I have a lot more to say about the case. I read
Rushdie's books and a history of Shi'ism and even an abridged
translation (German) of Khomeini's book `The Islamic State'. A
hair rising experience. To summerize the contents: Only the
Shi'ites have the right to live. Western statesmen should study
it, just as theyshould have studied Hitler's Mein Kampf.
To the Editor of the JAPAN TIMES (March 31,
1989, ignored):
March 26, 1989, about 220 Muslims staged a rally and demonstration against Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verse" which was sponsored by the Pakistan Association. Siddiqui Raees, vice-president of the association, said: "We respect freedom of expression, but freedom is not limitless." I agree with him: Freedom of expression should not be limitless. When someone calls for murder, he surely has passed the limits. (Even if he does so in the name of an inhuman, revengeful god, who wants to have all apostates killed. Rushdie was surely disgusted by so much inhumanity that he wrote insults against the religion he grew up with.)
That the Tokyo Metropolitan Police approved a demonstration where all members wear signs "Death to Rushdie" is of grave concern to me.
Recently there has been to much tolerance
towards religious fanatics (Christian and Muslim). It seems high
time that freethinkers and atheists get together to protect the
achievementsof the Enlightenment. Maybe we should stage a
demonstration in front of the Pakistan Association and in front
of the Iranian Embassy, maybe also one in front of the
Metropolitan Police, who gave their approval to this incitement
of murder.
Holger Hermann Haupt
To the Editor of the Tokyo Weekender (March 19, 1990, ignored):
Now that with the availability of Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" in Japan we are in danger of being blown up while browsing in bookstores maybe it is appropriate to review the whole affair.
Even after more than one year after Khomeini's death sentence against the author most of the public still has misconceptions about the book suspecting all kind of obscenities. No wonder, since they are informed by broadcasters and columnists who as busy people have little time to study this issue and often do know neither the book nor Islam and also not the foundations of our liberal society.
It is for example completely wrong to claim (as done by Gregg Easterbrook in an Washington Post article, reprinted by the Japan Times, Feb. 22, 1989) that the Moslems do not have to read the book, because "the title says it all" like the title "Satan`s life of Christ" would do. It is also wrong, when the spokesman of The Association of Pakistanis in Japan asserts "The novel is making God's words the devil's words." Like gossip the accusations are increasing, the end will be: espionage for Israel. There are already baseless rumors that Rushdie was offered life-long protection by the Israeli secret service Mossad (JT, Feb. 28, 89) and when the spiritual leader of the Benelux's Moslems, Abdullah Ahdal, was shot dead, because he had said in a TV interview that there is a distinction between Islamic countries and Western democracies, that Khomeini's death sentence does not apply to Western democracies, where Moslems have to respect the laws of their host country. After the murder of moderate Moslem, there was a triumphal procession of more than one thousand Moslems through Brussels (unhindered by police!). The demonstrators claimed that beside his offensive TV interview he was a spy for Israel. You understand, Jews are poisoning wells, atheists are communists, communists are devils etc., you have to make it easy for the mob, if you want a pogrom.
But back to the Verses: Rushdie did not invent the Satanic Verses! In pre-Islamic, polytheistic Mecca many goddesses were worshipped, but the most important goddesses were Al-Lat, Al-Uzza and Manat. Mohammed who claimed that he received the Koran piecemeal through the angel Gibreel from God first transmitted: "Have you thought upon Lat and Uzza, the third, the other? They are the exalted birds, and their intercession is desired indeed" (SV p.114) Probably pressure from the polytheistic priests drove him to do so, but the next day he regretted it. Maybe he thought it was not necessary to compromise with them. Their power wasn't so great after all. He changed the text to: "Have you thought on Al-Lat and Al-Uzzah, and, thirdly, on Manat? Is He to have daughters and you sons? This is indeed an unfair distinction! They are but names which you and your fathers have invented: Allah has vested no authority in them. The unbelievers follow vain conjectures and the whims of their own souls, although the guidance of their Lord has come to them." (Sura 53:19-23, Penguin Classics p. 115)
Mohammed claimed that the first version was inspired by the Satan and it became known as the Satanic Verses, it would have been the only part of the Koran that showed sympathy for the pre-Islamic deities and some kind of religious tolerance. But as we can also see from the Bible, religious tolerance is worse than obscenities and much worse than murder, at least for God and the faithful.
