Latest news with #SatanicVerses
Telegraph
04-08-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Muslim teacher claims discussing Rushdie's Satanic Verses is harassment
A Muslim teacher has sued for discrimination after her colleagues discussed The Satanic Verses in front of her. Rabia Ihsan claimed she was harassed on religious grounds when one of her colleagues brought up the Sir Salman Rushdie novel in what she claimed was a deliberate attempt to 'provoke [her], incite hatred and create a hostile environment'. The book was discussed when, not long after the assassination attempt on Sir Salman in New York, a colleague asked for book recommendations. Ms Ihsan claimed the book, which was condemned as blasphemous by Ayatollah Khomeini, the late Iranian leader, was 'offensive to Islam'. Sir Salman, 78, was forced into hiding for a decade after a fatwa was issued against him calling for his death. In Ms Ihsan's case, it was ruled that it was not 'reasonable' for the biology teacher to conclude that her colleagues had harassed her by talking about it. The tribunal, held in Glasgow, heard that Ms Ihsan, who is Pakistani, started working for Park Mains High School in Renfrewshire in 2010. In October 2022, a teacher Laura Gardiner had asked for suggestions of audiobooks, and Mairi Lagan, another teacher, stated that after the stabbing of Sir Salman in August 2022 she 'downloaded a sample of Satanic Verses intending to learn more about the circumstances. 'However, she did not find that to be the kind of book she would read so she read no further.' Ms Lagan was reportedly 'not aware that the book had any connection to Islam', and her colleagues 'stopped talking about' the book when Ms Ishan raised that it is 'offensive to Islam'. The tribunal heard that Ms Ihsan thought the conversation was 'pre-planned to trigger her' and she believed it was 'an attempt to provoke [her], incite hatred and create a hostile environment'. Ms Gardiner told the tribunal that she 'didn't realise that anything had happened' and Ms Lagan said she became 'concerned about how relatively innocent comments were being perceived by [Ms Ihsan]'. A month earlier, in September 2022, Ms Ishan had been 'very upset' when staff in the science department put pages of the Creationist book, the Atlas of Creation, in the bin after discovering it had been 'sent unsolicited' to schools, and that its author had been convicted of sex crimes. Ms Ihsan was 'very upset about the destruction of the book because of the holy symbol on the front cover' and raised her concern to the school's headteacher. The deputy head teacher investigated the incident, and it was considered alongside a number of incidents which Ms Ihsan complained about in a grievance hearing. She was signed off sick with work related stress in August 2023, and resigned in March 2024 while the grievance proceedings were still ongoing. Employment Judge Muriel Robison said that regarding The Satanic Verses, 'neither of the staff directly involved knew that it was a book about religion.' She added: 'Even if it could be said that raising this matter was unwarranted conduct related to religion which made [Ms Ihsan] feel uncomfortable, it was not reasonable for her to conclude that it had the proscribed effect [of harassment], particularly when the subject was dropped when she raised her concerns.' Regarding the Atlas of Creation incident, the tribunal was 'concerned to hear that the book had been destroyed' but accepted that staff 'did not appreciate that the book contained a holy symbol and they did not appreciate that it was a book about Islam'. All of Ms Ihsan's other claims, including discrimination related to race, religion and sex and constructive unfair dismissal were dismissed.
Indian Express
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
From Emergency to now, how censorship became a competitive sport
When the Emergency was declared in 1975, the Hindi newspaper Vir Pratap, like most Indian media, had an editorial problem. First, they tried to leave the editorial space blank. The government said that it was not permissible. Nor were they allowed to fill it with inspirational quotes, even from icons like Mahatma Gandhi or Rabindranath Tagore. This was not a time the government wanted anyone to reiterate Tagore's 'Where the mind is without fear'. 'They said you cannot leave the editorial blank. You have to fill it up,' says Chander Mohan, who, along with his daughter Jyotsna, authored the book Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper. 'That's when my father started writing his life history.' His father, Virendra, had quite a checkered history when it came to speaking truth to power. Accused of making bombs, he had been imprisoned with Bhagat Singh. The Urdu newspaper Pratap had been launched by his father, Mahashay Krishan, in 1919 in Lahore two weeks before the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Two days after its launch, the British shut it down for a full year. 'The paper was blunt and we were frequently shut down; the editors, my father and grandfather, were imprisoned and fines were imposed repeatedly,' recalls Mohan. As long as the British were ruling India, the narrative was straightforward: Good guy desi Davids taking on bad guy sahib Goliaths. After Independence, it got murkier. The good guys and bad guys now looked the same. The boundaries of freedom of expression felt less clear in free India. The Emergency was lifted in 1977, but the issues of censorship have morphed into a shape-shifting monster. Now, everyone competes in taking offence and banning books and films they deem offensive, the most famous example being the then Congress government's preemptive strike on Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. That set off the 'Big Ban' Theory of everything. Satanic Verses recently returned to Indian bookstores, but that doesn't mean freedom of expression is in fine fettle. The battles, as Alice said in Wonderland, are getting 'curiouser and curiouser'. For example, the Central Board of Film Certification stalled the Malayalam film Janaki vs State of Kerala because it feels a woman who has been assaulted should not be given the name of someone revered as a Goddess. The irony is that Sita from the Ramayana is also a survivor, someone who was kidnapped and endured an Agnipariksha to boot. Instead of acknowledging the parallels the CBFC wants to draw a Lakshmanrekha as if to seal off all possible names of Sita, and one presumes, every other God and Goddess in the pantheon, from possible fictional contamination. That's a slippery slope. Can an out-and-out villain never be named Ram or Lakshmi henceforth? Would a modern-day CBFC take filmmaker Satyajit Ray and novelist Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay to task because Durga in Pather Panchali steals a necklace? And how could a Durga be shown dying anyway? Sometimes names are chosen to make a point. Salman Rushdie deliberately named a bad-tempered bulldog in The Moor's Last Sigh as Jaw-Jaw after Jawaharlal. It upset the Congress, but little came of it. All of this harkens back to an old controversy about Deepa Mehta's 1996 film Fire, where angry protesters felt she had deliberately named the lesbian characters Radha and Sita in order to take an unsubtle dig at Hinduism. Now, taking offence and demanding censorship has become a competitive sport across the political spectrum. Most people protesting books have never read them. It's just a shortcut to political fame. And it does not require a state of Emergency because it's always open season, whether it's for a stand-up comic like Kunal Kamra or an Instagram influencer like Sharmishta Panoli. Even an apology and a deleted post are not remorseful enough. The issue is not really what they said. It is the political dividends to be gained by making an example of them. On the other hand, everyone knows that in an age of e-books and VPNs, a ban is hardly a hurdle for a book from reaching readers. And more Indians are now aware of a Malayalam film called Janaki v State of Kerala than ever before, thanks to the CBFC controversy. Meanwhile, the censorship story has an odd new avatar. According to media reports, the CBFC directed the makers of the new film Sitaare Zameen Par to include an inspirational quote from the Prime Minister in its opening disclaimer. 'Let us all build a society where no dream or goal is impossible,' says the Prime Minister. 'Only then will we be able to build a truly inclusive and developed India.' It's a fine sentiment and a laudable aspiration. It's just that at one time, censorship was about what one could or could not say. The new twist is that the censor board can now also tell one what one must say. Roy is a novelist and the author of Don't Let Him Know
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'I'm over knife attack,' says Salman Rushdie
Sir Salman Rushdie says he has moved on from the knife attack which has seen his attacker jailed for attempted murder. Hadi Matar, 27, was sentenced to 25 years last month after repeatedly stabbing Sir Salman on a New York lecture stage in 2022. