Welcome to Douglas Murray’s column “Things Worth Remembering,” in which he presents great speeches from famous orators we should commit to heart. Scroll down to listen to Douglas reflect on Sir Salman Rushdie’s speech at the 2012 PEN World Voices Festival.
“No writer ever really wants to talk about censorship,” said Sir Salman Rushdie in 2012.
I might add that none of us really want to write about it, either. But it is necessary.
Ten years after Rushdie spoke those words on a stage in New York City, he was stabbed, blinded in one eye, and very nearly killed. The attack took place on another stage, a few hundred miles upstate in Chautauqua. Last week, the trial of his assailant, Hadi Matar, was scheduled to begin.
It was delayed when Matar’s lawyer demanded at the last minute that it take place in another county. According to The New York Times, his public defender, Nathaniel Barone, argued that the lack of a local Arab American community and publicity surrounding the case in Chautauqua County would make it impossible “to preserve [his] client’s right to a fair trial.”
The implication here is that a jury assembled in a majority-white area is likely to find the American-born Matar guilty simply because his parents happen to be Lebanese—rather than because dozens of witnesses can attest to seeing him plunge a knife into an innocent author more than 10 times.
Or indeed, because of the testimony of the victim, Rushdie himself, who—prosecutors confirmed last week—will testify in court when the trial finally begins.
No writer ever really wants to stand, and speak, in the same room as a person who has tried to murder him for words he’s written. But Rushdie has lived with a fatwa on his head since 1989, issued upon the publication of his supposedly blasphemous novel The Satanic Verses. Necessarily, he has spent over 30 years patiently discussing things no writer wants to talk about.
So, although justice has been delayed yet again, now is a good moment to remember what Rushdie said, on that Cooper Union stage in Manhattan in 2012. Perhaps now, we will understand it.