Although Islamic scholars have offered this kind of rational explanations, in Rushdie's version, it is a vision and it is not immediately clear who's vision, the Prophet's or the Archangel's, but since one of the protagonists, the actor Gibreel Farishta, suffers the phantasmagoria of being the Archangel, we can conclude that it is all his vision.
From the book: `It was the Devil' ... `The last time, it was Shaitan.' This 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, ... but Gibreel, hovering-watching from his highest camera angle, knows one small detail, just one tiny thing that's a bit of a problem here, namely that it was me both times, baba, me first and second also me. From my mouth, both the statement and the repudiation, verses and converses, universes and reverses, the whole thing, ...' (SV p. 114). Ergo not the Devil!
To Khomeini's assassination order the West added character assassination: Foreign secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe e. g. accused Rushdie in BBC World Service of also insulting `our government and society' and that he compared Great Britain to Hitler's Germany (Howe did not read the book). But it is true that the police is depicted as racist and brutal. In police custody people are even transformed into beasts, real animals and animals of fantasy - through witch craft! And one character calls Mrs. Thatcher `Mrs. Torture' and `Maggie the bitch'.
But Rushdie does not claim the book to be factual. It is a piece of fiction written with exuberant fantasy in the style of the Grotesque.
When Max Danger invents a murderer for his thriller he is also not accused of murder.
Many articles were published in the West that valued the religious feelings of the Moslems higher that Rushdie's right of free speech and our right to read his book (Some writers seem to have even difficulties with Salman Rushdie's right to be alive.). Other articles accused him of making a lot of money with his books, as if there are not many much richer people in this world who did nothing to earn the money. The American magazine Spectator even demanded that Rushdie himself should pay for his protection. The article was reprinted by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (March 9, 1989). The same paper like other major German papers refused to publish advertisements for the Satanic Verses!
For a collection of press reports refer to `The Rushdie File', edited by Lisa Appignanesi and Sara Maitland (ICA, London).
Here in Japan even 'Power to the People Jack Stamm' fails to assess the seriousness and outrageousness of the case as his humorous comment (TW Feb. 23) suggests. However, the murder of an Asahi reporter provoked him to write a serious letter to the editor of JT with suggestions how to hunt down the rightist murderers (JT March 20, 1987).
A citation from a review of SV in the art magazine Edge: `But I believe the freedom to practice religion without harrassment (sic) ought to be as inalienable as any other. And in this case, I am convinced Rushdie has himself to blame if push has come to shove.' Right on so! Have we not just celebrated that 200 years after the French Revolution there is not much left of its ideals?
The writer overflowing with sympathy for Islamic fundamentalists even finds offences (typical for so many commentators) where there are none: e.g. in the novel Mecca is called Jahilia which means darkness or ignorance. For the writer an offence, but the very slander is used by today's Moslems for the pre-Islamic era and what is more, at the time of the novel Mecca is still pagan and Mahound (=Mohammed, all names are travesties in the novel) has to run away from the ignorant people of Jahilia.
In the review we find another often heard offence: Mahound's greatest enemy, the satirist Baal marries twelve whores, who adopt the names and personality of Mahound's twelve wives, but the reader of the review is not told that at the end Baal and the whores receive their `just' (for Islamic taste) punishment - stoning. A happy end for Moslems!
Is Salman Rushdie really the apostate, the die-hard atheist, his enemies claim? From his book (SV p. 92): `Question: What is the opposition of faith? Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself a kind of belief. Doubt.'
A real atheist would surely not agree with that.
In Midnight's Children the grandfather of the narrator suffers a `hole' because of his disbelief. `A hole in the middle', `a hole inside him', `the hole in his chest', like the leitmotif in music the hole appears and reappears again and a again.
A die-hard atheist would claim the faithful have a hole, namely in the head.
Rushdie himself claims he did not commit blasphemy (JT, Feb. 6, 1989) and his novel has not betrayed Islamic heritage (JT, Jan. 16, 1990). And he is right. No doubt, Islam is for most believers a strictly dualistic religion, but there is also an Islamic tradition that mixes good and evil (as Rushdie does), like the Islamic mystic Abu Said who said: As long as the mosques are not devastated, the dervishs' work will not be fulfilled, as long as belief and disbelief are not totally equal nobody will be a real Moslem.
Or a more recent example: "Open the wine bars to me day and night, for I have grown to hate mosque and school. ... The town preacher hurt me with his advice, so I sought help from conversation with drunks smelling of wine. ..." From a poem by Khomeini (JT, June 15, 1989).
