police reported forty-four arrests.

June 18
The British newspaper Mail printed
what it described as Rushdie's first interview after being forced into hiding by
death threats. He spoke bitterly of the
Khomeini revolution:

The Moslem Action Group, of Britain,

asked a Magistrate Court there to prosecute Rushdie for blaspheming Islam by
writing his novel The Satanic Verses,
but the court refused on the grounds
that the English blasphemy laws only
protect Christianity. The Moslems appealed and the High Court Justice permitted them to challenge the ruling at a
three-judge panel of the High Court.
The barrister for the group announced
to the media that if the group should
win, it will ask the magistrate to serve
the author, in hiding since February 28,
with a subpoena.

July 31
The BBC in Great Britain released a
production titled "The Blasphemers'
Banquet," celebrating renowned blasphemers, but it came close to cancellation because of protests led by the archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie protests which mobilized the Moslems
in Britain.

August 3
It ate most of the people that
supported it. It ate the unions, it
ate the women's groups, it ate the
socialists and left behind only its
own bloated members.

June 19
The next day, Ameena Meer, the
author of the interview, revealed that it
had been conducted on December 24,
1988. She had interviewed Rushdie for
the New York-based literary magazine,
Bomb, and the article was published in
its spring edition, in March. The Bomb
sold the article to the Mail, which insisted that it was the "real thing" and
had been done in June 1989. Rushdie
Page 28

A man accidentally blew himself up in

a London hotel while constructing a
bomb to attack Rushdie.

August 25
American Booksellers Association
announced that it did not want to "insult
people." "We respect people of the Islamic faith." But more than 4,000 independent bookstores in the United States
carried the book.

In York, England, a bomb shattered

the window of the Viking Penguin bookstore in the center of the city. It was
found before it went off and people were
safely evacuated. There were bombs
outside Penguin bookstores in three
other cities: Guildford, thirty miles
southwest of London, in Nottingham in
central England, and in Peterborough
seventy-five miles north of London.
They appeared to be identical to a bomb
made from a length of metal pipe filled
with explosives which exploded outside
a store in central London earlier in September.

October 3
Seventy-two-year old Ahmed Deedat,
a scholar from South Africa, demanded
that Moslems read the book. To prove
that reading it would convince Westerners to suppress it, he rented the Royal
Albert Hall in London, and began to
read the book to 6,000 assembled Moslems. He read those parts of the book
which took aim at Britain and the West
in general to prove that Rushdie was
abusing his adopted country.
The Dutch Foreign Minister canceled
a trip to Teheran. British airlines received
bomb threats, causing security delays at
London's Heathrow Airport.
French President Francois Mitterrand condemned the death threat and
said:
All dogmatism that through
violence undermines freedom of
thought and the right to free expression is, in my view, absolute
evil. The moral and spiritual progress of humanity is linked to the
recoil [from] all fanaticisms.
The hard-core religious stand in the
United States was that reflected in
Proverbs 30:33:

September 1989
A bomb exploded, on Great Marlborough Street, near a Penguin bookstore in London's West End on September 3.
September 1989

For as the churning of milk produces butter, and as twisting the

nose produces blood, so stirring
up anger produces strife.
American Atheist

1\\\Sf\\.lH

cani be/ita ~

Police officers hold back a crowd of several thousand Moslems chanting slogans and protesting The Satanic Verses during
a demonstration in Hyde Park on January 28, 1989.

It was thought that perhaps Rushdie

needed to prepare to "reap what one
sows."
And how does it allboil down? Salman
Rushdie wrote a somewhat senseless
book, acknowledged by all to be a fantasy, in which he made side swipes at the
religionof Islam.The AyatollahKhomeini,
knowing a good red herring when he
saw one, seized upon the issue of the
book to create a phantom enemy, of
which all the great decadent religions
are in need - and he would destroy the
world with it.

October 10
The Frankfurt Book Fair is traditionally and historically the largest and the
best in the world. One would have
thought that the issue of Rushdie would
be raised there - and it was on October
10, the day preceding its opening. The
director of the fair, Peter Weidhass, in a
Austin, Texas

press conference, called on Iranian

President Hashemi Rafsanjani to revoke
the call for the death of Salman Rushdie.
Saying that he was speaking "in the
name of the worldwide community of
publishers assembled here," he ruled
that Iran could not participate. in the fair
"as long as this murder threat has not
been withdrawn."
Iran was, however, staying with the
June statement of the Iranian president
that "there is no one in Iran who would
want to or could take back that prescription."
. Generally, the book fair is opened
with pleasantries, but this time the director spoke darkly that "it would appear
that the tide of anti-p.ogressive thought
is rising all over the world."
There has been a call for murder, a call for murder which is
directed against the most fundaSeptember 1989

mental interests of the people who

make 'up this fair.
The curse of this murder threat
was also extended to cover the
publishers of this book and the
booksellers offering it for sale.
He then apologized for the presence
of increased security measures at the
fair, which expected 200,000 visitors.
However, both Viking Penguin of Great
Britain and Penguin of the United States
announced on the same day that the
book would not be in their display
stands at the fair.
Boersenverein, the trade group of all
(about 100) West German (and some
Austrian and Swiss) bookstores and
publishers, announced on the same day
that it had decided "to postpone publication ... in light of a variety of threats
that the publishers had received in past
months." Publishing by the group, it was
Page 29

decided, would help to discourage any

retaliations against any single member.
Weidhass actually made his statement into a speech:

"Put Honor Back on the Agenda," and

"Hypocrisy in High Places." Al-Ghamdi,
explaining why the picketing was called,
said,

forty-six Moslem countries.

Ishtiaq Ahmend, spokesman for the
Bradford, England, Council of Mosques,
explained that:

The hatred we have seen in this

case, the aggression against an
author, his publishers and booksellers, reveal to my eyes a basic,
underlying phenomenon - a problem between the industrialized
l.,Vorldand the out-stripped world
of the so-called "developing countries." It is the modern age's historic burden of guilt.
The Islamic Republic is an expression of defense against the
cultural engulfment of the Islamic
world by the culture of the modern
age. It reflects the failure of a
thoughtless polidiJ of modernization in the "underdeveloped" countries.
The book fair is in fact a dialogue
of the First World with itself: More
than 80% of the world's entire
book trading is actually carried
out by only a dozen of the over
nin~~ countries represented at
the Frankfurt fair.
The historic horizon of the modern age must be the successful
synthesis of the world's cultures.
This calls for the combination of
cultural forces, not threats of murder. It calls for the expansion of
cultural dialogue, not fundamentalist separatism.

Since the sensationalism has receded, what remains is a genuine

and permanent bitterness in the
hearts and minds of ordinary Moslems.

We just cannot let go of this

issue. It is not just about a writer.
It is about whether we can live as
a religious community without
fear of indignity and abuse.

Penguin publishers were meantime

keeping a twenty-four-hour duty police
officer and three security guards at its
entrance hall which is equipped with a
metal detector.
Naturally the British Guardian newspaper got to Rushdie about the picketing and he replied, "I am not the enemy
of my own people," apparently referring
to Moslems.

Meanwhile, Labor Party members of

Parliament who rely heavily on Moslem
votes, were urging the banning of the
paperback publication on the basis of
"the deep offense" it would cause to
Moslem sensibilities.
By January 29, Viking Penguin announced that there would be no paperback edition of The Satanic Verses. The
announcement stated that the publishers
would not produce the paperback "as
long as there was any risk to its staff, its
book shops, or the public." Reports
then indicated that Rushdie was charging that Penguin had a contractual obligation to publish the paperback edition
and was pushing for it. His wife,Marianne
Wiggins, who lives apart from him,
added that they were not planning a
divorce and that Rushdie would have
some financial problems if the paperback was not published. Meanwhile, she
was successfully making a publicity tour
for her own Penguin paperback publication, John Dollar. Naturally, the Chicago
Tribune would take the opportunity to
take a swat at her also, and in short
punchy terms:

January 1990
From this October incident forward,
little or nothing was heard of either The
Satanic Verses or Salman Rushdie until
January 1990. At that time Mugram alGhamdi, chairman of the United Kingdom Action Committee on Islamic
Affairs, called for a five-day demonstrations, outside the offices of the publishers. Moslems from all of the Moslem
communities across Britain took turns
during the picketing. Leaflets handed
out were captioned, "No Rushdie Porn,"
Page 30

Ithink ifsome of the people who

protested about the book took the
trouble to read it, they would see
that it is not unsympathetic to
them.
The Knight-News-Tribune chain, affiliated with the Philadelphia Inquirer, then
had its London correspondent attempt
a follow-up story. Her report was that
Rushdie was growing increasingly paranoid, alternating "between self-pity and
rushes of angry egotism" as he remains
under twenty-four-hour-a-day
police
guard. In 1989,that guard cost the British taxpayers almost $800,000. Viking
Penguin Books also is said to have spent
$6 million on security to protect its
stores and employees. In Britain alone
Penguin received 5,000 threatening
letters and twenty-five bomb warnings.
Five incendiary devices were discovered
in its shops. And its executives have
moved to other addresses, not published.
Absolutely under siege as Iran continued to demand that all hardbacks be
withdrawn from circulation and that the
paperback version be abandoned, Penguin was at risk of losing its business in
September 1989

Wiggins, like her husband, is

forty-two, and has led a calamitous
life: a kidney removal at nine,
marriage at seventeen, divorce
and single parenthood at twentytwo, her father's suicide in her
twenties, cancer of the colon in
her thirties, and now this.
Later Penguin backed off its original
statement somewhat, indicating that
sometime, somewhen, in the future,
American Atheist

there could possibly be a paperback edition. Rushdie himself is insisting that the
paperback edition be issued; Iran and
the Moslems insist that the hardback be
withdrawn from sale and from libraries
and that no paperback be issued. Penguin has asked Rushdie to forego the
paperback edition and he has refused.
Non-publishing, he states, would be
suppression, "banned by the back
door." But many critics see Rushdie
only as "an unrepentant multimillionaire
who is still greedy for more [money]."

continuing reports of a "high level of activity" by the Lebanon-based Hezbollah

(Party of God) Islamic extremists group.

February 14, Valentine's Day

It's very odd when you think of

how much has been written about
them as the bedrock of European
free speech, to see what actually
happened to those guys in their
lifetimes. They were banned, persecuted, reviled, and accused of
blasphemy.

This was, of course, the anniversary

of the issuance of the death order by the
Ayatollah Khomeini and the 366th day in
which Rushdie had been in hiding.
The American Penguin office announced that it now had 30,000 abusive
letters related to the book. But it also
confirmed that it had sold one million
English-language copies (740,000 in the
United States and 220,000 in Britain)
plus thousands more in fifteen other languages. That totals up to a cool $20 million in sales, in just seventeen months.
Penguin estimates that its profit on the
book has been $3.4 million - which is
a fairly unlikely story.
Meantime, the Moslems fume. Freedom of speech in the West, they point
out, is constrained by blasphemy laws,
and by the laws of libeland slander. Moslems point out that their religion forbids
blasphemy, and requires that each Moslem defend his faith.

How nice. He noticed .

What now?

February 4
Rushdie prepared a lecture to be
delivered by Harold Pinter, a playwright
friend, on February 7 at the Institute of
Contemporary Arts in London, on the
theme, "Is Nothing Sacred?" This was
preceded by a 7,000-word essay published in a London newspaper, The Independent, on February 4. The Independent also put out an interview of Rushdie. The essay was as trivial as the book.
Can you imagine this author, condemned
without hope of redemption, saying to
rabid fundamentalist Moslem nuts that
his book:
. . . celebrates hybridity,impurity,
intermingling, the transformation
that comes of new and unexpected
combinations of human beings,
cultures, ideas, politics, movies,
songs. I rejoice in mongrelization
and fear the absolutism of the
Pure.
He then asks the Moslems for "a
moment of good will,a moment in which
we may all accept that the other parties
are acting, have acted, in good faith."
Nonetheless, Newsweek purchased
the essay and published it in its February
12, 1990, issue, along with its own personal interview with Rushdie.
During his interview, Rushdie told
The Independent that he has been reading Enlightenment authors such as
Rousseau, Diderot, and Voltaire and
that he saw himself in their company:
Austin, Texas

- Salman Rushdie
Essay in Newsweek

But all of this was simply a harbinger

of actions to come.

February 7
Apparently Rushdie wanted to deliver
the lecture/essay himself, but Scotland
Yard dissuaded him from it, and Harold
Pinter went ahead with the audience of
200. Police guarded the building and security guards searched handbags and
screened the audience with metal detectors.

February 9
Rushdie had an immediate reply from
Iran when the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
renewed a call for his death: the fatwa
(religious decree) "... about the writer
of the blasphemous book The Satanic
Verses is still valid and must be implemented." Britain imposed a fullsecurity
alert at military bases and airports immediately in response to the repeated
death call against Rushdie. There were
September 1989

When all is said and done

Well, that then is another tip of the
submerged mire under the thin top on
which modern culture floats. Everyone
is talking about the last decade of the
twentieth century, and all that rot But at
any time the religious can have at us
again - not alone Atheists, but the entire culture. We are going down the
corridor of time carrying with us ideas
which should have been shed 10,000
years ago. We are encumbered with irrationality, burdened with hatreds, entrenched in the muck of religious trivia.
And despite the opportunity that reaches
out - humankind is not going to go
anywhere but back again to medievalism, locked in tight with the new technology and beyond any hope. ~
Page 31

Lessons from

The Satanic Verses

A bookstore owner
who dared to sell
"Rushdie porn"
reflects upon the
practical meaning of
freedom of speech in
the United States.
Is the First Amendment
nullified because some
say a book "is obscene,
blasphemous, sinful,
controversial, and in
poor taste"?

Conrad Goeringer is the director of

the Tucson Chapter of American
Atheists.

Conrad Goeringer
Page 32

1)

espite threats from the late

Ayatollah Khomeini and a $6
million price tag on the head of
its author Salman Rushdie, the
book The Satanic Verses remained on
the New York Times list until the fall of
1989. It is well into its fourteenth hardback printing, which is an impressive
feat for any modern fiction novel. Salman
Rushdie to date remains unrepentant,
insisting that his contemporary allegory
of good versus evil was not designed to
offend Moslem fundamentalists. The
book, with its attractive red, black and
silver cover, is now openly sold in most
chain bookstores, and the threats of violence by groups such as the Islamic Revolutionary Army are, perhaps quite deliberately, forgotten.
The ayatollah moved on to discover
and create new excuses for raising the
fervor of his Islamic fundamentalist
counterrevolution.
The head of the
Iranian parliament has called for the
murder of Britons and Americans, presumably because it would aid the uprising on the West Bank of the Gaza. It is
difficult to comprehend how (a) Iranian
"hit squads" leaving Tehran and flying
to, say, (b) London or (c) Boise, Idaho,
can substantially affect the well-being of
persons on (d) the West Bank in Gaza
by murdering other persons in (b) or in
(c). Fundamentalists had long believed
that the earth, besides being "young"
(i.e., less than 10,000years of age) could
also be somewhat flat. Islamic geography apparently employs a different
notion of space-time. In fact, Rushdie's
novel speaks of freezing time and history; "all that matters" are events and
persoris after the time of The Prophet.
All else is profane, or does not matter.
The same may be said of geography,
and all those infidel persons inhabiting
infidel and strange lands, and having infideland strange ideas. Indeed, Khomeini
was attempting to freeze history, to interpret all events in space-time through
September 1989

the narrow focus of the Koran.

Perhaps in a few years, people willdiscover Rushdie's once-controversial
tome on the shelves of used bookstores
and remember a senile, sclerotic religious bigot demanding the death of its
author. Typical of Khomeini, they will
mumble. Few people might recall the
plot or its characters like Gibreel Farishta, or Saladin Chamcha; they willinstead
see in their mind's eye television images
of mobs storming an embassy in Pakistan, or a rag effigy of Rushdie being
burned in Tehran.
Forgotten, too, will be some of the
other outrages against The Satanic
Verses, perpetrated not by fanatics in
the Middle East, but by social, political,
and economic figures in the West. An
Islamic fundamentalist 7,000 miles from
our shores can do little to threaten our
Billof Rights; a corporate executive ensconced in New York - well, that's a different story.

Of fear and loathing

One would expect that in the face of
such threats by a religious hoodlum like
Khomeini, the entire political and literary establishment of the Western world
would defiantly resist, and embrace
Rushdie's book as a symbol of principle
(regardless of its literary merit). After all,
here is a theocrat - and not even a
good Christian one at that! - telling
people thousands of miles from the border of his Islamic dictatorship what they
mayor may not read, publish, believe all based upon what happens to offend
Moslem dogma and sensibilities. Indeed!
One would expect outrage, defiance, resistance. In the United States (after all!),
a nation which explicitly supports freedom of expression, one would expect to
see Moslem religious propaganda outlets to be, literally, under siege by picketers. One would expect the publishing
and bookstore industry to stand behind
Viking Press, eagerly awaiting shipAmerican Atheist

ments of The Satanic Verses, proudly

and defiantly displaying them in front
windows and advertising them in newspapers.
One would expect major political figures to unconditionally support the
right of people to read this book, regardless of their own religious or social
biases, and regardless of any religious or
social message Mr. Rushdie might be
conveying in the pages of his novel.
One would expect the bevy of "new
age" political celebrities, so eager to often embrace bizarre philosophies or
fads, to at least issue a statement of support in favor of freedom of expression.
One would expect a declaration from
the Congress of the United States, indeed a blizzard of resolutions from
unions, trade associations, educational
groups, civic organizations, lodges,
clubs, assemblies, anywhere people
congregated for just about any purpose.
And from the British - who stood up
to Adolf Hitler, who in a moment of
jingoistic fury would send their aging
fleet halfway around the world to recapture an island of sheep claimed by generals from Argentina - one would expect even more outrage.
Or from France, Germany, Italy, all of
those European countries we consider
to be part of the enlightened "democratic" West for whom we fought against the
Nazi horde so they could be "free" could we not expect at least a trifle of
support for Mr. Rushdie?
We could expect ...
What we have discovered instead is a
deeply ingrained timidity when the issue
of fundamental civil liberties is raised.
One is not talking about figures so
loathed in our history; we are not talking about communists, pornographers,
or the targets of "tabloid television." We
are not dealing with a fringe political idea
or so unpopular a concept as, say, our
own Atheism. We are instead dealing
with a novelist, somebody most people
would never hear of in the course of
their daily lives were they not part of
that insular group which consumes
Austin, Texas

"modern fiction" with the appetite of a

glutton. After all, Viking printed only
50,000 copies of The Satanic Verses in
first edition hardback, knowing that a
goodly portion of them might be sold to

remainder houses, or sent to the "bargain table" of chain bookstores. Rushdie

had already written other novels like
Grimus, Midnight's Children (winner of
the 1981Booker Prize), Shame (winner

"At the end of his wrestling match with the

Archangel Gibreel, the Prophet Mahound falls
into his customary, exhausted, post-revelatory
sleep .... When he comes to his senses in that
high wilderness there is nobody to be seen, no
winged creatures crouch on rocks, and he
jumps to his feet, filled with the urgency of his
news. 'It was the Devil,' he says aloud to the
empty air, making it true by giving it voice.
'The last time, it was Shaitan.' That is what he
has heard in his listening, that he has been
tricked, that the Devil came to him in the
guise of the archangel, so that the verses he
memorized, ... were not the real thing but its
diabolic opposite, not godly, but satanic. He returns to the city as quickly as he can, to expunge the foul verses that reek of brimstone
and sulphur ....
"After the repudiation of the Satanic verses,
the Prophet Mahound returns home .... "
- "Mahound"
The Satanic Verses

September 1989

Page 33

DISOBEY THE

AYATOLLAH
AN OPEN LETTERAS

OUT CENSORSHIP AND THE SATANIC VERSES...

