Controversial Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie believes his time in hiding following a “fatwa” against him spurred him to write more novels.
The 66-year-old British Indian novelist and essayist was forced into hiding after Ayatollah Khomeini, the then Iranian spiritual leader, issued a fatwa of death against him in 1989 following the publication of his book The Satanic Verses. “It wasn’t so much therapeutic as more being bloody-minded. My view is that if someone is trying to shut you up, you shout louder,” the author told a gathering at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Saturday.
The Satanic Verses was branded blasphemous by conservative Muslims and led to bombings of book shops and the killing of one of Rushdie’s translators while another was seriously injured after being attacked. “I do think one of the characteristics of our age is the growth of this culture of offendedness. It’s got something to do with the rise of identity politics, where you are invited to define your identity quite narrowly...What’s happened in this age is we are asked to define ourselves by hate,” said the author of the iconic Midnight’s Children. He ascribed the new hatred to the fall of Communism and the rise of religious fanaticism, among other things. “Instead of there being one Iron Curtain, there became lots and lots of little enclaves with people fighting to the death about their own little mindset or their own tribalism,” Rushdie said.
“And then religious fanaticism happened, which is not only Islamic. In India, there is the rise of Hindu nationalism, and in America the increased power of the Christian church,” said the Mumbai-born author, who stressed that he did not believe that a book had the power to offend.