But Rushdie stays of course also in the tradition of the Enlightenment, but only as a irresolute, insecure representative, who lives in doubts and regrets the lost of his belief in the simplicity of faith.
The sentimental, reconciliatory endings of the different stories of SV are hard to bear. He surely lacks the aggressive wit of Heinrich Heine, Oskar Panizza, F. Rabelais or Nietzsche, but not insight: "Cocksure men do terrible deeds." (Midnight's Children p. 212).
There are a lot of books much more offensive to the Islam than SV but the Mullahs do not know about them. In Christian literature Mohammed is often depicted as some one who had only superficial knowledge of Christianity and Judaism, plagiarized from them and invented the rest himself. As an argument to support his limited knowledge usually follows that the Moslems believe in Jesus' birth by a virgin but not in his crucifixion and resurrection, even the preface of my German Koran translation hints in this direction. But let it be Mohammed's (peace be upon him) turn to hit back: "The Jews say Ezra is the son of Allah, while the Christians say the Messiah is the son of Allah. Such are their assertions, by which they imitate the infidels of old. Allah confound them! How perverse they are!" (Sura 9:30)
A writer of a letter to JT once called Mohammed (Jesus, Buddha etc.) wise man and in the lengthy article published in JT on the occasion of the Iranian Islamic Revolution Day the Charge d' Affaires of Iran tells us of the `wise leadership of Imam Khomeini'. Yes, maybe they are wise and I am unwise because my motto is: Although the religions were imposed upon us by force, we should abolish them without it.
Holger Hermann Haupt
To the Editor:
This letter was written for the JAPAN TIMES (Feb. 12, 1990), who - for obvious reasons - chose to ignore it:
It is disturbing to see three pages of flattery on the occasion of the Iranian Islamic Revolution Day (Feb. 11) and all the congratulation notes from major companies. I wish they would invest as much money for the protection of human rights. But what counts is business. I am surely right when I say that if shah Pahlawi were still in power and it would have been his birthday he would have received the same honors. And just as I protested against the shah's reign of terror I am now protesting against the ayatollahs.
I recall well how in early summer 1967 when the shah visited Germany we that means mostly young people who did not want to commit the same mistake their fathers, namely the Nazi generation, had made went into the streets to protest against torture, murder and other human right abuses in Iran. For whom did we do that? Well, it seems for people who themselves have no respect for human rights.
The SAVAK (and also the German police) hunted us down, attacked us even in our own meeting places, Benno Ohnesorg, a pacifist, waskilled, many were wounded and bleeding.
The same, namely being hit and wounded (The only differences to 1967: I was alone and the Japanese police came to my protection.) happened to me Sunday the 11th when I came too close to the demonstration the Muslims staged against Rushdie and the publishers of his book. I carried a placard saying "Freedom of Speech ends where Incitement to Murder begins" on one side and "Blasphemy is Remedy to Religion" on the other side. I hoped to make a statement in favor of human rights and free speech in front of some representatives of the mass media. I felt that it was necessary. So far the mass media with their kowtow before the "hurt sacred feelings" have committed a sellout of our democratic values. There is no reason why religion should be exempt from satire and criticism. Religion did not create a better world. What is "sacred" about intolerance, death threats, destructiveness, about advocating that people be stoned to death or have their hand cut off, for fairly minor offences, about the cruel female circumcision and the oppression of women?
When the human rights, esp. the freedom from bodily harm for some of our fellow-citizens is at stake there should be an outcry throughout the whole community. If we give in to religious fanatics and permit people like the ayatollahs to rule the world where will it end? Maybe the writing of some of our most venerable philosophers like Pierre Bayle, Voltaire, Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Darwin, Nietzsche, Henry Miller, Kurt Tucholsky, Albert Camus, Bertrand Russell, Sigmund Freud will end up on the Index and many present-day scientists and psychologists will risk their live when they insist upon publishing their findings. What is more, intolerant Christians who make statements like that all Muslims go to hell and that Mohammed invented Islam because he was seeking power might be stoned together with members of the PEN Club who advocated free speech.
Let us just imagine the reaction when the Sovjets had called to kill Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the author of "The Gulag Archipelago". Could you imagine that his potential killers where given prime time in Western TV to explain their motives? And that your paper would reserve three pages for their self-promotion? No, the reaction would have been more appropriate, from national emergency to protective custody not for the victim but for his potential killers. There would even have been an over-reaction with persecutions of everybody who ever showed an inclination towards socialism.