r I Salman Rushdle

Buy AND
Read the

Kh meni hos demanded thot nod' hat overnments

of the French Prix du Meilleur
Iran's Ayolollah
THE SATANIC VERSES, on b' lEuropeon counLivre Etranger), and a book
be executed for ~~;~~~ntro..,.ersiol book. !""'any Ar t~:re ore legal bottles
d
everywhe~?
bond
in"
to
this threat; ev~n Englo;HE SATANIC VERSES
about Nicaragua, The Jaguar
tries hove ,?ve ndamentolists ore trYlO9 to ban
where tslomic f~
bl
hemy laws.
.
d and removed
Smile. Rushdie was a very bright
ul"'~erth,e nhoto~'~~Sd~~~e~,choin book~ellers O~C\\il~~c:len,e
hom m~ny
light in a relatively small social
Here
t e m e hei helves There was a
lipsarvke
Rushdie's ~?velltom t ~~d
even ~e\i9iouSleadersRP~X~':pronoun,ed
the
and intellectual world. It took
mojcr pol.ltlC~h '~:~~h
sentence e~einst Sel~en o~~regations not to read .
condemh,ng
e
" end told theIr respectIve c
Ayatollah Khomeini to push
book IIblasphemous
\"
s bodies in banning
il.
. h
Ie of governments and re ~aloullobscene/' blcsThe Satanic Verses into the
At issue here ISI. ~ rc
body happens to conSl er
t Should libraries
and censoring whlC sO:~sia\ subversive, or in poor tcs ;~ups2 And should
second and third printings and
phemous, sinful. con rc
bo~k of organized ~ressureig dam~nlal commitbeyond - into the news and
and bookstores ~;:~:~tviolence
by abandonlO;e~~i~nu~nl soy "NO"I
onto the best-seller list.
::~~:~fr:~~oo~dof,:~":(lhi'S f~n~~I~~~~~a~\~\~ le~~:~rs ~~:)r:o~~~~:
Solman
us f '
are not port of large ,c a,nsbon or censor some other
When Khomeini did throw
hich
stores, many. a :merica there is a gr~up tryIng to a ozine. 'There is a growdown his gauntlet to the world,
somewhere In
ovie or a mUSICVIdeo or ~ g f m library books to
book, or perhtps a m wHch "monitor" everyt~Ing d'o We are rapidly
the world hesitated, stumbled,
ing n~mb~r a gr~bt~ sd~oo\s, even music on t e~~t I~~ernment "pro!ect
read,ng~ In thfr\ htening tendency ~o dem~E~~ol
doesn't agree WIth, h
and hid. There was a thin veneer
developing 0 I 9
d from malencl SO
'fy hal happens when I e
of disapproval, even a mild cuUSNfrom ourse 'tk a~ollah Khomeni merely typl
own home~grown
The aC,Iions
:ra is institutionalized. We have o~e hear, write, publish
riosity. Who was Salman Rush,ensorshlP menteh y t to tell us what we may reed, s h~ keep silent over the
cyatollahs who won !'ti,al end religious \ead~rOWN
ogenda of what to
die? What does this book say?
and think. W~ have po ~because they have their
Why does it "offend" Moslems?
Rushdie affo", perhop
d THE SATANIC VERSES
Sold at
,ensor and bon,
h 'ght to purchase and rea
Deeper, more profound quesYoushouldhavet
e rt
~
cnd ony olher book.
t Conrad Goerlnger
Cost
tions about civil liberties were
ignored.
B. Dalton and Waldenbooks,
the nation's two largest chain
Visit us this weekend
bookstores, quickly announced
at the Fourth Avenue Street Fair
that they were withdrawing
and Arizona Spring Book Fair
The Satanic Verses from their
shelves. The atmosphere at
Holiday Inn-180 W. Broadway
Viking Press, though, was one
We Buy, Sell & Trade Quality Books
of open defiance to Khomeini
USED NEW. RARE
- extra security was hired and
Mon. - Sat. 10 -10, Sun. 12 - 10
Viking's British division an431 NthAve 792-9551
nounced that it was going
4th Avenue-It's a Year 'Round Affair
through with plans for the British edition. Yes, the book would
Me: 85705. {By now I realize that this is
(telephone conversation)
be printed; it soon fellupon independent
not the usual procedure when I order
booksellers, many of them members of Ingram: Ingram, this is Shirley, may I
books. Are they verifying who I am?)
the American Booksellers' Association,
help you?
to distribute The Satanic Verses.
Me: Hello, Shirley, I'm calling from Ingram: What is your address?
GOODBOOKS in Tucson, Arizona, Me: 431 N. Fourth Avenue.
Timid in Tucson
and
I wanted to see about ordering
My own experience with The Satanic
some
copies of The Satanic Verses. Ingram: We do not have this book in
Verses may be somewhat typical of
stock anywhere, or in any of our
I don't have an ISBN or a catalogue
what independent booksellers throughwarehouses.
number
for
ordering
though
...
out the country encountered. As the
controversy over the book grew, I de- Ingram: (interrupting): We have no in- Me: (frustrated) Yes, I know, you said
that ...
cided to carry the novel (most of my information on this book. What is your
ventory is used and rare books; the new
control number?
Ingram: Would you like to place an
books are in specialized areas of interest
order?
Me:
Last
name
Goeringer,
G-O-E-R-Isuch as art, photography and AmeriN-G-E-R,
first
name
Conrad.
Me: (sighing relief, then whooping for
cana). I contacted my new book distrib.0

In

In

C 1

In

6atanic
SVer5e5

'II

L-~::::::---~=---

utor, the Ingram Co.

Page 34

Ingram: What is your zip code?

September

1989

~~

__ $1498

joy!) YES! (I love you, Shirley!)

American Atheist

.'

I never did meet Shirley, but I sure did from customers (many of whom purchased the novel) - and now even the
receive shipments of The Satanic
chain bookstores carry Salman RushVerses.
My next task was advertising. Copies die's book. Sales remain brisk: it is now
were nowhere to be found in Tucson ex- "safe" to sell The Satanic Verses, and
Khomeini's fanatics appear to have
cept at two independent bookstores.
Like my own supplies, theirs seemed to gone in search of new targets.
It was an outrage that Waldenbooks
be intermittent, depending on the printed availability of the book. Inside most and B. Dalton, in effect, gave in to the
new books is a numbering system on threats of a religious bigot thousands of
the verso page which indicates which miles from their corporate offices. Walprinting the volume is. I watched that denbo oks claimed it was withdrawing
number rise steadily with each ship- Rushdie's novel "for the protection of
ment, and I knew that Viking was work- employees" in the light of threats. Indeed, a publishing company and newsing furiously to meet the public demand.
Waldenbooks and B. Dalton and George paper in New York was bombed after
Bush may have been silent about The denouncing Khomeini, and Cody's
Verses, but somebody in America at bookstore in Berkeley was dynamited,
least was curious enough to buy a book! presumably for openly selling the book.
Keeping my trusty Smith and Wesson To my knowledge, no surveys were ever
9mm behind my counter in easy reach, made within the B. Dalton or WaldenI arranged for advertising. The Tucson books organizations about what exactly
Weekly is our only "independent" paper the employees thought about this issue;
in Tucson, and often dares to go where some television coverage included interno "establishment" paper has gone be- views with workers who wanted to sell
fore. The Arizona Daily Star and the the novel!
There was a curious and somewhat
Tucson Citizen are both staid, community rags which gnaw at their consciences chilling silence from the White House
about naked breasts in the movie adver- and other governmental quarters about
the Rushdie affair. Of course, with so
tisements. No, go with the Weekly.
I ended up running two advertisemany governmentalists busy defending
ments. The first had a snarling picture of censorship of books, magazines, videos,
and other material (to "fight drugs" or
Khomeini with the caption "DON'T
LET THIS GUY TELL YOU WHAT "combat pornography," the two often
YOU CAN'T READ," followed by a plug linked in the public imagination), it was
for the book, informing people that it difficult to defend Satanic Verses on the
was available at cost. I copied the ad and basis of so libertarian a notion as freemailed it to the local media along with a dom of expression. With religionists on
press release elaborating on why my both the "left" and the "right" picketing
store was openly selling Rushdie's book, convenience stores and movie theaters,
even displaying multiple copies in the protesting their own peculiar notion of
front window. (No, I don't carry plate "obscenity," we are not exactly in a
social climate which embraces freedom
glass insurance!)
I followed that ad with another which . and tolerance.
included an "open letter" about censorInstead, we were implored by so
ship, pointing out similarities between many to "understand" the outrage of
the religiosity of Ayatollah Khomeini Moslems and "look deeper" into the isand our own "home grown" ayatollahs sue of why Khomeini ordered somewho have a censorship agenda of their body murdered for merely writing words
onto paper. We were told that "many"
own.
Both ads managed to attract public found the book "offensive" and "blasphemous," that it "insulted their reliand media attention, good reaction
Austin, Texas

September 1989

gious beliefs."

"How would we feel if our

religious values were m.ocked?"
Mobs in Tehran, death threats from
the ayatollah, the banning of Rushdie's
book in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Bangladesh, India, other Islamic countries, even in South Africa, all of this was
because religionists were "offended."
We should "empathize" and "respect
their sentiments."
The Vatican newspaper agreed with
Islamic mullahs that The Satanic Verses
was offensive and blasphemous and
should not be read. New York's John
Cardinal O'Connor chimed in that the
book was "offensive" and "blasphemous," and he would not waste time
reading it.
In Britain, the Thatcher government
- so loathe to have government interfere in the business of business - was
fresh from a round of prosecutions with
the Official Secrets Act and the whole
incident from Peter Wright's memoir,
Spycatcher. Mr. Wright dug up the
corpse of the Kim Philby affair, suggesting that Sir Hollis, once head spook,
may have instead been in the service of
Soviet Intelligence. The government
went to court in order to ban Spycatcher
- undoubtedly, some crafty KGB sleuth
deduced that - yes! - the Kremlin
could learn what it already probably
knew by, perhaps, buying the book outside of the United Kingdom.
Thatcher declared that the Rushdie
book, however, would be available "subject to the rule of law and the Blasphemy
Acts."
If MI-S doesn't get you, the High
Church of England will.
The Official Secrets Act empowers
the British state to ban anything deemed
to be a matter of national security; this
includes musty documents from the
Boer War, the First and Second World
Wars, up through newspaper interviews
with (suspected) IRA activists. The
Blasphemy Act prohibits the utterance
or publication of anything offensive and
Page 35

demeaning to Jesus or the Church of

England.
For years in Britain, religious bodies
other than the "official Anglicans" have
been agitating to be included under the
umbrella of blasphemy statutes. Jewish
and Moslem organizations want official
protection for their own peculiar creeds,
but thus far have not been successful.
Usually, the blasphemy laws go handin-hand with countless national and regional anti-obscenity laws which are
ammunition for militant fundamentalist
sects and censorship groups like Mary
Whitehouse's National Viewers and Listeners Association. Ifthere is something
obscene, blasphemous, even vaguely
offensive, there is a law somewhere
which someone can try and use.
There were suggestions that The Satanic Verses be banned simply because
of the large number of Moslems residing
in the country who constituted a potential "fifth column." Many of these persons, though, especially of Iranian extraction, left their respective homelands
to escape precisely the kind of censorship and religious meddling which was
being proposed.
Many large British corporations, of course, had lucrative
contracts with Iran and in other countries throughout the
Middle East. Was the pound
sterling more valuable than
human rights?
On the European continent,
West Germany, Italy, and
France quickly announced
that they would prohibit importation of Rushdie's book.
One had to settle for excerpts
published in the Communist
party daily paper in Yugoslavia. Which side of the Iron
Curtain was the free world on,
anyway?
In Canada, a Moslem group
filed a court action which delayed entry of shipments of
The Satanic Verses for up to
two weeks. A recently enacted
Page 36

law there prohibits the publication or

distribution of so-called hate literature;
it was used in the prosecution of a man
who wrote a book questioning the existence of the Holocaust during World
War II. The Canadian government decided that the Verses did not constitute
racially motivated hate propaganda and
decided to allowentry of book shipments;
censorship is indeed a two-edged sword.

Meanwhile, back in the USA ...

Undeterred by the Vatican and Cardinal O'Connor, a group of New Yorkbased writers, led by Norman Mailer, organized a public reading of The Satanic
Verses. By this time, it was getting "safe"
to publicly admit that, yes, you did support Salman Rushdie and freedom of expression. The Nation was one of the few
periodicals to denounce the hesitation
on the part of many to defend the Billof
Rights and so basic a notion as freedom
to read. There was stilla strange alliance
between fundamentalist Christians busy
"empathizing" with their Moslem counterparts, and Khomeini's regime in Iran.
Perhaps much of the hesitation stems

September 1989

from our growing lack of concern with

our own civil liberties. In our hysteria
about "problems" such as drugs or "pornography," there is a disturbing willingness to suspend, even eliminate basic
freedoms to "stop crime" or bring the
nation "back to God." Politicians employ
an almost military terminology - there
is a "war" against crime, a "crackdown"
against pushers, a "battle" to "smash
smut" - and of course in a "war," civil
liberties can easily be forgotten.
Much of the silence in the face of
Khomeini's threats comes from our own
"caving in" to the antics and demands of
religious fundamentalists here. "Freedom of expression" seems to apply only
to what is deemed "responsible" expression, not that which happens to offend,
insult, blaspheme, or provoke. We have
more and more come to embrace an
anemic, insubstantial notion of freedom,
a safe freedom, a conditional freedom.
"There is no freedom to insult god ... "
"There is no freedom of speech for
smut peddlers!"
"There shouldn't be freedom of expression for racists!"
"There shouldn't be freedom to publishmaterial which offends me!"
Freedom of expression, the
right to explore and promote
and to extend all boundaries
of the written or spoken word,
thus becomes a "licensed"
privilege granted by the State,
to defend the political or ideological or religious establishments.
I'm still bogged down in The
Satanic Verses, not being much
of a fan of "modern fiction."
Rushdie is very much the
, wordsmith, though; he has
crafted an interesting tale
about good versus evil. Do we
know one from the other based
upon mere appearance, or on
content and deed?
For that matter, is there
anything real left in our notion
of being free? ~
American Atheist

.\

Fundamentalist Moslem
violence in Britain
Fundamentalist
Moslems in Britain are
carrying out acts of
violence and inciting
one another to murder
in pursuit of their
demands for
"blasphemy" protection,
for the banning of a
work of fiction that
refers disrespectfully to
Moslem history, for the
public funding of
separate Moslem
schools, and for the
legal recognition of the
Islamic personal law.

Barbara Smoker is president of the

National Secular Society in London.

Barbara Smoker
Austin, Texas

here as the American immigration ideal has historically been the metaphorical
"melting-pot" - immigrant
families to the United States being only
too anxious that their children should
learn the English language and integrate
with their neighbours - the immigration ideal in Britain is that of "pluralism,"
multi-culture, and multi-lingualism. It is
this misguided, mythic ideal that, in response to the most vociferous of the immigration community leaders, is the one
generally promulgated by many "progressive" British people, including politicians of every party. Most of them failto
realize that what they are advocating is
appeasement of the patriarchal fundamentalists of these communities, leaving
those under their thumbs to their oppression - the effect being to deny to
their young people brought up in Britain
the chance to become truly British and
to deny to their women the normal civil
rights enjoyed by British women.
Britain, with a total population of
some 56 million, now has over a million
Moslems, mostly from immigration
within the last quarter of a century.
Some were refugee families from former
British colonies in East Africa in the
l%Os, more came from the Middle East,
and many more from the Indian subcontinent. Their British homes are
largely concentrated in a few localities,
including the Brick Lane area of London's East End and Southall in Middlesex, to the west of London - these two
names being telescoped in Salman
Rushdie's fictional Brickhall. There are
also large pockets of Moslem concentration in the industrial cities of the Midlands (especiallyBirmingham and Leicester) and the North (especially Bradford).
,
't"
\Il

Resistance to change
Upwards of a thousand years ago,
Islam was far less objectionable and
more civilized than Christianity; but
September 1989

whereas Christianity has, on the whole,

gradually become more humane, Islam
has tended to stand still, and has thus
been left behind. This is partly because
Mohammed (570-632)laid it down that,
to avoid the sort of corruption that had
beset Judaism and Christianity, his new
religion must never accept any change
of any kind. And to this day, the true
Moslem continues to obey this injunction and resist anything new in social
mores.
This intransigent attitude has, according to the Indian writer K. K. Joshi
(in an article reprinted by the International Humanist and Ethical Union in
their Humanist Outlook, February 1989),
been reinforced in India during the past
two centuries:
Unfortunately, the Moslem community kept itself aloof from the
main currents of the nineteenthcentury Indian renaissance, F~om
the very beginning they were distrustful of the "new learning" that
came to India in the wake of British conquest. Instead of opting for
western liberal education, which
the Hindus accepted with enthusiasm, the Moslems preferred to
stick to their old traditional learningthat was imparted in "madarsas"
and "makhtabs." The result was
an all-round stagnation of the
Moslem community.
Today the situation has become
even worse. Moslem India has
built a cordon sanitaire of Islamic
fundamentalism which has made
it difficult even for the educated
Moslem middle class, what to say
of Moslem masses, to imbibe modern ideas of liberalism, secularism,
socialism and science, which incidentally form the basis of Indian
polity.
There are many extreme fundamenPage 37

Below: It was one thing for the English

newspapers to report on Rushdie riots
in faraway lands, but then the headlines
moved closer to home.

talists among the Moslems now livingin

Britain. Of those who were already fundamentalist Moslems when they left
their homelands, many have responded
to this upheaval by clinging even more
tenaciously to their religious traditions
than the people they have left behind.
Then, of the thousands who are now in
their late teens and early twenties most of whom have been brought up in
Britain, often as moderate Moslems many have espoused increasingly fanatical Islamic fundamentalism as a means
of asserting their ancestral identity.
There is also a surprising number of fundamentalist Moslem converts.

Page 38

Imbued with all the fervour of fundamentalist religion, this extremism is a

component of a sort of tribalism rather like the gang loyalty of football
hooligans to their particular football
club - its function being that of a cohesive tribal force against the wider community. So it appeals particularly to
those who feel marginalized by society
at large and psychologically alienated
from it.

Death threats
They were therefore ready to respond
fervently to the call of the late Ayatollah
Khomeini in Iran for the assassination of

September 1989

the secularist author, Salman Rushdie

- a British citizen of Indian Moslem origin livingin Britain - for daring to write
a novel, The Satanic Verses, based partly on a critical view of Islam.
The author and his American wife
(novelist Marianne Wiggins) had to go
into hiding as a result of Khomeini's
transcontinental death sentence in February. Six months later, his wife emerged
to say that after moving with him from
place to place every few days (fifty-six
moves in five months), she had now left
Salman, and no longer knew where he
was hiding. He himself may never dare
to be seen again in public.
On August 3, a young Arab who had
booked into a London hotel was apparently handling a bomb in his room when
the bomb exploded, killing him and doing extensive damage to the hotel.
Claims were made, simultaneously on
Iran radio and by a Lebanese Moslem
group to a Beirut newspaper, that the
bomb had been intended for Salman
Rushdie; but it seems unlikely that
Rushdie's whereabouts are known to
would-be assassins or, ifso, that a bomb
would be the method of assassination
chosen. Investigators regard these
claims as disinformation, and enquiries
suggest that the man was working for a
radical faction with the intention of frustrating international moves towards a
negotiated settlement of the Lebanese
hostage crisis.
The publisher of The Satanic Verses,
Penguin Books - which, ironically
enough, is also the main publisher in
Britain of the Koran - has also received
death threats, the book has been publicly burned by Moslem mobs in Britain,
many booksellers and libraries have responded to threats of arson and personal attack by withdrawing the book, and
some of these threats have now been
put into practice.
Thus, several bookshops have been
seriously damaged by Moslem fireraisers - including one shop in central
London, Collet's, that was burnt out in
spite of the fact that it had already, unAmerican Atheist

Imagine: getting it on with J.e.

der pressure from its intimidated staff,

withdrawn the book.
At the beginning of September, a
bomb was thrown from a car at the
famous West End store Liberty's, and
four passers-by we're injured. At that
moment, a telephone message claiming
responsibility for the incident was received by the police from an obscure
Moslem group calling itself "Islamic
Concern for Banning the Satanic Verses."
Moslem leaders, while expressing regret
that people have been injured, say it is
the fault not of the Moslems but of Rushdie and his publishers and booksellers
and the British government - though
Liberty's book department does not
even stock the book!
The publisher, Penguin Books, owns
nine retail bookshops in city centers
around the country, and time bombs
were planted outside four of these
shops during the evening of September
13. A passerby, seeing a man lurking
suspiciously in the dark doorway of the
shop in York, alerted the local police,
who were just in time to clear people
from the vicinity,so that when the bomb
exploded, causing damage to the building, there were no casualties. Meanwhile, the York police warned their colleagues in the localities of the other eight
Penguin bookshops, thus enabling the
other three bombs (in Nottingham,
Peterborough, and Guildford) to be defused before they exploded.
The National Secular Society's bookshop in north London has - despite
threats, broken windows, police warnings, and (just before the Liberty's incident) industrial oil poured through the
letter-box and over the shopfront continued to display the dust jacket in
its window; though, having residents
above the shop, it has compromised by
removing the display at night to safeguard life.

Blasphemy law
One excuse made for Islamic violence
on the streets of England is the fact that,
whereas Christianity is protected in EnAustin, Texas

In September 1989, another artistic work was caught in a blasphemous

edict - this time Britain's blasphemy law. A film, "Visions of Ecstasy"
produced by the independent British film company, Axel Ltd., was refused
a certificate for broadcasting by the British Board of Film Classification
because it depicts "the erotic imaginings" of Saint Theresa of Avila.
Theresa, a sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite nun, at age thirty-nine
began to have visions of J.C. and to enjoy vivid experiences of "mystical
marriage" with him and experiences of "His presence within her." The
eighteen-minute film depicts St. Theresa caressing and kissing J.e. A female
character depicting her psyche erotically touches her. The film has no
dialogue, and the music score was written by a punk band, Siouxsie and the
Banshees.
The case came up for a two-day hearing during the first week of December
1989. The hearing was apparently stormy. Comparing it to "The Last
Temptation of Christ" and "Monty Python's Life of Brian," the Board of Film
Classification found that those two films presented "alternative realities of
Christ," whereas "Vision of Ecstasy" was "an object of overt sexual passion
to which He responds" and thus was a "contemptuous treatment of the
divinity of Christ." The British Board of Film Classification, accordingly,
banned it from the airways. In its initial ruling before the trial, it had held:

... the wounded body of a crucified Christ is presented solely as the

focus of, and at certain moments a participant in, the erotic desire of
St. Theresa, with no attempt to explore the meaning of imagery beyond
.ensagingJhe viewer in an erotic experience.

gland and Wales by the blasphemy law

(which is a common-law offei'fce- i.e.,
a criminal offence based on centuriesold case law, made by judges, not on
statute law, made by Parliament), Moslems have no such recourse to the law
courts when their religious susceptibilities are hurt; and a number of British
public figures, including religious leaders and members of Parliament, have
therefore been calling for an extension
of the blasphemy law to every "major"
religion.

The British government, was, for extraneous reasons (inclU'dingsuch good

ones as negotiating for the release of
hostages in Lebanon), slow and halfhearted in its condemnation of the notorious Iranian death sentence on Salman
Rushdie. Many members of the major
political parties, together with spokesmen of all the major religions and the
usual "race-relationites," grovelled with
apologies for the hurt feelings of Moslems in this country.
Foremost among the religious spokesSeptember 1989

men was the archbishop of Canterbury

(head of the international Anglican communion) whose proposed solution to
the crisis was the extension of the criminal law of blasphemy to protect Islam
(and other religions) against verbal offence, rather than renounce this special
protection for his own creed.
The legal justification for the existing
blasphemy law is to prevent possible
"breaches of the peace" caused by the
abuse or ridicule of people's stronglyheld beliefs. Needless to say, we Atheists have always had to put up with
abuse and ridicule from Christians, but
have not breached the peace on that account, nor demanded protection from
such abuse and ridicule. On the contrary, we have always favoured the
robust exchange of ideas.
British public figures who are now
calling for an extension of the blasphemy law to Islam (and other religions) include some of the most liberal-minded
churchmen and politicians. This is in
line with a pervading idea that seems to
Page 39

Left: Moslem girls attending

traditional single-sex religious
schools may miss many of
the educational opportunities
which are taken for granted
by other young Englishwomen.

have sprung up among many liberalminded people in Britain, that to be

"progressive" it is necessary to make
any special privileges - such as the protection of the blasphemy law - universal. The secular humanist movement,
on the other hand, together with a handfulof enlightened politicians, is opposing
this - on the principle, as the old adage
puts it, that "two wrongs cannot make
a right" - and is pressing instead for the
archaic criminal offence of blasphemy
to be abolished altogether,
The general survey of blasphemy law,
written by Jon G_ Murray, which appeared in the March 1989issue of American Atheist, did not bring it quite up to
date for Britain. The last successful blasphemy prosecution here occurred as
recently as 1977, when a homosexual
paper, Gay News, and its editor, Denis
Lemon, were both convicted of blasphemy for publishing a poem about the
crucifixion, and had to pay heavy fines
and even heavier costs_ The editor was
also given a suspended prison sentence,
forcing him to give up his editorial job.
The legal costs would have bankrupted
the paper - which was, presumably,
the intention - had not donations
poured in to reimburse it These convictions and sentences, apart from the
prison sentence, were upheld in the
Appeal Court (1978)and the House of
Lords (1979)-Later the European Court
of Justice ruled that it could not overturn this decision since the blasphemy
law is outside its jurisdiction.

Denominational schools
The argument of the misguided "proPage 40

gressives" in favor of according blasphemy protection to Islam on the ground of

a right to parity with the Church of
England is closely paralleled by their
support for campaigns for the public
funding of Moslem (and other nonChristian) denominational schools on a
par with existing denominational schools
(mostly Christian, plus a handful of Jewish schools).
Because some religions are, under
the existing education laws in Britain,
allowed public subsidies amounting to
85 percent of the capital cost and 100
percent of the running costs of their
own denominational schools (whether
or not that in itself is morally justified),
it is argued that all religions (or, at least,
all "major" religions) must be given the
same privilege. Needless to say, the secular humanist movement would prefer
to have the public subsidies of all denominational schools phased out and, indeed, has consistently campaigned for this. But even ifit is politically impossible to remove the subsidies on
all church schools in the foreseeable future - as both justice and sound educational principles really demand - the
resulting inequity does not represent a
valid argument for extending the same
privilegeto schools run by other religious
grol,lps. Again, "two wrongs cannot
make a right"
Parity between one cultural group
and another is certainly an important
principle, but it cannot be an overriding
principle when it means sacrificing even
more important things - in the case of
sectarian schools, sacrificing one of the
basic rights of children. For surely it is a
September 1989

basic right of every child to

come into contact with a
wide range of people and
with a wide range of views. A
denial of any experience beyond a school that merely
reinforces the prejudices of
the home background is a
denial of that right.
The stifling effect of their
own single-sex denominational schools on Moslem (and orthodox
Jewish) girls - especially those from
fundamentalist families - is greater
than for girls attending, say, the average
single-sex Roman Catholic school of the
present day, who are unlikely to be
totally segregated socially from boys
and men, both in and out of school, to
be totally deprived of any exposure to
ideas at variance with those of the home
background, or to be narrowly educated
only for the roles of submissive wife and
mother.
The public funding of ghetto schools
- and therefore their proliferation would, however, be harmful not only to
the girls and women of the ghetto but to
the whole fabric of our society, as is
made clear in a letter from the National
Secular Society, which, bearing the signatures of twenty-three public figures in
Britain, appeared in a national newspaper, the Guardian, on July 9, 1986:
We the under-signed are very concerned about a dangerously divisive factor in our educational system - that is, the large number of
voluntary-aided denominational
schools that segregate children
according to their religious background. The social divisiveness
this causes is seen at its worst in
Northern Ireland.
Voluntary-aided denominational schools have so far been confined
almost entirely to Anglican, Roman
Catholic, and a few Jewish schools,
but we are now seeing the beginning of a proliferation to include
other religions.
American Atheist

In April this year, a recommendation from a localauthority (Brent)

that a fundamentalist Islamic primary school in its area be allowed
public funding, in line with denominational schools in the JudaeoChristian tradition, was sent to the
Minister of State for Education.
Whatever the decision in this particular case, it cannot be long, in
the name of racial and credal
equality, before a separate Moslem (or Sikh or Hindu or other religious)school is granted voluntaryaided status, thereby encouraging
a general upsurge of immigrant
denominational schools.
This may seem superficially, a
progressive step ... ; but in fact it
would mean for many children (especially the girls) of immigrant
families almost total isolation from
the host community and from
ideas at variance with those of the
home background. This would
not only be a disaster for these
youngsters personally, it would
also inevitably build up for future
generations a greater degree of
animosity and violence than we
have seen even in Northern Ireland.
There, children are segregated on
grounds of religious background
only; in this case there would be
the additional divisive factors of
race, skin colour and sex. And besides driving a wedge between immigrant families and the host community, separate religious schools
would import to Britain some of
the religion-based bitterness and
strife that exist on the Indian
subcontinent.
In the name of equity, however,
it is manifestly impossible for the
state to refuse Moslems and Sikhs
.the same right as Christians and
Jews to state-subsidised schools
of their own.
How, then, can this looming social tragedy be averted, without
blatant discrimination? Only by
Austin, Texas

Parliament legislating without delay for steps to be taken gradually to phase out subsidies to denominational schools of every
kind ....
We cannot deny, however, that
a parliamentary decision to phase
out subsidies to denominational
schools willneed considerable political courage, since it willinevitably lose votes. It therefore demands
an all-party determination to grasp
the nettle.

Principle of tolerance
What the British race-relationites are,
in effect, blindly proposing, is to hand
over the moderates in each ethnic community to the tyranny of its fundamentalists. And limits must surely be placed
on the tolerance of intolerance.
Though Iam as concerned as anybody
about the right of minority groups to
pursue their own chosen life-style and, indeed, see this as a positive contribution to the varied general culture I am also concerned about the rights of
minorities within those minority groups,
and of the smallest minority of all: the
individual. Moreover, the individual is
not only the smallest, but also often the
most oppressed, of all minorities especially, in patriarchal groups, the
women and girls.
If families settle permanently in Britain' surely they should be willing for
their children to grow up as part of it?
The demand of their religious leaders
for their own religious schools to be subsidized out of the public purse and for
education to be conducted in their
home languages is designed to prevent
their children from integrating with the
wider community,
Fundamentalist Moslems are fond of
quoting the principle of tolerance in
their own favor - but in countries
where they themselves are in power,
Moslems do not accept that principle.
Nor, though vociferous in its demands
for parity with Christianity in Britain,
does fundamentalist Islam accord parity
September 1989

of rights to non-Moslems in Moslem

countries. Even foreigners visiting those
countries may be judicially flogged if
caught with a glass of wine. Indeed,
Moslems declare that any compromise
is impossible for them, since the Islamic
laws were laid down by Allah himself,
not by men.
They also declare that Islam is not
merely a religion; like communism, it
pervades the whole of life. This means
that their political and economic, as well
as their religious, demands must share
the sanction of religious liberty as they
see it - and this bestows on them the
god-given right to demand that the English law should assimilate the Islamic
personal law (on legal polygamy, easy
divorce for men but not women, inheritance, and so on), and uphold it in English law courts for Moslem citizens. In
India, where this Moslem personal law
prevails, the law courts have to administer a special code of justice for Moslems
and even have to take account of differences in law between one Islamic sect
and another. The result is not only
chaos in the courts; more importantly,
the civil rights of individuals are handed
over to fundamentalist religious leaders
and social compartmentalization
is
crystallized. This means a permanent
denial of common citizenship and leads
to inter-group strife.
Apart from the courageous Muslim
Truthseekers Group (supported by the
Indian Secular Society in western India),
moderate Moslems on the Indian subcontinent have rarely put up any fight
against their fundamentalists, so most
of the Moslems who are now settled in
Britain have no tradition of standing up
to them and simply allow the fundamentalists to speak on their behalf.
One of the leading fundamentalist
Moslem spokesmen in Britain has said
that it is inconsistent to allow people to
follow different religions whilst forcing
them to accept British values enshrined
in the laws of the country. But the laws
of a country, while designed to facilitate
as far as possible the peaceful coexisPage 41

Barbara Smoker (right), president of the

National Secular Society, was in the
thick of the riot that made English headlines in May 1989.

tence of different cultures within that

country, must surely, in the name of justice, apply to all - even if some groups
would prefer them to be otherwise.
For that very reason, it is important
that the National Secular Society is seen
to be campaigning constantly against
the Christian blasphemy law and Christian voluntary-aided schools at the same
time as campaigning against the extension of these privileges to nonChristians.

Political response
It is heartening that the ruling Conservative Party has begun to warn the Moslems against extremist demands - for
instance, on July 4, Mr. John Patten (the
minister of state at the Home Office responsible for race relations) stated that
the government felt it would be unwise
to extend the blasphemy law to Islam
("To rule otherwise would be to chip
away at the fundamental freedom on
which our democracy is built").

RUSHDIE PROTEST
ERUPTS IN HATRED
SUNDAY

MIRROR

REPORTER

VIOLENT-clash with police broke out

yesterday when more than 20,000 demoristratars went an the march against
Salman Rushdie's cantroversial baok The
Satanic Verses;

Police arrested
101 people,
blocked
London's
Westminster
Bridge
for four hours, demanding the release of
the first batch
of
marchers arrested.

arid Muslims

wir':eb~m:'a~C:egm:t{~
sticks, stones, and bottles, and 100 MusUms
charged on the police

screaming abuse.

Eighteen
omcers were
injured, none seriously.
Mohamm~d Elhannach, who watched the

running battle !rom his

cafe. said: "I thought

~~~~~~Jce were
"It was mainly

the

younger ones causing

trouble.
"Many

cr

the

older

Muslims stood by with

~~ ~:r:1rme:re~huraeJ
turned to violence,"

Gallows
But

barrlster

>

Mo-

hammed Yousuf Akhtar

claimed demonstrators
had been provoked.
He said: ..SOme of the
ponce officers had a brutal and nasty attitude,"
Many demonsteaecrc

g~~:r~~

The
started
Square.

Page 42

Police vans, cars and

taxis were kicked and a
mortorcyclist
charged by
.the crowds.
There
were further
clashes
as the National
Front and Left-wing organisations
held counterdemonstrations.
Barbara
Smoker,
65,
president or the National t
Secular Society, was sur-