But in case of the Iran everybody is concerned about business. Even a hero and martyr of free speech, mayor Motoshima, claims that he has good business relations with Iran and therefore does not like it that Gianni Palma dedicated the translated Japanese version of the book to him. In his case, we can understand that. He might have worried that another death-squad might hunt him.
The Japan Times has the motto gwithout fear and favor". I hope that is not only for business purpose. Dedicate your pages to the defense of human rights!
For those Muslims who attacked me in Bunkyo-ku, human rights do not exist, only Allah's law, as one demonstrator said.
To the Muslims I appeal: Have more trust in
God, he will be able to revenge himself if he feels offended, and
if one day he really asks you why did you not kill the apostate,
tell God, you felt sorry for him. Your God is also the
compassionate, merciful Lord, it is paradox, but even that says
the Koran.
Holger Hermann Haupt
PS: I could not give my money to people who
permit themselves to become the propaganda organ of criminals who
want to kill innocent people in our midst but refuse to publish a
statement in defence of human rights. I therefore canceled my
JAPAN TIMES subscription.
I wrote a similar letter to the Editor of the
Asahi Evening News, also ignored:
When last year in March I learned that the Muslims planned to stage a demonstration in front of the British embassy to protest against the publication of Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses", I called the organizer because I found it more appropriate to protest in front of the Iranian embassy against Khomeini's call to murder Salman Rushdie. A human life is a kind of "sacred" to me. At the phone a polite and friendly voice (which caused more irritation than a fanatic, hateful voice would have done. He seemed to be surrounded by happy children) explained me matter-of-factly that Rushdie must be killed because the Koran demands that an apostate is killed (better never become an adherent). He invited me to come to the demonstration to discuss the matter more thoroughly.
At that time I did not go. And that was good. It turned out that the demonstration was not a protest against the publication of the book but an incitement to murder Rushdie with people shouting and carrying badges 'Death of Rushdie'. If I would have tried to argue with them I probably would have ended up to be burned as the effigy of Salman Rushdie.
I was very disturbed when I learned that it was possible to shout in public that somebody should be killed. I think freedom of speech ends where incitement to murder begins. But what annoyed me even more, was all the sympathy the muslims found in the mass media because their "sacred feelings" were hurt.
Many people, even non-religious people, make the mistake to associate religion with morality, but what kind of morality permits intolerance, threats, destructiveness and murder?
In our Western society we question everything. How can broadcasters and columnists advocate that religion be exempted from criticism, satire etc. What did religion achieve, that makes it so special? Did it create a better and happier world? On the contrary. The Near East, Northern Irland, the Middle Age (which enjoyed an especially scary revival in our century in Croatia 1943-45), and the affair around Rushdie are amble examples.
When I learned that on Sunday, Feb. 11, the Muslims were going to stage a demonstration against the publication of a Japanese translation of "The Satanic Verses". I went there hoping to be able to make a statement in front of the mass media covering the demonstration in favor of the achievements of the Enlightenment - achievements for which our fore-fathers once fought and died, because the churches would not give up their privileges voluntarily.
I carried a cardboard placard saying "Freedom of Speech ends where Incitement to Murder begins" on one side, and on the other side "Blasphemy is Remedy to Religion". The police was more concerned about my life than about my freedom of speech and obviously not willing to protect both, life and free speech. Who likes to get hurt?
They kept me away from the demonstration, but released me when they thought it was safe because the protest march had passed. I followed with my sign still hoping to attract some representatives of the mass media. But when I came too close I was attacked by several `brave' men from the demonstration, I could not count them, but I was only one. They hit me with what ever they happened to have in hand that I received bruises and was bleeding from my fore-head when I was again in police protection.
Nip things in the bud. Let not the ayatollahs succeed with their global censorship.
There are also books by Christians who wrote about the competitor Islam things even more offensive than Salman Rushdie's book. (I will not reveal names because I do not even wish my enemies to be persecuted by these fanatics.)
Even noted scientists could come into danger, like the psychologist (name withheld) who wrote: "... most religions appear to be the apotheosis of schizophrenia. ... religions inhibit the development of self-reliant, self-assertive behavior and reinforce infantile, dependent behavior".
The West should be more concerned about human rights than business relations and not allow that our ambassadors "crawl back like rats" to Teheran, as Khomeini called it so pointedly, but isolate a country that fails to respect human rights.
...
My final advise: Do not burn books, also no
books that are blasphemous, but if you have to burn books, than
burn books that tell you kill your fellow-man.
Holger Hermann Haupt
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