~~~:~die
main
'trouble
in Parliament

~~~,bkill,mJ8,.c~~~
Uley spotted

her banner

calling for free speech.

Labour MPs Keith Vaz

and Max Madden told the
crowds
they would be.,

~Fe~atpaenFcu~~~r:
t~
withdraw the novel.
Rushdie
has been in
hidlng since Iranian ruler.
Ayatollah
Khomeini
called for his death.

Threat or promise -

demonstrator makes his point

September 1989

A few Conservative back-benchers

have gone against the Party line and
backed the Moslem demands - but as
they themselves tend to expound Christian fundamentalism, maintaining that
everyone who disagrees with their theology is in error, their motive in wishing
to sponsor the perpetuation of such
error through their taxes is obviously
more like that of the South African
National Party's aim of ethnic "separate
development" than genuine fellow feeling with the Moslem community or respect for their creed.
The Labour Party, though generally
the more progressive of the two major
parties in Britain, is split right down the
middle on the issue of separate Moslem
schools. On the one hand are those to
whom sound educational principles and
equal opportunities for girls are the
most important factors in this debate;
on the other hand are those (unfortunately including the Party's national
spokesmen on education - who could
well be in office in another two years) to
whom the overriding factor is "race relations" - which, in practice, inevitably
means good relations with the most vociferous extremists in an ethnic group .
The Moslem vote has hitherto been
almost entirely Labour and, in several
marginal constituencies, Labour MPs
would have lost their seats in the last
general election without the Moslem
vote. But one or two of those most likely
to lose their seats in that eventuality
have nevertheless been brave enough
to come out in favour of principle rather
than expediency. The remainder, however, have taken the opposite view and have unfortunately secured the
American Atheist

Women Against Fundamentalism picketed the Moslem demonstration in London on May 27,1989. In the background
are the Houses of Parliament.

support of the national Labour Party.

Even so, it does not satisfy the Moslem fundamentalists. Early this year,
Moslem leaders announced that steps
would be taken to set up a separate
Moslem political party. This threat was
implemented in mid-September, when
the Islamic Party of Britain was founded
- its agenda to include state-funded
Moslem schools and extension of the
blasphemy law, with the legalisation of
Moslem personal law a longer-term aim.
Some Moslems, however, are opposed
to having their own separate political
party, since it cannot possibly gain parliamentary power in the foreseeable
future and, by diverting Moslem votes
from the Labour Party, willonly weaken
Moslem influence within that party.

Giving in
Giving in to fundamentalist demands
is like giving in to blackmail or terrorism:
the next demand is even bolder. So the
more legal concessions that fundamentalist Moslems obtain, the more they demand.
Thus, Moslem demands in Britain at
the present time - the demand for blasphemy protection, for publicly funded
separate Moslem schools, for the banning of a work of fiction that refers disrespectfully to Moslem history, and for
the assimilation of Moslem personal law
into the law of the country - would
most likely have been less extreme and
persistent had not their fundamentalist
religious leaders got away with demands, in the past two decades, for exemption from various laws. For instance,
the animal slaughter laws, which demand
the pre-stunning of animals killed for
meat, are not only waived in favor of
both orthodox Jewish and Moslem religious methods of slaughter, both of
which forbid pre-stunning (each of these
religions denying that their particular
slaughter method is cruel, but agreeing
that the other one isl), but our legislators and civil servants have acceded to
the demand to have halal meat served
daily in all state schools that have a subAustin, Texas

stantial number of Moslem children as though there were no acceptable alternatives, such as vegetarian dishes,
packed lunches, and meat meals at
home.
So where is it all going to end? We
could eventually have Moslem religious
leaders in Britain demanding the freedom to follow the Koranic penal code
within their own community. In the
name of freedom of religion, they must
surely be allowed to chop off the hands
of any members of their community
caught stealing, to flog those caught
drinking alcohol, and publicly to stone
to death any of their women caught in
adultery?

Violence on the streets

A large Moslem demonstration took
place in central London on May 27,
mainly to demand the extension to Islam
of such protection under the blasphemy
law and to demand the withdrawal of
The Satanic Verses.
Though disagreeing with these demands, secular humanists would naturally uphold the right of anyone to dem-

September 1989

onstrate peaceably in support of them:

however, not only was the Moslem demonstration far from peaceful; the blasphemy issue was largely lost in violent
incitement to murder. No attempt was
made by the Moslem leaders themselves or by the agencies of law and
order in this country to prevent the
parade from setting off from Hyde Park
with model gallows from which swung
effigiesof Salman Rushdie, with placards
and banners calling (in obedience to the
late Khomeini and other overseas religious leaders) for Rushdie's murder,
with such homespun slogans as "DEVIL
RUSHDIE WANTED DEAD OR
ALIVE," "RUSHDIE
MUST BE
CHOPPED Up''' "WE'RE GONNA GET
YOU - THAT'S A PROMISE," and
with thousands of demonstrators raising clenched fists and yelling "kill, kill,
kill!"
Those guilty of this incitement to murder were apparently not told, either by
the organizers or by the police, that this
was prohibited on the demonstration,
nor were any arrests made on a charge
of incitement. Even the 101 demonstra-

Page 43

Other Rushdies in other times

Francois Rabelais (ca 14831553),French satirist.

Was the repeated substitution
of an n for an rn in orne making "ass" out of "soul" a printer's error? Not hardly.

Miguel Servedo (1511-1553),

Spanish scientist, whose
observation that Judea was
barren - hardly "flowing
with milk and honey" "necessarily inculpated
Moses and grievously
outraged the Holy Spirit,"
according to Calvin, who
promptly had him burnt alive.

tors arrested later for physical violence

against the police were released without
charge - presumably on Home Office
orders designed to prevent further violence. Nevertheless, having thus flouted
with impunity British laws and customs
and sensibilities, Moslem fanatics have
proceeded to carry out further acts of
violence (such as arson), and have continued their monstrous demands for the
banning of The Satanic Verses and
death to its author.
Many Moslems in this country are, of
course, appalled and ashamed by all
this, and realize that nothing is more
likelyto cause real racist hostility against
their whole community; but their voices
are hardly heard above those of the
religious leaders and the rabble behind
them. The race-relationites have therefore started saying that Salman Rushdie
should have known better than to write
such an "offensive" book and that the
publishers ought to withdraw it. To be
consistent, they would also have to
decry the original publication of Paine's
Age of Reason, Shelley's Queen Mab,
Ibsen's Ghosts, and Darwin's Descent
of Man, which were no less offensive to
Page 44

Malchos (A.D. 232-304),

known as Porphyry, a Syrian
and one of the last defenders
of classical paganism against
Christianity. "Men of pure
heart need no formulas, cults,
or incantations" brought the
wrath of Christian apologists.

the fundamentalists of their day.

The organizers of the demonstration
later tried to disclaim responsibility for
the violence, blaming it on a few hotheaded youngsters; but the organizers
had done nothing to ensure that it would
be a peaceful demonstration, and the
"few" hotheads could be numbered by
the thousand.
Since the Moslem leaders are apparently either unable or unwillingto control
their fanatical supporters, they should
surely be refused any public open-air
demonstrations in the future; while
archbishops and politicians should be
willing to allow the same robustness of
debate on religion as on any other
controversy - that is, short of incitement
to violence.

Counter-demonstration
At secular humanist meetings during
the few weeks before the demonstration, I had asked for volunteers to
mount a counter-demonstration;
but
response was negligible. I therefore arranged to join in with a new protest
group, set up mainly by some brave
Asian women callingthemselves Women
September 1989

Aspasia (ca 470-410Be),

Greek companion of Pericles
and philosopher. Prosecuted
on the "holy" charge of
"impiety" and acquitted, she
influenced Anaxagoras,
Euripides, Hippocrates, and
Socrates.

Against Fundamentalism. In the event, I

happened to miss them, but met by
chance secularist friends Nicolas Walter
and his wife Christine, standing on the
route of the so-called march (which
proved to be more of a stampede), opposite Hyde Park Corner.
Although there were only the three of
us, we represented, in our memberships, the whole of the British Atheist
movement - primarily, however, the
National Secular Society, the Rationalist
Press Association, the Free Speech
Movement, and the Campaign against
Blasphemy Law (set up jointly by the
National Secular Society and the Rationalist Press Association at the time of
the Gay News blasphemy trial in 1977).
We had brought homemade banners mine proclaiming "FREE SPEECH,"
and the Walters' "FREE SPEECH FOR
ALL."
We had deliberately rejected the idea
of more provocative slogans, such as
"Religion Breeds Intolerance" - but
our studied moderation made no difference. As soon as they caught sight of
our banners, demonstrators rushed at
us, grabbed and ripped up the banners,
American Atheist

and proceeded to push, punch, and kick months earlier, in which he had tried to
us. Nicolas was knocked to the ground, appease the Moslem would-be murderbut by backing up the steps of the Wel- ers by saying,
lington monument I managed to remain
Only the utterly insensitive can fail
standing. Fortunately, a few people (into see that the publication of Salcluding some middle-aged Moslems)
man Rushdie's book has deeply
came to our rescue. The press also
offended Moslems both here and
helped, by coming up for statements throughout the world.
whereupon our attackers began grabbing and tearing the reporters' notebooks; and someone with a radio mike It was apparently this statement that
began interviewing me. One of the men was read out in Hyde Park - but in the
stilljostling me, having previously kicked context of the demonstration it sounded
me on the leg, now added insult to injury like a new message written for the occaby pinching my buttock. I turned on him sion. As far as I know, however, there
has been no public retraction of the
with a trenchant "Don't do that!" which, I learnt later, was heard by thou- archbishop's seeming support for the
sands of listeners to the London Broad- demonstration.
In any case, the Moslem demand for
casting Company's news report. The
picket of the Women Against Funda- the extension of blasphemy law to Islam,
mentalism ha& taken the precaution of which was the chief aim of the demonobtaining special police protection and stration, was really based on the archbishop of Canterbury's refusal to volunso avoided a similar physical assault.
Some humanists have since told me . teer to give up the protection of this
that counfer-demonstrations are not archaic law for his own church (the only
the way to deal with the situation: they church protected by it at present - the
seem to think it is enough to preach to ~sectarian tenets of other Christian dethe converted in urbane humanist meet- nominations having been excluded in
ings. But if we can no longer go on the cases that predated Catholic emancipastreets of our capital city to defend free- tion). Rather than give it up, he urged its
dom of expression, Britain is back in the extension to other Christian sects and
eighteenth century - the cross merely to Islam and other religions.
In this he was joined by a number of
replaced by the equally bloody crescent.
misguided members of Parliament, of
both the major political parties. There
Episcopal appeasement
Among the messages of support for are two reasons for this: first, the usual
the demonstration read out on a public- reluctance of British politicians to vote
address system in Hyde Park while the against the demands of any religious or
faithful were gathering there was one ethnic group, particularly if that group
that purported to come from Dr. Runcie, has a substantial number of voters in
the archbishop of Canterbury. After- their local constituencies; and secondly,
wards I wrote to him, asking why he had the high-principled (but equally missaid nothing since to dissociate himself guided) desire for good race relations
from the violent nature of the demon- based on multi-cultural and multi-lingual
stration, and his secretary for public equality, at all costs.
.affairs (John Lyttle) replied, denying
True, the present situation, in which
that the archbishop had sent the orga- the Church of England alone is protected
by the blasphemy law, is unjust; but the
nizers any such message. However,
with this reply (which, incidentally, ac- argument behind the proposal to extend
cused me of being "extraordinarily big- it to other religions is, again, basically
oted") was enclosed a copy of a state- the argument that two (or more) wrongs
ment made by the archbishop three somehow make a right. Other civilized
Austin, Texas

September 1989

countries manage without a criminal

offence of blasphemy, so why not Britain? Public order needs protection; religious sentiment does not.
The obvious commonsense solution
is to abolish the blasphemy law altogether (as, indeed, was recommended in
1985by a majority of the Law Commission) - not to extend it. Anyway, to
which religions would it be extended? If,
as has been suggested, it were to apply
to all m.onotheistic religions only, this
classification would presumably exclude
Hinduism but include the Mormons and
Moonies!

Unofficial censorship
Present attempts in Parliament to extend the blasphemy protection to Islam
are backed up by the argument that the
hurt feelings of Moslems could then be
assuaged through the law courts instead
of through violence on the streets. However, even ifthey were able to prosecute
"blasphemers," any prosecution thrown
out of court (and, inevitably, many such
prosecutions must fail) would undoubted~y still lead to zealots taking the law
into their own hands, in exactly the
same hotheaded, violent way as they
have done, in the absence of the blasphemy law, over Rushdie's Satanic
Verses. At the same time, to present
Moslem fundamentalists with this legal
weapon, however weak in practicallitigation, would result in unofficial censorship, since any writer who dared to mention Islam except in the most respectful
terms would have difficulty in finding a
publisher for fear of heavy legal costs if nothing worse.
When a pro-Rushdie one-act play,
Iranian Nights, was hastily put on for a
short run at the Royal Court Theatre,
one or two actors engaged for it withdrew out of fear; but a cast was found
and the show went on, with heavy security precautions. Then, on July 2, a number of celebrities (of show business,
literature and politics) participated in a
public reading at Conway Hall Humanist
Centre of selected excerpts from The
Page 45

The founding members of Women Against Fundamentalism oppose the creation of special laws to accommodate Islam.

Full marks to the BBC, then, for going

ahead with the transmission. And, as
with the sales of Salman Rushdie's
book, the attempt at censorship only
multiplied the audience for it.

Satanic Verses.
On July 31, the British Broadcasting
Corporation presented a television
verse-drama, The Blasphemers' Banquet, in which Omar Khayyam, Voltaire,
Moliere, and Byron ("blasphemers" all)
meet in an Indian tandoori restaurant in
Bradford together with the play's author
- a controversial poet, Tony Harrison
- and toast an absent friend: Salman
Rushdie. It also included real-life scenes
from the Khomeini funeral, with hysterical mourners, including children, deliberately wounding themselves in an orgy
of religious fervor.
Some days before the play was due to
be shown, the archbishop of Canterbury's secretary for public affairs (he
who had called me "extraordinarily
bigoted") wrote to the director-general
of the BBC, asking him to "postpone"
its transmission, so as to avoid giving
any offence to Moslems at a sensitive
time. Behind this demand was the
bishop of Bradford (whose diocese, one
of the most Moslem in the country, has
been the scene of the worst Moslem
riots), who feared that the programme
would make the Moslems in this country
"feel that they are not welcome"! The
more fanatically fundamentalist of them
are certainly not, and it would only
make matters worse for the general hostilityagainst them to simmer underground
and not be allowed public expression.
Page 46

Women against Fundamentalism

I have become quite accustomed,
over the past few years, to the charge of
being "racist" whenever I have opposed
the provision of halal and kosher meat,
the waivingof conservation and planning
regulations for the building of mosques,
the demands for publicly-funded schools
for Moslem and orthodox Jewish girls,
and other such special provisions. The
same charge was made when I was
instrumental in allowing the anti-Zionist
play Perdition to be put on last year at
Conway Hall Humanist Centre after it
had been denied access to theatres and
halls all over the country. In vain have I
protested that it can hardly be racist to
take a stand against policies that are put
forward by fundamentalist co-religionists
of different races and are opposed by
some other people of the same races.
However, Ifeel that I am vindicated by
the very existence of the promising new
organization mentioned above, Women
Against Fundamentalism, especially as
its activists are mainly Asian women.
They too are castigating the British
race-relations industry for its promotion
of separate schools, of an extension of

..

September 1989

blasphemy law to cover all major religions, and of third-world fundamentalist

demands in general.
From the perspective of their own
third-world background,
the Asian
members of Women Against Fundamentalism see the demands of fundamentalist religious leaders (especially
the Islamic leaders) as basically a denial
of freethought, individuality, and sex
equality; not as legitimate cultural aspirations. Their first draft leaflet explains:
"At the heart of all fundamentalist
agendas is the control of the minds and
bodies of women, and the maintenance
of 'the family'." And it calls for "A high
standard of secular, state-funded comprehensive education which fulfils the
needs and aspirations of all children
from all communities," and for "The
right of all women to make their own
choices and make their own destinies
not limited by static definitions of religion, culture and tradition."
It is true that many Moslem women
cling to the symbolic veil and their traditional submissive role - but that is
just what brain-washing does to people.
In the days of slavery, many slaves were
similarly opposed to the abolitionist
campaign, fearful that they would never
manage to support themselves. Does
that mean that the abolitionists were
wrong to liberate them? 3lg

American Atheist

Blasphemy is enlightenment

As Salman Rushdie
faces prosecution for
blasphemy, his fellow
writers are up next on
religion's hit list.
Already religious forces
around the world have
used the example of the
Rushdie case to silence
other voices they find
offensive.

ebruary 14, 1989, is a historic

date: After Islamic mullahs from Islamabad to Tehran and
the northern English town of
Bradford - had been instigating their
faithful followers into protests against
The Satanic Verses, and it had come to
book burnings in Northern England,
Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini spoke
up on Radio Tehran:

I inform proud Moslems all over

the world, that the author of the
book The Satanic Verses, which is
inclined against Islam, the Prophet
and the Koran, and everybody
connected knowingly with the
book's publication is [sic] hereby
condemned to death. I challenge
all Moslems to execute these persons wherever they may be found.
The world seemed shocked, as this was
the strongest action of religious fundamentalists since the Nazis' book burnings and Christian-Catholic Inquisition:
a death sentence on an author who had
taken issue with a world religion in a
critical/fantastical way.

The "crime" of blasphemy

Anton Neureiter, Paul Friedlander, and

Michaela Bartsch of Salzburg, Austria,
contributed to this article. All three
are officers of the Antiklerikaler
Arbeitskreis Salzburg (Salzburg
Anticlerical Working Group), members
of which quite familiar with the issue
of blasphemy, as several have been
prosecuted for it in Austria. For further information on this activist Atheist group, please refer to the March
and April 1989 issues of the American
Atheist. Andreas Sanders provided the
translation of this article.

Anton Neureiter, et al.

Austin, Texas

Rushdie is accused of the "crime" of

blasphemy. It consists, according to his
persecutors, most of whom seem to be
judging the book by its cover only, of his
including in The Satanic Verses controversial Islamic traditions and letting his
fantasy work on them, which is, after all,
just a normal means of expression for an
artist.
.
It is historically proven that the founder of Islam, Mohammed, was called
"Mahound" by his enemies, and that is
the name Rushdie uses in the Verses.
It is also correct that there were
verses included in the Koran that were
later removed by Mohammed himself,
declaring them "Devil's suggestions"the so-called "Satanic verses." For MosSeptember 1989

lems it is unthinkable that the Koran, instead of being a divine inspiration, was
"made up" by Mohammed, which might
be a reasonable assumption for thinking
people. Moslems do insist on the Koran's
descent from Allah.
The two heresies mentioned above
are garnished with a passage in the
novel that especially enrages the puritan
mullahs: in one of the places of action,
the desert town of Jahilia, in which religion founder Mahound installs a regime
of puritan chastity, there is a brothel. In
it work twelve whores, who besides
having taken the names of Mahound's
wives, become more and more like
them in appearance and behavior. Jahilia's inhabitants, who suffer under
Mahound's puritan dictatorship, take
symbolic revenge by making a point of
preferring that particular establishment.
Also, some other guidance they are getting does not make them too happy:
Mahound has forbidden them to eat
pork. Nevertheless, Ibrahim the butcher
is doing quite well and the black market
is prospering. In contrast with the other
two "blasphemous" assumptions, this
one was made up; it is literary fiction,
with which Rushdie claims his right to
unlimited invention.
But-as they were to the Christian inquisitors, historic truth and fantasia especially connected with sex and religion - are an offence, a blasphemy to
Islamic fundamentalists. That is because
truth can bring dull-witted faith to its
knees and fantasia can taunt and ridicule
it; together they are weapons against
the "thinking-and-feeling-prohibited"
mentality of fundamentalists and become
a blasphemy in their eyes. The task of
"blasphemy" was best characterized recently by the Austrian author Michael
Scharang:
I am in favor of Rushdie's book
mainly because it is said to be blasphemous. Blasphemy, regardless
Page 47

of its form, is one of the foremost

goals of enlightenment worldwide.

Much ado about nothing - a

summary of internationalreactions
Even before the ayatollah's appeal for
murder, Rushdie's book had been an issue in political confrontations and had
been banned. Saudi Arabia, South Africa, India, and Pakistan (where Islamic
fundamentalists had assailed the United
States' Cultural Institute, foreshadowing the ban) had all forbidden publication. Pakistan's government, led by
Benazir Bhutto (who in the summer of
1989 was President Bush's guest of honor), stated that blasphemy was equal to
an offence against the state. The ban
was also introduced by Indonesia in
March 1989.
In Bombay, India, demonstrations following Khomeini's appeal resulted in
several casualties. The highest ranking
Indian Islamic official, Syed Abdullah
Bukhari, supported the appeal in a sermon. The Lebanese "Revolutionary
Front of Justice" took on the job of executing the Imam's orders. The Islamic
World Conference judged the novel to
be blasphemous and said that according
to the Sharia (the Islamic code of law),
Rushdie was a heretic and therefore
doomed, but did not support the ayatollah's atrocity directly.
The world's .number two industrial
nation, Japan, acted completely opportunistically by not even considering diplomatic protest in Tehran. The most important Japanese publishers refused to
bring out the book. In Australia, the government called for mitigation, and that
was that. New Zealand, however, cancelled its minister of commerce's trip to
Tehran, but soon Prime Minister David
Lange made that action obsolete by announcing that New Zealand could not
afford to let a threat to some writer in
London endanger its exporting sheep
and butter to Iran.
In Europe, the main confrontations
took place in Great Britain, where quite
a number of Islamic immigrants are livPage 48

ing. In Bradford, book burnings and

riots occurred as early as January 1989.
So-called "left" Labour Members of Par1iament demanded that the law against
blasphemy be extended to all religions
(only Christian religions are included at
the moment). After the ayatollah's appeal, British Moslem leaders demonstrated solidarity with it. Among them
was Yussuf Islam - former British pop
idol Cat Stevens, now a Moslem.
British book store chains withdrew
the book from their shelves. The publisher (Viking Penguin) issued a statement saying it was sorry to have caused
distress to Moslems and renounced
publication of the paperback edition
later this year. The British Foreign Office withdrew its ambassador to Tehran,
but soon Margaret "Iron Lady" Thatcher
and the secretary of state for foreign
affairs, Sir Geoffrey Howe, said they
understood that Moslems claimed that
their religious feelings were hurt. Suddenly, British officials discovered that
the British themselves were "strongly
offended" by the book, too, as it deals
with racism and the results of Conservative government policy in England. In
this context, the novel tells us of "Mrs.
Torture," that is, "Maggie, the bitch"
and diehard policemen beating up refugees just for the fun of it.
In May 1989, a mass demonstration of
Moslems took place in London, at
which, besides the protests against
Rushdie, rival Islamic groups had it out
with each other. In June 1989 the British
Supreme Court accepted a prosecution
of Salman Rushdie for violating the law
against blasphemy.
In Sweden, the eighteen members of
the Nobel Prize Committee dissociated
from the Imam's appeal, but merely as
citizens, not as an institution, which led
to several members leaving the committee in protest.
The states in the European Economic
Community (EEC) followed Great Britain in withdrawing their ambassadors
from Iran, but after a two-week vacation
at home the plucky diplomats returned
September 1989

to their Tehran residences without making a fuss about it. It is understandable

that they were laughed to scorn by
Tehran leaders, but of course the EEC
did not want some writer to spoil the
most profitable deals in rebuilding the
Persian Gulf region after the war.
France was the only state that called
upon fundamentalists to refrain from
further threats on French territory after
there had been riots, by stressing that
there was a law against it.
The Federal Republic of Germany
acted not unlike the other EEC countries, especiallyas a treaty about GerrnanIranian cultural association, was due to
be signed soon. The publishing house
that had bought the German translation
rights, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, acted
just as shabbily as its government had:
immediately after the threat from Tehran
had been made, the publisher, in accordance with the Association of German
Publishers, announced its decision not
to translate the book at all. At the same
time, it refused to sell the rights to
another publishing company. It took
massive pressure and threats of boycott
from writers all over Germany to ensure
publication of a German version of The
Satanic Verses through a group of companies and writers in the fall of 1989.
Also, as in other countries, Moslems
protested against the book in Germany.
In Belgium, the principal of a mosque,
who had stated his opposition to the
imam's threat, was murdered, presumably by Islamic fundamentalists.
Only in Italy, publisher Mondadori
had a translation out immediately, but
soon after its bookstore in Padua was
burnt down. Stores in Venice, Trieste,
Verona, and Bolzano were attacked by
disguised fanatics.

Austria is a little world, in which

the big one stages rehearsals.
This sentence was written in the first
half of the nineteenth century by the
German author Friedrich Hebbel. And
what happened all over Europe as a reaction to Khomeini's monstrosity took
American Atheist

Below: Members of Austria's Antiklerikaler Arbeitskreis Salzburg (Salzburg Anticlerical Working Group) with
Madalyn O'Hair (center) and Jon Murray
(second from right). The officers of the
group are Paul Friedlander (left), Michaela
Bartsch (right), and Anton Neureiter (to
the left of Madalyn O'Hair).

place in Austria, too. In a note to the

secretary of state for foreign affairs,
Alois Mock, the "Antiklerikaler Arbeitskreis" demanded discontinuance of
diplomatic and economic relations with
Iran immediately after the threat was
made. The Christian-Conservative secretary's answer was that Austria would
of course not discontinue relations, but
would protest against the threat in "personal consultations" with Iranian officials in Austria. The government did not
even withdraw Austria's ambassador to
Tehran. The Austrian parliament did get
around to doing something, inasmuch
as it had a debate about the issue. At its
end, a "protest" resolution was drawn
up in which Iran was not even mentioned
by name.
Additionally,some members of parliament had the not-so-bad idea of staging
a public reading from The Satanic
Verses in parliament, but devaluated it
by having the reading in a small back
room of parliament, accessible only to
journalists. At the same time, the religious fanatic's line of reasoning was followed in the choice of parts to read
from: of course one was going to recite
only those parts that were not blasphemous and did not hurt religious feelings.
Even this was too much for a Socialist
member of parliament: disregarding her
prior assent to take part in the reading,
she chickened out and instead used the
debate in parliament to talk about all
sorts of things, but not Rushdie - and
so reached the peak of hypocrisy.
The Combine of Austrian Authors (a
trade union-like association of Austrian
writers) organized a reading and discussion. An attempt was made to hold it at
the Vienna university, but bomb threats
were issued, and demonstrations against
the reading by Islamicimmigrants prompted University officials to prohibit a public reading on campus. (It has been a
long time since universities were places
of free thinking and guarantors of freedom of speech.) Also, an Iranian in exile
in Vienna, who has Austrian citizenship,
received death threats because he had
Austin, Texas

planned to take part in the reading.

Austrian police refused to grant protection; since that time he has been in
hiding. At long last, the reading and discussion took place in a large tent erected
on a Viennese square - with massive
police protection and threats by a huge
number of anti-Rush die demonstrators.
One of the most important effects the
reading had is that a well-known Austrian Catholic fundamentalist, in accordance
with the Iranian embassy in Vienna and
Islamic fundamentalist groups, filed a
lawsuit against the chairman of the
Combine of Austrian Authors according to 188, the Austrian blasphemy
paragraph. (See "History of the Antiklerikaler Arbeitskreis Salzburg," American Atheist, March 1989.)His declared
object was to prevent publication of the
book in Austria in the fall of 1989. Even
President Waldheim had something to
say about The Satanic Verses. On one
of his rare trips abroad (he is restricted
by lack of invitations to countries other
than the Vatican and Islamic nations),
this time to Abu Dhabi in Saudi Arabia,
he stated that Rushdie's book was blasphemous and to be condemned.
The "Anticlerical Working Group:
Organization for Atheism and Enlightenment" wanted to organize a reading

September 1989

in solidarity with Salman Rushdie and

rented a room on the campus of Salzburg
University for that purpose. The Viennese procedure was adopted by the
Salzburg University administrators:
they prohibited the reading. Most viciously opposed to it were members of the
theological faculty, because it was Atheists who were to stage the reading. The
official reason for the denial of a room
was concern for the "security of the university," because "security is paramount
to such abstract terms as freedom of
speech," a quote from the rector, a theologian. These "security reasons" were
used as a means of prohibiting the reading, although there are no Islamic fundamentalists in Salzburg, although there
were no threats at all, and although the
police declared that the reading could
take place without any problem and
added that one should not refrain from
staging events because of threats, because otherwise it would become impossible to stage anything at all in the
future. After the university's refusal, the
Antiklerikaler Arbeitskreis organized a
panel discussion on "Solidarity with Salman Rushdie - Freedom of Art and
Censorship" under police protection in
a former cinema now used for pop concerts. On the panel were the chairman

Page 49

The Vatican and the Kaaba are separated by distance, but the goals of their
leaders are surprising similar. The Islamic solution to the Rushdie case will
give Roman Catholic leaders insights
into dealing with their own dissidents in
the modern age.

dialogue is Hans Kung, professor of theology from Tiibingen, West Germany. In

Europe, Kung's reputation is that of a
"liberal" Roman Catholic scholar of god,
as he has quarreled repeatedly with the
Holy See.
Hans Kung was a member of German
Foreign Secretary Hans-Dietrich Genscher's delegation on his visit to Tehran

of the Combine of Austrian Authors and

a member of parliament from the Green
Party.

The alliance of inquisitors

The Roman Catholic church's reaction to Khomeini's threat was especially
remarkable, as it disco~ered its spiritual
kinship with the Imam and was visibly
fascinated by the success of the Iranian
god's reign. After all, what Khomeini
had done was something the Roman
Catholic church had not been able to
accomplish in its agitation against Martin
Scorsese's film"The Last Temptation of
Christ." In its mouthpiece, L'Osservatore gion."
Romano, the Vatican condemned the
Many a reader may be amazed by
Satanic Verses as blasphemous. Rushdie these statements, as Islam and Roman
had hurt the "religious feelings" of hun- Catholicism are rival religions, especidreds of millions of the Moslem faithful. ally in their struggle for world domination, but the Roman Catholic church
Affiliation with the Roman Catholic
church demanded rebuke of the blas- has for centuries done what Iran is doing
phemous statements in the book, said now - persecute and liquidate heretics
the paper. The Spanish newspaper El and members of the opposition. FightPais commented: "A new inquisition." ing against odious thinkers unifies all reHardly by chance Pope John Paul II saw ligions: they have to be destroyed. Givfit to call Khomeini (after his overdue en the power it once had, the Roman
death) one of the world's greatest reli- Catholic church would act exactly as
Iran is acting today. Viewed in this congious leaders.
Not only Rome, but other high digni- text, the "Christian-Islamic dialogue"
taries of the church elsewhere got a that has been going on for some years
word in: Cardinal Decourtray, head of now can be seen in quite a different light.
the French episcopal congregation,
This dialogue's goal- this is detectable
spoke of an "insult to God"; New York's in its selection of themes - is obviously
Cardinal O'Connor stated it would be coordination and concerted action of
stupid to read Rushdie's book and that the world's religions against democratic
it was important to "let Moslems know liberties and freedom of speech. One of
we disapprove of attacks on their reli- the most important participants in this
Page 50

September 1989

late last year. There he, along with other

Roman Catholic clergymen, conducted
high-level talks with Iranian leaders,
among them Khomeini's son-in-law.
Topics were Feuerbach's and Marx's critique of religion and current affairs that
concerned both religions - Islam and
Christianity. The Iranian theocrats
seemed especially interested in the
Roman Catholic university teacher's experiences with convincing the students
of religious doctrines, as it is not too
easy to get Iranian scholars to believe in
the Koran. The Roman Catholics surely
were able to offer the mullahs some
hints as to how they did it.
The talks' practical results were the
accomplishment of an agreement on
cultural exchange between Iran and the
Federal Republic of Germany, and of
course a resolution to strengthen economic cooperation. Accordingly, the socalled "liberal" Kung in an interview with
American Atheist

Considering the reactions

to this assault on freedom of speech and art,
Atheists are seized by unholy terror.

the "Bayerischer Rundfunk" (Bavarian

Broadcasting Corporation) defended
Khomeini's threat. In his opinion, writers
should take religion more seriously.
Rushdie should have known what he
was doing and have refrained from writing the book. Authors, after all, couldn't
write as they liked, because it couldn't
be tolerated that religious figures like
Jesus or Mohammed were attacked in
writing. For Kung, the limits of freedom
of speech are defined by "religious feeling." He who hurts these dubious "feelings" is responsible for the results - a
murder threat in Rushdie's case. Not
only is Kung "theological-diplomatic advisor" to Germany's foreign secretary,
but he is also seen as one of the most influential European professors of theology,especially for students at theological
faculties.
Not only do Roman Catholic leaders
and ideologists tend to view Iranian terror in a positive way, but so also do Jewish fundamentalists. Orthodox Rabbi
Avraham Ravitz, leader of Degel Hatorah
in Jerusalem, declared that the world
should stop making a saint of Rushdie,
for his dragging the prophet and his
wives through the mud in the novel
would hurt millions of Moslems' feelings.
At the end of the twentieth century,
two hundred years after the French revolution, obviously a new International is
forming, whose goal is the rebirth of the
Middle Ages.

Consequential damages
The cowardly and opportunistic reactions of those countries that like to see
themselves as the guardians of democracy have downrightly encouraged successor criminals like book burners, cinema assaulters, and potential murderers to follow Khomeini's path. A whole
bunch of "new Rushdies" seem to suddenlyappear. Khomeini's ban has broken
a dam.
Most of these successor criminals
come from the Islamic world. In Egypt,
the leader of the fundamentalist group
Jihad passed the death sentence on
Austin, Texas

Nobel Prize-winning writer Naguib Mahfouz, who had criticized Khomeini's

murder threat. In Italy, fanatical Moslems threatened to blow up the grave
and statue of the great writer Dante
Alighieri. Dante had mocked the prophet by letting him fry in hell along with
popes and saints in his "Divine Comedy,"
written nearly six hundred years ago.
Since then the tomb has had to be
guarded by the police.
Assaults on bookstores in Great Britain have been mentioned; some more
took place in Italy and the United States.
In Turkey, the supreme court ordered
the burning of books by the Turkish
author Ahmet Altan. Additionally,several
Moslem preachers called for execution
of the death threat against Rushdie,
after cinemas showing the film "The
Last Temptation of Christ" had been assaulted some months earlier in apparent
solidarity with Christians. The explanation given for these violent acts was that
Christ had been insulted in the film, and
after all he was a prophet, too.
In mid-May of 1989tens of thousands
of Chinese Moslems protested against
the publication of a sociological study
on worldwide sexual customs. The
book, entitled Sexual Habits (published
by the Shanghai Cultural Press), dealt
with, among others, the Moslems' sexual
customs, including the significance of
minarets and mosques as sexual symbols and pilgrimages to Mecca as a
means of celebrating orgies. The results:
Moslem demonstrations in China, demanding a "hard sentence on the Chinese
Salman Rushdie," meaning the study's
authors. The Chinese government immediately prohibited publication.
In India, fundamentalist Hindus announced they were going to murder a
historian who had allegedly insulted
Hinduism in a book published two years
earlier. The author was put under police
protection.
These are just a few of the known examples of successor criminality after
Khomeini's threat. No one can tell how
many artists, scientists, and enlighteners
September 1989

will be threatened by religious fanatics

and psychopaths in the future.

What does it all mean?

The so-called "Rushdie affair" is just
another sign for the dawning of new
Middle Ages all over the world. The
imam's international murder threat
takes off where the Christian world was
in the Middle Ages, where openly stated
dissident opinions led to one's death
sentence. At the same time, we get an
insight into the conditions of religious
terror in which Iran's population must
be living. One example might be perfect
to further illustrate this: As recently as
February 1989 word got out that a
woman was under the threat of a death
sentence in Iran, only because she had
stated that she did not think of Mohammed's daughter Fatima as a model for
Iranian women, for she had lived fourteen hundred years ago. She would prefer "Oshi," a Japanese television series'
title role. In a letter to Iranian television's
top executive, Khomeini declared that
this woman had to die if it could be
proven that her insult was made on purpose. Four of the television station's employees responsible for the broadcast of
the woman's remark were sentenced to
terms in prison and corporal punishment.
Eventually, the Rushdie affair should
clarify for all beneficiaries of European
Enlightenment the consequences of a
mentality like the ayatollah's: physical
extinction of real and/or imaginary opponents. Most of all, though, it is, and
this is most important for Atheists, a
yardstick for determining how far the
Enlightenment has receded in recent
years, for it is due to the Enlightenment
that both Europe's and the United
States' citizens are not in a similarly
threatening position as Iran's. Considering the reactions to this assault on freedom of speech and art, Atheists are
seized by unholy terror. Official complaints about Iran's measures in dealing
with Rushdie have long been forgotten;
as shown above, the mullahs and all
Page 51

sorts of successor criminals were even

encouraged to follow the path they had
taken. Especially remarkable in its inherent symbolic meaning is the prohibition of readings from The Satanic Verses
by universities in both Salzburg and
Vienna. These prohibitions clearly mark
a break with the tradition of the Enlightenment, as science and research, the to be stated publicly, is the barely conuniversities' tasks, were made possible cealed goal of the Vatican's statements.
The message conveyed to artists is
only by liberation from religious terror.
Universities once safeguarded minority clear: if you want to avoid trouble, keep
opinions; this does not seem to be the off religion. As Austrian Bishop Krenn
explained in a recent television intercase in Austria anymore.
Government officials and the media view, strictly speaking, Christian myare of the opinion that in "opposing fa- thology is the church's possession natics, one is powerless." Closely fol- thus the artists' unwanted tampering
with it is plagiarism. This statement is all
lowing the aforementioned developments, one cannot help the impression but a request for self-censorship, and as
that the public never even planned to soon as religious feelings are accepted
as a reason for censorship, other "feelseriously oppose these fanatics' terror.
What we Atheists are experiencing ings" such as "national pride," which is
today is a slow poisoning of the intellec- closely related to "religious feelings"
tual climate. The public is desensitized
psychologically anyway, are sure to folto monstrosities, and this process is ac- low suit.
celerating very fast. At the end of this
In a climate of fear and intimidation
development, freedom of art, speech,
artistic license cannot develop but, on
the contrary, is sure to wither just like
and thought willhave been abolished.
This is what the controversies con- freedom of speech will if minorities'
cerning The Satanic Verses or "The beliefs cannot be stated openly and
Last Temptation of Christ" are aiming without repression. It becomes clear
at. A great deal of energy is put into the that what constitutional rights are worth
effort to further the respect for "reli- shows only when they are actually made
gious feelings," overtly by brute force use of. Conformist artists have no need
and encouraging censorship, covertly for freedom of speech as they never
by support of religious agitation. Each challenge it, but rebellious and critical
and everyone of us is to acknowledge
artists do need these constitutional
religion as Something Special, not to be rights, which are of almost crucial imcriticized in any way by mere humans.
portance to Atheists.
If anybody, like Rushdie, does not acThe central point is not a lip-service to
cept this as the ultimate truth, the con- these rights, but dedication to and
sequences he might have to suffer are struggle for them. A question arises:
his own responsibility, according to the which steps can be taken against this
mentally inert public. Ultimately, this threat? One such step would be to make
line of "reasoning" leads to the big reli- it public knowledge that Khomeini's
appeal for murder is by no means ungions' substance, beliefs, and statements
becoming unquestionable. If this is al- precedented in history, but that such
lowed to happen, we are set back to the condemnations have been an integral
times before the French Revolution, the part of the history of all religion. Theretimes before the beginning of the Age of fore, one can not distinguish between
Enlightenment. Just that, making it im- "good" and "bad" religions; religion as
possible for certain opinions and thoughts such is an evil.
Page 52

September 1989

Another goal worth fighting for is the

separation of church and state. The
state must be forced to relinquish all
support for organizations which try to
undermine basic rights - including the
Roman Catholic and all other churches.
Censorship's
foothold is the law
against blasphemy (188 in Austria, but
to be found in many a country under
different names). A hard blow to censorship fanatics would be the uncompensated removal of this relic of inquisition
from the codes of law. Ifreligion feels the
need to argue with criticism, this could
still be done by putting forth real arguments. For example, Moslems could
prove that the Koran really is Allah's
work, Christians that Mary really was a
virgin before, during, and after giving
birth to the guy named Jesus - there is
a whole range of possibilities.
Personal consequences? Leave the
church and join American Atheists in
America, the Anticlerical Working Group
- Organization for Enlightenment and
Atheism in Austria! ~

Sources
The facts and quotations of this article were collected from the following
media:
Austria: Der Standard (a liberal newspaper), Arbeiterzeitung
("Workers
News," social-democratic), Salzburger
Nachrichten ("Salzburgian News,"
conservative), Volksstimme ("Peoples
Voice," communist).
West Germany: Die Tageszeitung (an
alternative newspaper), Deutsche
Volkszeitung - Die Tat ("German
People's News - The Action," which
stands near to the West German
Communist party), Siiddeutsche
Zeitung ("Southern German News,"
conservative), Materialien und Informationen zur Zeit ("Materials and
Informations to the Time," magazine
of the Western German League of
Atheists and Non-Believers), Bavarian
Radio Station 2 Switzerland: Neue
Zurcher Zeitung (conservative).
American Atheist

Frankfurt Book Fair: The most

important author was missing
Rushdie has been
taken into "protective
custody" - essentially
house arrest - for
having written The
Satanic lVerses.
And at the largest book
fair in the world there
were few publishers
brave enough to defend
his right to free
.
expression.

This account of the Frankfurt Book

Fair was provided by the AhrimanVerlag, an anticlerical and Atheist
press headquartered in Freiburg, West
Germany. The Ahriman-Verlag, which
recently published a book on the
Rushdie controversy, was an exhibitor
at that book fair.

Austin, Texas

alman Rushdie and his book

The Satanic Verses became
jtI
the dominant subject of the
forty-first international book
fair in Frankfurt. This had not
at all been planned, however. Publicity
for this book was not desired.
The publishers let themselves be intimidated by the threats of religious
fanatics and, following a half-official arrangement with the fair management,
they hid the book or did not exhibit it at
all. The British publishing house Penguin only displayed it at times at an inaccessible place; its representatives' reactions to television filmingwere almost
hysterical. The Italian publishing house
Mondadori kept the book under the
counter, like porno in Iran. Only the
Norwegian Aschehough publishing
house presented its translation of The
Satanic Verses just like any other new
book. The German edition, published
by the collective company "Artikel 19"
that had been founded especially for
this, had been held back, although printing was finished, until after the fair.
The only company that took the offensive and spoke up for the author
threatened with murder was the AhrimanVerlag with Salman Rushdie - Portrait
of a Poet by Peter Priskil. Our book explains why Salman Rushdie is being persecuted by the Muslims and why the
West - contrary to all hypocritical declarations - does not want to protect
him and with him freedom of speech. By
his literary analysis of Salman Rushdie's
novels, Peter Priskil makes a contribution to the discussion about this suppressed work. This portrait of the persecuted poet is meant to act against a
tendency which Rushdie's case demonstrates - the betrayal of the French
Revolution and the bringing back of
Middle Age conditions. Instead of effecively protecting freedom of speech
against all attacks, as the constitutions
of European states have laid down, in

September 1989

several states blasphemy laws are being

tightened and extended. Rushdie, a British citizen, is not being protected against
any attack but rather has been taken
into preventive detention. Neither are
the media put at Rushdie's disposal nor
is his incriminated book published on a
governmental level to thus demonstrate
that the rights of any European citizen
are being protected against the attacks
of religious fanatics. Diplomatic relations are further maintained with the
state that threatens a British citizen with
murder. Unhindered the religious mob
can execute Rushdie in effigy, i.e., symbolically,on European grounds, pogrom
leaders are not prosecuted. Instead,
understanding for the religious feelings
of the Muslims is expressed from all
sides.
Thus the "Modell Deutschland" whose
characteristics are the blasphemy section, Stammheim, and Berufsverbote,
and in which democratic rights exist
only on paper, is transferred to all of
Europe.

<

.'../. i.~I,.~"<:

,5/("

"'""/t(f~At the Frankfurt book fair, the last

chance to create a worldwide forum for
Salman Rushdie was deliberately wasted. At the introductory press conference, Fair Director Weidhass reported
in detail about the extensive security
Page 53

A few weeks before Khomeini's

death order, Salman Rushdie
attended the Whitbread 1988
Book of the Year awards in
London.

precautions that had become

necessary for the first time, and
he asked for understanding _.
but it was exactly those companies that published books by
or about Rushdie which did not
get effective protection. Anyone who publishes such provocative books was, of course,
responsible himself for the
consequences, and apart from
this there were no concrete
threats, the Frankfurt chief
constable said. Therefore we,
the Ahriman-Verlag, had to pay
good money to have our booth
protected privately - at the
same time the fair management
cynically demanded an extra
risk charge for night guarding
because there was a special
security risk. Even after a concrete bomb threat, police protection was refused. Thus fair
management and police actually censored the book. The
"security precautions" turned
out to be a farce - performed to distract from the cowardly kneeling before
the mullahs.
The "International Committee for the
Defence of Salman Rushdie and his Publishers" also had to suffer a quiet, but
not less effective, sabotage. At the fair,
it organized a solidarity meeting, the
groundwork of which had to be carried
out in London. This required cooperation with the fair management that hindered far more than it supported. Thus,
without prior consultation, the meeting
was moved from a central place to a
small room outside the area of the book
fair. There was no public announcement; the invitation leaflets just lay under the counters of the publishing houses. Fair management and Wagenbach,
speaker of the "Artikel 19" company,
openly admitted: the matter was not to
be bandied about. In consequence - as
desired - only very few persistent people asked their way to the small, remote
room, and the panel discussion was
Page 54

future it will be possible to express any opinion without reservations, or if there is a death
penalty for any unpopular opinion again, i.e., a reintroduction
of classic Middle Age conditions.
Even this selective publicity
- for the fair management it
was far too big, so they tried to
prevent the spreading of the
leaflets - resulted in sudden
and astonishingly realistic estimations of the situation in
some press organs, because
this was the only way to keep
up the belief in the democratic
and liberal basic position of the
media and the objectivity of
their reporting. Typicallyenough
these articles did not print the
slightest note about us or the
International Committee, or if
they did it was always in a defamatory way. Or the responsiReuters/Bettmann Newsphotos
ble editor was brought back
into line, ifthere should happen
actually closed to the public, in spite of to be objective reporting - like the
a relatively great number of mass media news in the ZDF (a television channel).
being present. Afterwards the media
The events at the book fair are typireported next to nothing about it. In a cal of the decay of freedom of speech in
report about the fair, a culture magazine the Federal Republic of Germany. The
programme of the German television for hard-won rights of 1789are increasingly
example, showed only some meaning- undermined. The watchfulness of the
less and whiny remarks from the pub- public is getting weaker and weaker.
lisher Wagenbach. The really interesting The Rushdie case showed that the
points - that it had become evident "Modell Deutschland" finds more and
that Salman Rushdie and everybody
more imitators all over Europe as an opwho stands up for him is boycotted and portunity to invalidate basic democratic
threatened - were totally suppressed.
rights. The way back into these new
Broadcasting and radio did not act any Middle Ages leads past the blasphemy
better. As obedient government organs, laws in every single country. Therefore
they spread about legends which made we regard fighting these laws as our
the West appear the highest guardian of most important task. Whoever wants to
freedom of speech and civil rights.
keep pope and mullahs from turning
It was only by our obvious presence
back the wheel of history two hundred
at the fair, with a big poster of Rushdie years, must kno\}' very clearly that he
at the booth and leaflets (using the sets out against a perfect organization
slogan "Book Fair '89: The Most Impor- proven to be successful over centuries.
tant Author is Missing"), that there was In order to cope with this enemy, one
a certain publicity for the idea that Rush- must work together worldwide in a way
die's case exemplarily decides if in the just as consequent and resolute. ~
September 1989

American Atheist

The Rushdie case and the

cowardice of the West
Europe's reaction to the
threats of Moslem
fundamentalists was to
attempt to appease
them - not to-protect
the rights
of free expression
and free speech.
Is this an omen of
intellectual repression
to come?

[he following essay is reprinted from

Ketzerbriefe 12, a magazine published
by Bunte Liste Freiburg .. a West
Germany Atheist group. Ketzerbriefe
('Heretical Letters") focuses on information about the continuing legal
prosecution of Atheists in West
Germany. Ahriman Verlag, the
publishing arm of Bunte Liste Freiburg,
recently issued Salman Rushdie - Portrait of a Poet, a review of the Rushdie
controversy by Peter Priskel.

Austin, Texas

t the time of the British Em

pire, an Indian maharajah cornplained to the governor be~
cause the latter had prohibited
the burning of widows - this, being an
old custom should, after all, be kindly reo
spected - and got the brief and probably quite effective answer, "We hang
widow murderers."
Since the Rushdie case this uncompromising attitude towards religious
barbarity, no matter of what color, obviously belongs to the past for good. Even
more frightening than the Iranian order
to kill Salman Rushdie is the cowardice
with which Great Britain and the entire
West are bending to the threats of the
potential poet killers. More oppressive
than the rabid appeals of the ayatollah
- what could be expected from him in
the matter of freedom of speech is
known, after all - are the comments
soaking with "understanding" given by
the West about this outrageous order by
a foreign religious leader, to kill a European citizen.
For the better comprehension of the
extent of this super-soft attitude, the following comparison may wing the reader's fantasy: What would have happened
if the order to kill had not come from
Iran but, about ten years ago, from the
Soviet Union under Brezhnev, if the victim had not been Rushdie but Solzhenitsyn? What would have happened if
West European parties, sympathizing.
with the Soviet Union, had organized
mass demonstrations, had burnt the
book The Gulag Archipelago publicly,
and had threatened to killany publisher
or bookseller continuing to publish or
sell the book? What would have happened ifa pro-Soviet combat group had
announced a proposed assassination of
the secretary of state of the United
States as well as bomb attacks on American civilian airplanes until the United
States government permitted the shooting of Solzhenitsyn? Would there have
September 1989

been in this case, too, "understanding"

for the motives of the Soviet leadership
and the "being insulted" of the Soviet
population? There is no question: From
the proclamation of the state of emergency to military retaliation, anything
would have been acceptable to counter
this blackmail.
The cowardice of the West is the
more apparent as its opponent in this
case is not a more or less well-armed
great power but a regime that has just
barely escaped a military defeat. Furthermore, only a few years ago in the
Falkland War, Great Britain had shown
what a single NATO state is capable of
doing if it sees its interest threatened in
any part of the world. A non-interventionalist policy cannot be the reason for
th= attitude of the West European governments: this time they are the attacked and they have not only the right but
the duty to defend themselves and to
protect Rushdie with all means. This
would include, should Iran take to open
violence, military intervention, of which
we approve - as we have shown in the
Falkland War - ifit serves progress, for
example the fallof a South American regime of torture. We do not at all share
the perverse underlying logic of the
pseudo-left that this is just "Imperialism"
and "Eurocentrism."
It is, however, apparent even without
open military exchange that the West
does not want to protect Rushdie efficientlu For if it had, it would have protested when the Satanic Verses were
prohibited in the first several countries.
It would have particularly interfered
when on its own territory Rushdie's
books were burnt by fanatic Moslems
and the poet himself was executed in
effigy - as was the custom in the Middle Ages when one could not get hold of
the heretic. Instead of the leaders of the
pogr oms being thrown into prison, thus
preventing further riots, they were encouraqed to more rioting by the reverPage 55

ent murmurings about supposedly "insulted religious feelings" and were thus
given state licence for putting up the
stakes, After Khomeini's order to kill, it
should have gone without saying that
the Satanic Verses should have been
published at the expense of the state.
Instead this was left to a few single persons with little determination and even
less means, who are furthermore much
more easily blackmailed and intimidated. Instead of being hidden, Rushdie
should have been given an opportunity
to speak for himself publicly, particularly after the death threat, without, of
course, any personal risk. Why were
not radio and television put at his disposal to defend himself? Let no one say
that a state such as Great Britain or
West Germany is not capable of defending anyone of its citizens from the
attack of killer commandos! Here the
GSG 9 would have made sense for a
change.
The use of all the means of the state
is not only absolutely necessary for the
protection of Rushdie but most urgent
for another reason: Khomeini's death
order aims at a particular person and
opinion, but it aims furthermore fundamentally at freedom of speech, the protection of which is a duty of the state and
can only be granted - or broken, that
is - by the public power. Anyone who,
in the face of the monstrosity of the call
for someone's being killed because of
his different opinion, utters "understanding" for the rabble-rousers, thereby expresses his basic agreement with
the murderers and makes the victim the
culprit ("Why, after all, did he write this
book?"). With each kowtow towards
the "insulted religious feelings," the
West sells out those values that once
distinguished the bourgeois states from
the rest of the world. The greatest value
of the achievements of the French Revolution was that one could no longer be
tortured, burnt, broken on the wheel, or
quartered if one held a different opinion
than the church. For it is the particular
feature of the freedom of speech that
Page 56

furthermore pronounces them guilty.

The up-to-now unimaginable then becomes possible again: that, because of
their opinion, heretics can be killed in
Europe with the explicit approval of the
government. This is the real and most
frightening meaning of the European reaction to Khomeini's death command.
There is finally the question as to why
Salman Rushdie with his book of all
books has become the victim of this
large-scale witch-hunt. To our knowledge for the first time in Islam, Rushdie
has by his Satanic Verses pursued the
anyone can utter his opinion without way the European heretics - i.e., the
having to prove any entitlement or hav- early enlighteners - had ~ken centuries
ing to justify doing it in this or that man- before him. According to his-own statener. Any opinion, differing from that of ment, Rushdie wanted by his book to
the government or the majority, most of picture in a literary fantastic form "the
all any view contradicting that of the inner life of someone who has lost his
church, has a particular right to protec- faith." .His .intention is comparable to
tion. This is, historically and logically,' many occidental pieces of art, including
the essence of freedom of speech. This doubtless world literature (as, for examright, to which any human being is en- pie,' Gargantua and Pantagruel by the
titled, was fought for in Europe over French humanist Rabelais). Compared
centuries and paid for by a high blood to the heretics of the early modern era,
toll. If it is still valid today - though in- however, Rushdie finds himself in a
creasingly restricted by censorship and much worse position, as the bourgeois
blasphemy legislation - this is only due states cowardly and hypocritically deny
to the beneficial late effect of the guillo- their own origin and prostitute themtine and the - increasingly diminishing selves to their former mortal enemies.
- commitment of the public to freedom Not so imams and popes. They plan for
of speech. This right was won by the centuries and have remained the same
European part of mankind just as the for centuries. In the concerted action of
other advantages that distinguish the the world religions against the freedom
bourgeois states from the Middle Ages of speech and the achievements of the
French Revolution, Iran has taken the
and present -day Iran.
As the Rushdie case shows drastically, role of the leading agitator and acts with
the support of all other religious leaders.
who censors never-mind-what-opinion
clears the way to witch burning and The death command of Khomeini was
lynch justice. This is the first thing the given after prior consultation with the
pogroms against Rushdie teach: how pope, who now doesn't keep his approvshort and inevitable the way is from cen- al to himself.
The Rushdie case is the first - deadly
sorship to the stake.
Who in the face of the order to kill serious - test as to how much [reedont
of speech means to the West. If Rushdie
Rushdie demands the latter should
is killed and thus the first burning of a
carry the costs for his police protection
himself (as can be read in the American heretic takes place in Europe after two
journal Spectator and a disgusting com- hundred years, the West bears the full
responsibility as it has omitted to protect
ment in the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung from March 3), gives Rushdie
Rushdie with all means and with him
and his successors to the hangman and freedom of speech! ~
September 1989

American Atheist

The theopolitics
of the Rushdie case
The Rushdie affair was
more than a freedom of
speech issue. It was
also a game of threats
and attempts of a
growing religion
to protect itself from
new ideas.
The question is, will the
apathy of the majority
allow it to succeed?

Madalyn O'Hair is the founder of

American Atheists and the editor
emeritus of the American Atheist.

Madalyn O'Hair
Austin, Texas

he Jews are awaiting their Messiah. The Christians eagerly expect the return of Jesus Christ.
The Moslems anticipate the
twelfth Imam. And the Atheists waiting
to "Let George Do It" idly watch as the
world goes to hell in a wheelbarrow.
As this tale of madness unfolded, the
intellectuals of the world took no part in
it: they abandoned the playing out of the
drama to the loons on earth, ill will to
men.
There are two factions of Moslems,
and that really is not germane to the
sounds of wind and fury either. But they
are the Shiites and the Sunnis. The
Shiites regard Ali as the first rightful
Imam (Caliph) and do not consider the
Sunna (the oral law, tradition) of any authority, but rather charge it as being
apocryphal. In Shiite doctrine, Mahdi, a
twelfth Imam, is living in concealment
through the centuries but is expected to
come to rule Islam.
The Sunnis are the orthodox and conservative body of Moslems and are divided into sects about which you don't
need to know a damn thing. They are
ruled by the Sunna, which is an oral collection of sayings and examples of Mohammed and his immediate followers.
They serve as a supplement to the
Koran. The Jews have the same kind of
garbage collection, which they call
Mishnah, which supplements the Old
Testament; and the Christians, in their
own right, have the excrement of the
papal bulls, which supplement the New
Testament. These three horrible religions, springing from the forehead of
ignorance, live on into our times.
To briefly discuss the youngest of
these introduced into the East in the
early seventh century: Islam is the religion of Mohammed.' He is so revered
that at any time his name is articulated
the speaker must follow it with the
phrase, "Peace be upon him." Islam's
adherents are called variously Muslims,

September 1989

Moslems, Musulmans, or Mohammedans, and all are members of the Semitic

family. The word islam means "submission to the will of god." Mecca, the city
in which Mohammed was born, is the
holy city of this religion. The faith is expressed in the shahiidah: "There is no
God but Allah and Muhammad is his
Prophet."
The problem is that Mohammed died
without a male heir, leaving money and
political power to whoever could grab it.
Mohammed's cousin and son-in-law, Ali,
and Ali's second son Husein were both
killed in the internecine war of succession - and legends of them have created a powerful mysticism to which
Moslems cling - as the Jews cling to the
mysticism of Moses, Abraham, and
Isaac; as the Christians cling to Paul and
the apostles, to the mythical Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John.
Dreams die hard.
The Shiites proposed the rule of Islam
by descendents of the holy family and
called this legitimism of the Imam, the
ruler. Iran, which is a Shiite nation, is
actually run by several hundred ayatollahs, all of whom came through the Shiite religious schools at Qom. They have
old school ties, being first classmates,
and then friends for years. The ruling
power rests with a twelve-member
Council of Guardians, made of senior
ayatollahs of which Khomeini was the
supreme head - the first among equals,
but who stands in for the "hidden"
Imam, the twelfth religious leader who
disappeared in the tenth century and
who is to return to create a perfect
world, to fill it with truth and justice.
After the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's
death, he was succeeded by the Ayatollah
AliKhamenei, elected as spiritual leader

!His full name is Abu al-Qasim Muhammad

ibn 'Abd Allah ibn 'Abd al-Muttalibibn Hashim.
..

Page 57

Moslems comprise more than 90 percent

of population.
Moslems are the majority (50-90 percent
of population).
Moslems are a substantial minority (1050 percent of population).

by the eighty-three-man Assembly of

Experts, who followed his wishes regarding Khamenei. Hashemi Rafsanjani
was elected president of the country,
but the new Imam has the power to dismiss the president, declare war, appoint
major officials,and serve as commander
in chief of the armed forces.
The minority has ever wanted to be
the majority. Khomeini's cry to killRushdie was his last attempt to rally all Moslems to unity, and there are approximately one billionMoslems in the world.
The estimate is that 85 to 90 percent are
Sunnis. There are thirty million in the
Soviet Union, and a Moslem majority
exists in Albania, Bangladesh, Chad, the
Gambia, Lebanon, Malawi, Malaysia,
Niger, Senegal, the Sudan, and Syria.
The Arabian peninsula countries are
nearly 100percent Moslem: Afghanistan,
Algeria,Iran, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco,
Somalia, Tunisia, and Turkey. Then, of
.course, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Mali,
Pakistan and Egypt are, at least, 90 percent Moslem. Ninety million Moslems
livein India, making up about 11percent
Page 58

of India's 880 million population.

In the Moslem nations there is no distinction between church and state. The
subjugation of unbelievers is, therefore,
one of the basic commandments of the
faith. An apostate from the religion is
seen as the deadliest enemy of Islam,
and to Khomeini Rushdie represented
all of them. With the collusion of a handful of other zealots he reached out,
through Rushdie, to terrorize the modern secular world which was seeping
slowly but certainly into his far from impregnable religious domain. As recently
evidenced, not even a Berlin wall can
keep out ideas.
But that modern secular world does
not defend itself from the frontal attacks
of the Khorneinis, the Falwells, the
Thatchers, the Terry Randalls, the
popes, the Ronald Reagans, or the
Bushes. A flaccid, directionless mass, it
hopes to conquer the blows by absorbing them, with little or no complaint and
certainly no correction. And so it was
with the Rushdie red herring. Khomeini
whipped up the mindless to senseless
September 1989

acts of violence, to which there was

small objection except for the economic
self-interest of the nations or publishers
involved. The strictured mind of Khomeini was protecting itself by protecting
the god-image it mirrored. A few isolated
persons and small groups took umbrage
at the side threat to freedom of speech
and freedom of press involved in the international theatre of bombast, anger,
and death. But since those voices were
briefly heard, scattered, and lacking
either authority or force, their complaints
were ignored. The great irony is that the
Rushdie matter will be resolved, if it is
resolved at all, only by time and apathy
as the secular homogenized culture reduces every human component to "My
opinion is as good as your opinion.
Neither can we criticize or find offense."
In the agglutinated mass everyone is
equal. There is no further need for freedom of the press, freedom of speech, or
freedom 'ofconscience. We are allfreaks
together - except, of course, that all
religions must be protected, for they
alone are sacrosanct. ~
American Atheist

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0989 magazine

Austin, Texas

September 1989

Page S9

Talking Back

Ah, sweet mystery of life

Bert Schorlemmer, retired sign painter from Texas, replies:
San Antonio.

This month's question:

Where did you come
from?

Norm R. Allen, Jr., Black historian

from Maryland, replies:
No one knows for sure, but "the last
word in wisdom is knowing how not to
know." Life can still have meaning - if
you want it to - without making up a
god and a system of beliefs centered
around that god. The comedian Jackie
Mason related, however, "I see life as a
dance. Does a dance have to have a
meaning? You're dancing because you
enjoy it."
We must also have the courage to
follow the argument wherever it leads. If
we do not also ask where did god come
from, asking where did you come from
is a waste of our time intellectually.
Robert Bandonis, writer and schoolteacher from Pennsylvania, replies:
What a silly question! I came from
someone's vagina. Didn't you?
Richard A. Busemeyer, Life Member
of American Atheists, replies:
The best way to answer this question
is to ask the question, "Where did god
come from?"
Robert W. Luck, a California Atheist,
replies:
I came from my parents, that is a male
and a female. They came into this world
the same as myself. What was it like
before I was born? Is it exactly like when
I die? Let me know if you find out.

So you're having a hard time dealing

with the religious zanies who bug you
with what you feel are stupid
questions? Talk back. Send the question you hate most and American
Atheists will provide scholarly, tart, humorous, short, belligerent, or funpoking answers. Get into the verbal
fray; it's time to "talk back" to religion.

Page 60

Madalyn O'Hair, founder of American Atheists, replies:

The person with this query is such an
idiot that he does not know how to
couch the question. It properly is:
whence was matter derived? We know,
on our earth, how the organic was
derived from the inorganic. We do not
as yet know the source of matter, or if
matter is energy transformed, we do not
know the ultimate source of energy.
September 1989

The only honest answer is that we

really don't know. All materialists and
Atheists should simply say that. But
what we do know is that the answer is
not found through reading a "book"
purporting to be the word of god written
in an unintelligible code (without vowels) by a group of bare-assed, ignorant,
illiterate, starving, bedouins wandering
around in the Sinai desert, twenty-five
hundred years ago, protein deficient,
probably hallucinating from lack of
food, water, and the wherewithal of life.
The answer is in the outreach of the
scientific method of inquiry, in astronomy, in space exploration, in astrophysics, in the keen inquiry of the educated mind. Atheists trust that humankind can, with the resolution to do so,
find out damn near everything, including how energy and matter were first
derived.
David Kent, Life Member of the
Virginia Chapter of American Atheists, replies:
What a welcome question for the
amateur genealogist! But the Christian
asking this question is not after a history
of glorious fornications. He wants the
Atheist to say simply, "my father," so
that the acknowledgment of a physical
father can be wrenched into an admission of some universal father up in the
sky. But, in fact, "you" - whoever you
are - are really a bit in a very long chain
of DNA, whose use of the organic shelters we call humans has nothing of a
supernatural character about it.
Derek Roberts, a University of Texas
student, responds:
This is a very interesting question
because it at once shows the reason for
religion and the dangerous complacency
it promotes. What the questioner is saying is "Because I rationalize my natural
inability to explain all phenomena, I am
unable to understand anyone who does
not." The questioner is expressing his
reaction to a person who accepts his incapacity to know everything. This is one
American Atheist

of the reasons why religionists are so

hostile towards Atheists. Atheism challenges the entire world view of religionists. Religion provides easy answers for
those who refuse to think beyond its
dogma. Atheism accepts that there are
some questions which are yet to be answered.
Religion's role, however, is not as innocuous as just providing mental stability for ignorant people. The "god did it"
explanation has created and continues
to create obstacles in the way of progress. It was not until religious preconceptions were removed that humans
learned that illnesses are caused by viruses and genes, not demons; that the
solar system is heliocentric and not
geocentric; and that man evolved from
other species, not from the breath of
god. There is no reason to doubt that
the gods will soon lose credit for the
making of life on Earth also.
Ralph B. Shirley, retired attorney,
formerly
of Washington,
D.C.,
replies:
Iam a member of the animal kingdom,
genus Homo, epithet sapiens and a primate mammal. My species reproduce
substantially like other mammals, by
copulation, giving birth to live young
and suckling the young.
What species are you? Since you did
not know where I came from, I can only
assume that you just arrived on earth
from another planet that we have not
heard of.

Austin, Texas

Dial A Minister Dial A Pastor - -_Dial A Prayer -

Dial fJ\ I\c." .

Dial A Re~e
Dial A Sa~n
Dial A SCIe
Dial A ser .
Dial A Splr.
'al A 1he
1V

DIAL-AN-ATHEIST
The telephone listings below are the various services where you may listen to
short comments on state/church separation issues and viewpoints originated by
the Atheist community.
Phoenix, Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
San Diego, California
San Francisco, California
Sonoma County, California
South Bay (San Jose), California
God Speaks
Greater DC
Denver, Colorado
Southern Florida
Tampa, Florida
Atlanta, Georgia
Northern Illinois
Dial-a-Gay-Atheist
Detroit, Michigan
Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
Northern New Jersey
Keene, New Hampshire
New York City, New York
Dial-a-Gay-Atheist
Columbus, Ohio
Findlay (Toledo), Ohio
Mansfield, Ohio
Portland, Oregon
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
DIAL-THE-ATHEIST
Austin, Texas
Dallas, Texas
Ft. Worth, Texas
Houston, Texas
Dial-a-Gay-Atheist
Salt Lake City, Utah
Seattle, Washington
September 1989

(602) 273-1336
(602) 623-3861
(619) 660-6663
(415) 647-8481
(707) 792-2207
(408) 377-8485
(408) 257-1486
(703) 280-4321
(303) 252-0711
(305) 474-6728
(813) 677-7731
(404) 662-6606
(708) 506-9200
(708) 255-2960
(313) 521-2672
(612) 776-6163
(201) 777-0766
(603) 352-0116
(212) 861-6520
(718) 899-1737
(614) 294-0300
(419)423-4090
(419)522-2686
(503) 771-6208
(215) 533-1620
(512) 458-5731
(214)824-5800
(817)499-8832
(713) 776-3309
(713) 888-4242
(801) 364-4939
(206) 859-4668
Page 61

Poetry

Self-hypnosis:

Crossing the Utah border at seventeen

Listen to the hymn,

soft notes from choir loft,
watch the shaft of light
upon the altar cross.

The freight train pulls across the flats,

a long low draw of a fiddle bow,
and the moon spills into this long valley
and shakes its fist at my leaving.

Let go reality
drift with theistic tide
close out latitude
accept dependency.

In a glass boxcar of summer wind,

on a deck of golden straw,
I split this vast emptyness.
I fly in the face of the moon.

Angeline Bennett

This is the road away from a god,

and a white sea gun heaven.
How they roll back the heavy stone
on their endless records.

The shelter
A place where statues of salt
await the great last apocalypse.
I look back at lightning that cracks across
the knuckles of the Uintas.

Jacob Barnes sleeps next to me,

At least that's what I think;
He didn't have too much to say,
He'd had too much to drink.

I throw my words at Salt Lake City

I scream at that galaxy of fading light.
I climb on top of this rolling stock,
I stand alive and hold myself in the rushing air.

Our cots are two of forty here,

A pillow but no sheet;
But we don't mind, a mattress beats
A newspaper and the street.

There are no armed gods, or saints,

at this midnight border crossing,
no walls or trip wires
of hell or unleashed dobermans,
it is the night mirage of mind,
boundaries of imaginary lines,
fences of flowers and gates of air.
I look around. I have escaped.

Old Jacob, he's been comin' here

Since the first frost came down;
Comin', that is, after he'd tried
Every other place in town.
And, 'taint so bad, I always say,
To have some soup and bread;
Some company, warmth, a place to rest,
And a roof above your head.

Peter Coyne
Some like privacy, but I had none
When I worked in the mine;
And all together we were laid off,
And together we stood in line.

Someone

They promised us jobs, they promised us dreams,

But for some, I think, they lied;
For where were they with a helping hand?
Where are they now that Jacob's died?

Anyone
Can bea religionist,
Only someone
.
Can be a non-religionist.
Anyone can be
So self-limited,
Only a special someone
Can remain free and open.
Many are anyone,
Few remain someone.

August Berkshire

Samuel Evins Brown

Now we're dispersed across the state,

Some've found new jobs, some not;
Some have the comfort of a middle class home,
And some the comfort of a cot.

Page 62

September 1989

American Atheist

American Atheist Radio Series

Mohammed

Mohammed was a
shrewd businessman,
but he did not find that
his new religion was a
quick sell.

When the first installment of a

regularly scheduled, fifteen-minute,
weekly American Atheist radio series
on KLBJ radio (a station in Austin,
Texas, owned by then-President
Lyndon Baines Johnson) hit the
airwaves on June 3, 1968, the nation
was shocked. The programs had to be
submitted weeks in advance and were
heavily censored. The regular production of the series ended in September
1977,when no further funding was
available.
The following is the text of "American
Atheist Radio Series" program No. 65,
first broadcast on August 25, 1969.

Madalyn O'Hair
Austin, Texas

am finding that the best books which Ayish was the most intimate with him,
[] are written on the subjects of reli- but none of them appears to have exergion, diverse religious faiths, and cised so much influence upon his charreligious leaders, are those produced in acter as Khadija.
European countries, most often Ger
It was she who first began to believe
many. The United States continues to in the divine inspiration which her husbe a backwoods country insofar as fac- band began to disclose in the year 612,
ing the issue of religion is concerned. No at the mature age of forty. She was the
criticism, or real investigation is permit- one who encouraged and comforted the
ted, perhaps on the theory that if one rising prophet during his early years of
religious person is criticized or analyzed trouble.
- no matter how remote from ChrisHis first revelation was received by
tianity - this opens up criticism for any him in 612. It was dictated by the angel
Gabriel, who is Mohammed's authority
religious person - including Christian
for the whole of the Koran.
leaders.
I have found a three-volume set of
Now, if you' look up the angel Gabriel
in religious books and acDas Leben und die Lehre
des Mohammed by a Gercording to religious auman, Sprenger, and from
thorities in the United
States, you will find that
that I can acquaint you
briefly with Mohammed,
he appeared as a divine
or Mahomet, tonight.
messenger to Daniel, to
He is the last man who
Mary, and to Zacharias.
attained the rank of a
But nowhere do the reliprophet. Mohammed was
gious authorities here
agree that he ever apthe son of Abdullah and
peared to Abraham, or
Amina, born in Mecca,
province of Hagaz (Saudi
Mohammed.
Well, Mohammed says
Arabia), in Asia Minor, in The seal of Mohammed
the year 571. His father
that he not only appeared
to Abraham but that he gave Abraham
died before he was born. His mother
died when he was six years old. He was a black stone, which is the holy Kaaba,
still intact and enshrined in the city of
then taken charge of by his grandfather,
Mecca. Mohammed even has Gabriel's
Abd-al-Mottalib, but the grandfather
died within two years and when Moham- exact words to him, Mohammed. Gabriel
med was eight he was in the charge then said to him:
of his uncle, Abu Talib. He was poor and
had to work for his livingin a very humRecite thou, in the name of thy
ble occupation. In time, however, he obLord who created; created man
from clots of blood: Recite thou!
tained a comfortable employment in the
For thy Lord is the most beneficent,
service of a rich widow, named Khadija,
who hath taught the use of the
who was engaged in business, and
pen; hath taught man that which
whom he served in the capacity of a
he knoweth not. (Koran, sura
commercial traveler. He married her in
xcvi)
595 when he was twenty-four years old.
She was at the time thirty-nine, about
fifteen years his senior. She was evidently
After this first reception of the word
a woman of strong character and re- of god, Mohammed passed through a
tained an unbroken hold upon the af- period of extreme depression and gloom.
fection of Mohammed until her death in He received no more revelations and
619,twenty-four years later. Mohammed
finally determined to throw himself
later married many wives, of whom down from high mountains, but he was
September 1989

Page 63

prevented by the appearance of the

angel Gabriel. Then revelations began
to pour down abundantly.
Mohammed's earliest disciples, besides his wife and his daughters, were
his cousin, Ali,and the slave Zaid, whom
he had adopted as a son. By and by he
obtained other important converts,
among whom were Abu Bakr, Zobayr
and Othman, afterwards the caliph.
At first the Meccans were not offended
by his religious revelations, but when he
began to preach the unity of god, the
resurrection and the responsibility to
the deity, that aroused opposition. First
there was disapproval and then persecution. Mohammed immediately had a
revelation full of instructive legends of
nations whom god had destroyed for
their wickedness in rejecting the prophets who had been sent to them.
The persecution was intense, however, and some of his followers were
compelled to take refuge in Abyssinia,
and it was about this time that Mohammed had a relapse into the old faith. In
616he published a revelation recognizing three Meccan idols, Lat, Ozza and
Manah, as intercessors with Allah. In
consequence of this concession to their
faith, the Korayshites, his own tribe, fell
down on their faces in adoration of

Page 64

A.llah, and the exiles in A.byssinia returned to their native land. But Mohammed soon became ashamed of the
weakness by which he had purchased
public support. The verses were struck
out of the Koran and the weakness was
attributed to the devil. The verses in the
Koran are

six novitiates of paradise. The place

where these first vows were taken is
now called the first Akaba.
This paradise was no mean thing
which he promised. The fifty-sixth sura
contains a description of heaven. Those
persons who attain it are in "gardens of
delight," with "inwrought couches"
whereon they could recline as "aye
but God shall bring to nought that
(ever) blooming youths," and that "flowing wine" of the best celestial vintage
which Satan had suggested. Thus
would be brought to them. They would
shall God affirm his revelations,
enjoy their "favorite fruits" and be able
for God is Knowing Wise! That he
to eat whatever birds they long for.
may make that which Satan hath
"Houris [i.e., prostitutes] with large
injected, a trial to those in whose
dark eyes" who were "ever virgin,"
hearts is a disease, and whose
never growing old, would supply them
hearts are hardened. (Koran, sura
with the pleasures of physical love (sex).
xxii, verses 52, 53)
With a promise like this, within one
Persecutions began again. However, year, in 622 Mohammed was meeting
conversions did not cease, and finally in with seventy-two men of Medina by
617Omar was converted and this was of night at the same ravine, and the oath
great importance to the nascent com- now taken was called the second Akaba.
munity. About this time, however, mat- Twelve of the seventy-two were chosen
ters were pushed to the extreme by un- as elders and the rest were termed disbelievers in Mohammed and his family, ciples. The same promise of paradise
was made. The believers then swore to
the Hashimites, who were excluded
from all commercial and social inter- receive the prophet and to expend their
course by the other Korayshites, and property and their blood in his defense.
compelled to withdraw into their own A place of refuge was thus found and all
quarter. This quarantine lasted from 617 those who wanted to leave the hostility
to 619,during which his wife Khadija and of their countrymen gradually found
his uncle Abu Talib both died. The inse- their way to Medina. Finally only Mocurity in which he lived at Mecca forced hammed and his two friends Abu Bakr
and Ali were left. The hostility became
him to seek supporters elsewhere.
Now the Kaaba or Holy Stone at Mec- so great that he finally effected his
ca was the scene of an annual pilgrim- escape to a cave some distance from
age, and during this pilgrimage in 621 Mecca but in the opposite direction
Mohammed was able to get six persons
from Medina. There he remained in confrom Medina to bind themselves to him. cealment with Abu Bakr for three days
They did so by taking the followingoath. while the daughter of Abu brought food
for both. After this time a guide brought
Not consider anyone equal to Althree camels and the three men proceeded to the safety of Medina. The
. lah',
prophet reached Koba, a villagejust outNot to steal;
side it on the fourteenth of September
Not to be unchaste;
622. He remained there for three days,
Not to kill their children;
Not willfullyto calumniate;
being visited by adherents from Medina.
To obey the prophet's orders in
This was the celebrated Hegira, or
flight, from which the Mussulman era is
equitable matters.
dated.
During all this time Mohammed conIn return Mohammed assured these
September 1989

American Atheist

Left: Mohammed as portrayed by a

Westerner.
Right:Inthis Islamic portrait,Mohammed
rides a mythical steed into the seventh
heaven. His face is veiled, in keeping
with the Moslem tradition of never portraying his features. Moslems believe
that there are seven stages to heaven.

tinued to have revelations. When a revelation arrived, in the first instance

Mohammed would dictate it to his secretary, Zaid, who wrote it on palm leaves
or skins, or tablets of any kind that
might be at hand. Other Moslems took
copies of these, but many more committed the revelations to memory. But under the reign of Abu Bakr, the prophet's
successor, Omar, finding that someone
who knew a piece of the Koran had been
killed, suggested that the whole should
be collected. The work was entrusted to
Zaid. Mohammed had taken the palm
leaves and other material on which the
revelations had been written and thrown
them - without regard to order -- into
a chest. Zaid now undertook to gather
these all together, along with fragments
and those preserved in the memory of
individual believers - and made a copy.
. This was not published.
It was committed for safe custody to
Hafsa, daughter of Omar, one of the
widows of the prophet. She kept it during the ten years of her father Omar's
caliphate. Then the caliph Othman appointed a commission, with the secretary
Zaid at its head, to copy the copy of Hafsa and return it to her, for already various missionaries sent to different and
newly conquered countries repeated it
differently and various readings and
interpretations were creeping into the
text. Several copies were made by the
commissioners, of which one was kept
at Medina and the others sent to the
great military stations. This was the
great official text, prepared about the
Moslem years 25 to 30 (about the year
650). After this all private copies were
ordered destroyed. The original Koran,
which Mohammed only reproduced
here on earth, is preserved in heaven, in
the presence of its original author Gabriel, on an enormous table there.
And thus the holy book of the Mohammedans, the Quran or Koran, came
into being.
Armed combat was immediately born
of the new religion and the first war was
between Mecca and Medina.
Austin, Texas

Mohammed began to place himself

on the level with crowned heads of
nations and in 628 had a seal made with
the inscription on it: "Mohammed the
messenger of God." As the governor of
Medina he became tyrannical and cruel.
At one point he sacrificed one hundred
camels to emphasize a preachment he
made from the back of a camel. In one
disagreement with Jews he had six hundred men of one tribe put to death and
all of the women sold as slaves. He used
private assassination. He added many
wives to his family and concubines. He
married women whom he had never
even seen and some who were already
September 1989

married. To effectuate this he obtained

from god a special law entitling him to
exceed the usual number of wives. He
finally coveted Zaynab, the wife of his
adopted son Zaid. Zaid obligingly divorced her but when the young woman
demanded a revelation to sanction the
union, this was produced by Mohammed and the obliging Gabriel.
His character degenerated as he continued in power. But he developed a remittent fever in the year 632, at the age
of 61,and died on the eighth of June 632.
We willbe coming back to talk about the
Koran and more about Mohammed at a
later date. ~
Page 65

Under The Covers

Satanic farces

Ii

It aroused the wrath

of Moslems around the
world, but The Satanic
Verses is not
a particularly pungent
attack on religion.

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

New York City: Viking Penguin Inc.
1988, 547 pages.
The Satanic Verses is available from a
variety of retail outlets in the United
States.

Page 66

he story lineof The Satanic Verses,

ifit can be said to have one, is concerned primarily with two characters: an Indian movie star, Gibreel Farishta, who carries a caricature of the
name of the archangel who revealed the
tenets of Islam to the prophet Mohammed; and a British-Indian television
star, Saladin Chamcha, who carries the
name of the great Islamic warrior who
defeated the Christian Crusaders in the
twelfth century.
A minor mention is made of Mahound,
the prophet of Jahilia (the name means
darkness), a city of sand, but actually
speculated as representing Mecca, the
sacred city of the Moslems. Mahound,
incidentally, is the historically pejorative
name for Mohammed (ca 570-632),Arab
prophet and founder of the Islamic religion. Mahound is the name that Christians mockingly used for Mohammed in
their medieval religious "passion" plays.
When the fantasy begins Gibreel and
Saladin are on board a London-bound
Air India jet that is hijacked by Sikh
terrorists. The plane is blown up, over
London, by the quarreling hijackers and
Gibreel and Saladin, clinging to each
other, fall29,000 feet to earth, arguing all
the way down. They do survive but,
born again, they are transformed.
Gibreel becomes the Archangel
Gabriel, wearing a halo.
Saladin becomes the fallen Archangel
Satan, sprouting horns and hooves.
Both go on their improbable, totally fantastic, Baron Munchausen-type, adventures in different ways. The writing is
mamc.
Gibreel begins to have dreams and in
one of them the character Mahound appears.
One dream: a scribe engages in trifling
dalliance with the dictated holy words of
Mahound, who does not even notice the
difference.
One dream: In a particular brothel in
Jahilia the whores take the names of the
wives of Mohammed in order to increase
their trade, and the ruse works.
One dream: God is an ordinary bus iSeptember 1989

nessman behind a desk, not particularly

concerned with anyone's life.
One dream: Mahound, since it is expedient, permits the town of Jahilia to
keep three of its old goddesses, in order
to gain favor in the town. Later, rewriting
history, he sees that the telling of the tale
of their inclusion is The Satanic Verses
included in his Holy Book, by Satan.
Rushdie is erudite and he exhibits his
intellectually elitist snobbery at the drop
of a situation description, a la William E
Buckley, whether appropriate or not.
As one is reading the book the problem that overtakes one constantly is:
whatever is the matter with the man?
Why would an adult, educated, modern,
presumably sophisticated man engage
himself in writing a totally idiotic, convoluted fantasy which never touches
home base with realism, sows obscure
half-insults and pejorative as the wind
would sow tares in a field, and treats the
irrational and the improbable as fact?
Slowlythe answer comes as one muddles
through this autobiographical psychobabbling while pursuing with the other
eye the solid facts of his life.
Nowhere in the 218articles which had
been printed in a nearly two-year period,
or in the pseudo-news listened to or the
monitored theological theatre on the
radio or the television, had anyone ever
classified the author as an Atheist until
he himself discussed his lack of faith in
early 1990. But, essentially, this is what
Salman Rushdie is: a know-nothing
Atheist.
The world of all Atheists such as this,
is filled with word posturing only; there
is no substance. This type of Atheist has
arrived at the conclusion that there is no
god but is intellectually incapable of understanding what theism has done and
is still doing in and to the world. He sees
it as a benign, immaterial, non-force
which he may simply, with impunity, ignore.
Rushdie, reared a Moslem, was born
into a very rich and politically powerful
Kashmiri Moslem family, in Bombay on
June 19, 1947,the day that India won its
American Atheist

independence from Britain. For his education he was first enrolled in the Cathedral School in his hometown but was
sent to Britain, at age fourteen, to Rugby,the very exclusive (ruling class) boys'
prep school in England. His father, Anis
Ahmed Rushdie, a highly successful
businessman, powerful in Indian politics,
had attended Cambridge University's
Kings College, and expected his son to
follow.The father held a British passport,
so Salman has been an English citizen
since birth. Rushdie enrolled in Oxford
in the fall of 1%4 at the same time his
family fled from the Hindu-dominated
India to live in predominantly Moslem
Pakistan.
At Oxford, he became interested in
the theatre, the land of make-believe,
got parts, worked backstage. He graduated in the spring of 1%8 and went back
to India, or rather to Karachi, Pakistan
- not Bombay. There, he attempted to
produce Edward Albee's The Zoo Story,
but it was censored because the play
contained the word pork. Piqued, he
returned to England - and the theatre
- within the year. He never got out of
wonderland, going from theatre to advertising, neither one related to the real
world. In 1970he turned to writing and
tried his hand as an advertising copywriter, first at the London offices of J.
Walter Thompson, Ogilvy and Mather,
then at Charles Barker, both major advertising agencies. He came up with
several catch-phrases for advertising
slogans, such as the candy that was
"incredibubble" and the cream cakes
that were "naughty but nice."
His first novel was never published.
His second book Grimus in 1979 was
concerned with an American Indian's
search for the meaning of the universe
after being granted eternal life. It was a
commercial disaster, being of the same
calibre as his current writings. Grimus
was an allegory set on an imaginary
island. His next novel Midnight's Children, set in India, was published in 1981.
This was a fantasy about 1,001 children
born in India at the moment that British
Austin, Texas

colonial rule ended in 1947 - and the

children were born with magical powers
to communicate one with the other. It
was well received in the United States,
but sold 250,000 copies in England and
that many more throughout the world.
This book won the Booker McConnel
Prize, Britain's most coveted award for
fiction, and the James Tait Black Memorial Book Prize. But the book was anathema to the ruling Gandhi clan in India.
In it Rushdie attacked Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi, and her younger son,
Sanjay, who was her heir-apparent. In
the book he accused Indira Gandhi of
being responsible, through her neglect,
for his father's death (of a heart attack
twenty years ago). Indira Gandhi called
this slander and took Rushdie to court,
but she was assassinated before the suit
was resolved. His next, Shame, published
in 1983, was set in Pakistan. It was a
brooding fable based on the ouster of
Prime Minister AliBhutto in Pakistan by
the late Pakistani President Zia, and
Rushdie's description of the Pakistani
culture as one of shame put him in trouble in Pakistan. In both instances, he
was unable apparently to come head
first into a fight, but preferred mystical
allegory, and rambling incomprehensible Joycean musings. The Satanic
Verses is his first novel set in Britain. It
took him five years to write - drafts
come slowly to him. Rushdie also wrote
a slim, sympathetic book on Sandinista
Nicaragua, The Jaguar Smile: a Nicaraguan Journey, published in 1987.He has
spoken out on television and in British
papers on what he sees as that nation's
two faults: (1) "institutionalized racism"
in employment practices and housing,
and (2) the domestic policies of the
Thatcher government. Rushdie is generally described as being arrogant and
self-righteous. At the award dinner
when the Booker Prize for the year 1988
was awarded to another author, Rushdie stood up and protested the injustice
of the decision.
Twenty years in England now, until
the controversy over The Satanic Verses,
September 1989

he lived, most recently, in a northern

borough of London, in a four-story row
house in what used to be a workingclass block. He had a studio and an
electric typewriter on the top floor. Each
morning he tried to write seven hundred
words. His eyes are heavy-lidded, behind
thick glasses, and he drove a Saab automobile.
His first marriage, to Clarissa Luard,
ended in divorce in 1987.He has a nineyear-old son by the marriage, Zafar.
His second wife is/was Marianne
Wiggins. She also is forty-two years old
and a writer. Her first four books were
Babe, a semi-autobiographical novel
published in 1976; Went South, a 1980
novel about a contemporary woman's
coming of age; Separate Checks, a 1984
book about three generations of unusual
women; and Herself in Love, a 1987
collection of short stories dealing with
doubt, self-consciousness, and love.
Her John Dollar, just issued, is her
fourth novel. Originally titled Eucharist,
it has been described as a female version
of Lord of the Flies. In discussing this
book, during the general Rushdie furor,
she said:
I am an opponent of religion. I
wanted to show how powerful it is
and how it needs to be questioned.
It is always this close to evil, as are
all of these things which are structured to keep society tamped
down.
On August 25, 1989, Wiggins announced through her publisher that she
and Rushdie "have been living separately for four weeks," i.e., since about
the end of July 1989. She stated that
they had lived in fifty-six "safe houses"
since February 15, under the care of
Scotland Yard.
Even Rushdie's marriages have apparently never come down to earth.
The Moslems vigorously attacked
this book, seeing in it insults to Islam.
But if the whores in a brothel in Salt
Lake City would decide to make themPage 67

Jobs Around The House

(Or How You Can Help Without Leaving Your Home)
selves more mystically desirable by
assumingthe names of the wives of
Brigham Young and someone wrote
aboutit, wouldthat bean attackon the
basictheologicaltenetsof Mormonism,
or wouldit simplybe a badjoke?Since
every "learned" theologiannow easily
saysthat the Biblewasnot written personallyby god, or the Pentateuchby
Moses,shouldallthefundamentalists
in
the United Statesgo careeningdown
theroadinabrigadeofarmoredvehicles
sentout to kill them?
Rushdiedoes not attack Islam,Mohammed,or the Koran.He not aloneis
too intellectuallybankrupt to do that
but, further, he hasn't the balls for it.
Rathereverythingmustbesetonstages,
with cameracrews,featuringimplausibleplots,in weirdcostumes,andworse
dialogues- thento bewovenintoafantasythat hasno realmessage,
Oh, severalreviewershave seenin
the book the destinyof India,at least,
and the dilemmaof the West,at most,
as it handlesthe flood of immigrants
from the East.It is an epic of cultural
collisions,integrationof Islamicpeople
into Westernculture.Someholdit blasphemyto attack the tenetsof any religionbut doublyso by onerearedin the
Moslemfaithwith theuseof obscenities
and offensiveimagery.Rushdie,they
say,livesin therealmbetweentheworld
hehasleft,MoslemIndia,traditionaland
religious,andtheworldhehasadopted,
modernandsecularLondon.Theimagery of both is seenas sacrosanct,with
Rushdiedeliberatelytrying to enrage
andoffendthe onein favorof the other.
ConsideringRushdie'sexplainedlaborious process of writing - seven
hundred words a day, written each
morning,overa five-yearperiodof time
- it wouldbe impossibleto sustainan
unsupportedragethat long. He writes
not of the inadequaciesof Islam,or of
the great harm it has brought to the
world, but rather of semipoliticized
Hobbitsgonemadbut livingin a decaying international city of our modern
world.- MadalynO'Hair ~
Page 68

1. Next time you read your favorite magazine (besides the

American Atheist, of course) turn to the classified ad section

and find out how to place an ad for American Atheists in it.

The ad you send in can be short, simple, and cheap. For
example: "For a sample copy of the American Atheist magazine, send $ 1to: American Atheist G.H.Q..P. O. Box 140195,
Austin, TX 78714-0195." Or place an ad for your favorite
American Atheist Press book.
2. Do you have a special skill? Maybe you could put it to work

for Atheism by mail. For instance, American Atheist G.H.Q.

needs persons to translate articles and letters to and from
French, German, Italian, and other European languages so
that we can keep in touch with Atheist groups abroad and
exchange ideas with them. Perhaps you are an artist? The
American Atheist is always in need of good, free artwork.
Think about how your expertise, handicraft, or hobby could
be put to use for Atheism and get in contact with American
Atheist G.H.Q.
3. Do you get book catalogs in the mail? The American Atheist
Library needs to keep up to date with the new publications
on religion and state/church
separation which are being
published. So next time you order yourself a book on something of interest to Atheists, why not order an extra copy for
the American Atheist Library? Subjects of interest would
include the history of religion in general and specific religions, organized religion, First Amendment
rights, censorship. Have your gift(s) mailed to: American Atheist Library,
P. O. Box 14505, Austin, TX 78761-4505.
4.

Start burning up those telephone lines! Call the office of your

mayor and let him that 9 percent of the people he is serving
are Atheists and that they expect their government to be
kept secular. Buzz your congressional representatives and
tell them that, as an Atheist, you don't appreciate having "In
God We Trust" on your coins and "Under God" in the Pledge
of Allegiance. If the "American Atheist Television Forum"
appears on your area cable access channel. call the cable
company to let it know that you do appreciate having a
voice of reason on the air in your area. Telephone the
regular television and radio stations in your area and ask
them to have representatives of American Atheists appear
on their programs. Let your voice be heard!
American

September 1989

Atheist General Headquarters

P. O. Box 140195
Austin, TX 78714-0195

American Atheist

Me Too

Animal rights a choice for humans

s

an Atheist who is in favor of

rights for all animals, not simply
humans, I generally try to avoid
beating dead horses. However, James
Skelly's ("Me Too," June 1989 American
Atheist) call to carnivores contains so
many inaccuracies and errors of logic
that Iwould humbly ask for one more
forum on the subject.
First, Mr. Skelly attempts to portray
scientists as being the "vanguard of
Atheism," and implies that they are
unanimous in their opposition to animal
rights. As someone who has worked in
basic scientific research for many years,
Ican accurately attest that there are still
significant numbers of scientists who
are religious, as well as insensitive, apathetic, and illogical,just as in every other
profession. Polls of "scientists" on their
personal ideologies are too few and the
response rate so small as to make them
statistically unreliable. Some scientists
clamor for commercial and DOD (Department of Defense) contracts to work
on nuclear weapons, while others help
the petrochemical and plastics industries further the destruction of our environment. Still others call themselves
"creationists" and see no conflict between
science and stupidity.
Conversely, a number of scientific
professional organizations have taken a
stand against animal experimentation,
most notably CAAT (Johns Hopkins
Center for Alternatives to Animal
Testing), PCRM (physicians Committee
for Responsible Medicine), PsyETA
(Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals), SCAW (Scientists Center
for Animal Welfare), RULARC (Rockefeller University Laboratory Animal
Research Center), CAPP (Center for
Animals and Public Policy), Tufts School
of Veterinary Medicine, and AVAR
(Association of Veterinarians for Animal
Rights).
The fact that some benefit has been
derived from animal research neither
justifies the continuance of the practice,
nor addresses the fact that most of the
discoveries could have been made using

Scott Kerns finds

scientists are not all
"vanguards of
Atheism," nor are they
all in agreement
concerning animal
research.

"Me Too" is a feature designed to

showcase short essays written by
readers in response to topics recently
covered by the American Atheist or of
general interest to the Atheist
community.
Essays submitted to "Me Too" (P. O.
Box 140195,Austin, TX 78714-0195)
should be 650 to 1500 words.

Austin, Texas

September 1989

alternate methods. Moreover, Mr. Skelly

ignores the harm that has been done by
reliance on animal research; for instance,
the horrible birth defects produced by
thalidomide (in the early sixties), which
was found to be completely safe in animals. Should we scrap aspirin, the most
commonly used drug, because it causes
cancer in mice?
That some animal rights groups utilize emotional fund-raising tactics does
not distinguish them from other political,
environmental, or consumer groups
that rely on contributions for survival.
The professional, academic, and educational organizations which are cited
above certainly do not employ such
methods.
That all vertebrates have the capacity
to feel pain and that mammals, with
their highly-developed cerebral cortex,
can experience complex emotions, including terror, loneliness, and anxiety, is
now accepted as fact. To what degree
other animals possess an awareness
comparable to human "consciousness"
is still under investigation. Human beings, at least some, that is, possess reason, which allows us to make choices
that, say, a bear cannot. When given the
choice between a healthy diet or an unhealthy one, of a humane life-style or a
cruel one, of ravaging the environment
or replenishing it, the choice should be
clear.
For a more thorough expose on the
religion-animal abuse connection, read
Animal Liberation by Peter Singer (Discus Books).
- Scott A. Kerns
Texas

Is the Bible
a dirty book?
Read The KRated Bible and
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Page 69

Letters to the Editor

Another commie for Christ

The mention in the June issue that
the great British scientist J. B. S. Haldane
was a Marxist and also supported the
Soviet Union prompts me to write what
follows. For more than forty years, I
have been a DeLeonist and active in the
Socialist Labor Party most of that time.
Recently, I have joined a Christian
church because of my Marxist convictions. In the first place, I believe that the
Soviet Union never had socialism because the leaders were only concerned
with their own power and their Atheism
deceives themselves as well as others.
Proof that they do not have a rational
society as Marx mentioned as a condition for the demise of religion is the
stronghold religion has in those countries. In my opinion, the people behind
the iron curtain who reject official Atheism and practice religion have a stronger
grasp of reality than the Communist
party stalwarts. The young Karl Marx
revealed when he studied Hagel [sic]
that religion stands on its head in that
man created god and the rest of religion
to resemble him. However, when you
use that key to understanding you see
that religion is man's collective effort to
comprehend the conditions of our lifeas
we all see them. If religion is the "opium
of the people," it is a good substitute for
drugs that create physical dependence
and destroy health.
Monroe Prussack
New Jersey
"Letters to the Editor" should be either questions or comments of general
concern to Atheists or to the Atheist
community. Submissions should be
brief and to the point. Space
limitations allow that each letter
should be three hundred words or,
preferably, less. Please confine your
letters to a single issue only. Mail them
to: American Atheist, P. O. Box
140195, Austin, TX 78714-0195.

Page 70

Rights and other animals

I have not been an Atheist for a long
time. Three or four years perhaps. For
more than thirty years, I was a fundamentalist Christian. I owe my liberation
from "Myth Information" to the animal
rights movement.
I viewed a powerful film called "The
Animals." It walks the viewer through
factory farms, research facilities, slaughter houses, fur farms, etc., for about two
and one-half hours, showing how people
brutalize animals from sunup to sunSeptember 1989

down. The film moved me to study the

question of animal rights. It also caused
me to question how "my God" could be
so uncompassionate toward animals.
As you well might know, once you question religion it falls apart.
I read the June "Me Too" essay by
James P. Skelly. His obvious hostility
makes me wonder if he is himself affiliated with animal experimentation. He
accuses people who believe animals
worthy of compassion of being willfully
ignorant or deceitful. I am neither, nor
are many other people who share my
view.
Animal rights activists will admit that
animal research has made some contributions to science. But we maintain that
most experiments are unnecessary,
cruel, or repetitive. Further (and usually
ignored) is the fact that animal experiments are less scientific than legal,
which is to say, "done to protect manufacturers."
Mr. Skelly asks, "Whose interests are
most consistent with Atheism?"
I'd like to answer for one Atheist. I do
not revere priests, ministers, rabbis, or
scientists. I am not a blind follower of
any group, set of rules, or ethics. I may
or may not believe in abortion, sodomy,
or vivisection. As Atheists, we share
only one common ground. We don't believe in ghosts, holy or otherwise.
Joan Mickelson
Minnesota
As an Atheist and animal activist, I
was amused to see James Skelly's plug
for animal research in June's "Me Too."
The facts about vivisection won't be
found in the slim volume he suggests
reading, for it's nothing but a series of
empty claims made by people paid to
defend the biomedical industry. Instead,
I suggest reading "The Cruel Deception" by Dr. Robert Sharpe.
This book fully documents how animal research has actually done nothing
but mislead science though the ages.
Animal tests are intrinsically unreliable
American Atheist

and have permitted the use of products

and procedures that proved disastrous
to humans, and they've hindered the introduction of many later proved beneficial to humans.
How could the polio vaccine have
wiped out polio when the disease had
declined almost 85 percent on its own
before any vaccine was introduced? And
what sort of praise should be lavished
on insulin when the incidence of diabetes
is higher today than before the use of
insulin?
Allmedical advances have come from
changes in life-style, including diet and
hygiene, and through clinical studies involving humans. To study animals to
learn about people is as irrational and
irresponsible as studying apples to learn
about oranges.
Stace Aspey
California

Talking back to "Talking Back"

Here is another response to the May
issue's question in "Talking Back."
The individual who asks, "Why aren't
there any Atheist hospitals" is really just
trying to assert that Atheists are somehow less ethical than deists. In reality,
ethics is far less pertinent than pragmatism. Let's assume the existence of an
Atheist hospital. Unlike religious institutions, public funding would not be available for its establishment. Furthermore,
there should be no particular reason for
Atheist hospitals, just as there should be
no reason for Atheist schools, compa-

nies, or roads. Religion should be totally

unrelated to any of these things.
But from a practical standpoint, what
do you suppose would happen if euthanasia were practiced there? Or abortions? This hospital had better have
large amounts of fire insurance and vandalism protection - if it could obtain
insurance at all!
Speaking of insurance, how many
malpractice lawsuits would arise against
"godless" physicians? Simply working at
an Atheist hospital constitutes malpractice to some people. The solution would
be to screen patients on the basis of religion. But discrimination is unethical especially in hospitals. And it certainly is
not a practice that Atheists endorse.

Mr. Justice Horridge, whereas it was actually Mr. Justice Avory; says that Gott
was sentenced to four months' imprisonment, whereas it was actually nine
months; and gives the date of Gott's appeal as 1921, whereas it was actually
1922. It should also be mentioned that
his nine months' penal servitude was restarted from the date of the appeal,
though Gott had been in prison since
before the original trial, and that (as
foretold by his defence counsel) the
prison sentence proved to be a death
sentence, since Gott (aged fifty-five)
was diabetic and was denied in prison
the requisite diet and other requirements
of that condition. He died within a few
weeks of his release.

Steven J. Silberberg
Massachusetts

Barbara Smoker, President

National Secular Society
London, England

Blasphemy
In his article on blasphemy law, which
appeared in the March 1989 issue of
American Atheist, Jon G. Murray did
not bring the survey quite up to date for
Britain, and I deal with that in my article
"Fundamentalist Muslim Violence in
Britain," appearing in this issue of the
American Atheist.
However, I should like the opportunity also to put right, for the record, some
of the details given by Jon Murray in
connection with the English blasphemy
trial of J. W Gott - the last man actually to serve a prison sentence in Britain
for the crime of blasphemy.
Jon Murray names the trial judge as

In a/ollow-up letter to Ms. Smoker, we

mentioned that Jon G. Murray had replied primarily on the account of Gott's
trialgiven by Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner
in her book Penalties Upon Opinion
(London: Watts & Co., 1912). Ms. Smoker
replied that the contemporary accounts
given in the Freethinker were more reliable, but that she had still found it necessary to do independent research in the
birth register to clear up his birth date.
We are indebted to Ms. Smoker for clarifying tip the facts of Gott's lifeonce and
for all. The help of our peers overseas is
vital to our attempt to publish accurate
accounts of our Atheist heritage.

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American Atheist

suggested

American Atheist
introductory reading list

III
Literature on Atheism is very hard to find in most public
and university libraries in the United States - and most of
the time when you 'do find a book catalogued under the
word A theism it is a work against the Atheist position.
Therefore we suggest the following publications which are
available from American Atheist Press as an introduction

into the multifaceted areas of Atheism and state/church

separation. To achieve the best understanding of thought in
these areas the featured publications should be read in the
order listed. These by no means represent our entire collection of Atheist and separationist materials.

1. Why I Am An A theist, including a history of materialism, by Madalyn O'Hair. Stapled. 39 pp. Product#5416

14. Atheist Truth vs. Religions Ghosts by Col. Robert G.

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2. The Case Against Religion: A Psychotherapist s View

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3. All {he Questions You Ever Wanted to Ask American

Atheists with All of the Answers by Jon Murray and
Madalyn

O'Hair.

Paperback.

248 pp. #5356

4. What on Earth Is an Atheist! by Madalyn

Paperback.

9.00

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288 pp. #5412

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5. An Atheist Speaks by Madalyn O'Hair. Paperback.

pp. #5098

6. All about Atheists by Madalyn O'Hair. Paperback.

pp. #5097

321
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7. Ingersoll the Magnificent by Joseph Lewis. Paperback.

342 pp. #5216

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8. Essays on American Atheism, vol. I by Jon G. Murray.

Paperback.

349 pp. #5349

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9. Essays on American Atheism, vol. JI by Jon G. Murray. Paperback.

284 pp. #5350

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10. Essays in Freethinking, vol. I by Chapman

Paperback.

229 pp. #5052

11. Essays in Freethinking, vol. JI by Chapman

Paperback.

240 pp. #5056

Cohen.
9.00

57 pp. #5156

4.00

15. Some Reasons I Am a Freethinker

Ingersoll.

Stapled.

by Robert

37 pp. #5184

G.
4.00

16. Our Constitution - The Way It Was by Madalyn

O'Hair. Stapled. 70 pp. #5400
4.00
17. American Atheist Heritage: Jefferson, Franklin,
Lincoln, and Burbank by Joseph Lewis. Stapled. 56 pp.
#5212

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18. Fourteen Leading Cases on Education, Religion, and

Financing Schools. Paperback. 273 pp. #5500
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19. Sex Mythology

by Sha

Rocco.

Stapled.

#5440

55 pp.
4.00

20. Women and Atheism, The Ultimate Liberation by

Madalyn O'Hair. Stapled. 21 pp. #5420
3.50
21. Christianity
Paperback.

Before Christ by John

237 pp. #5200

G . Jackson.
9.00

22. The Bible Handbook (All the contradictions,

absurdities,
and atrocities from the Bible) by G.W. Foote, W.P.
Ball, John Bowden, and Richard M. Smith. Paperback.
372 pp. #5008
9.00

23. The X-Rated Bible by Ben Edward Akerley. Paperback.

428 pp. #5000

6.50

13. The Logic and Virtue of Atheism by Joseph McCabe.

Stapled. 58 pp. #5280

Stapled.

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Cohen.
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179 pp. #5132

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Amendment I
Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right
of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government
for a redress of grievances.

"Most people define themselves by their work,

or where they come from, or suchlike; we have
lived too far inside our heads. It makes actuality
damn hard to handle."
- Salman Rushdie
The Satanic Verses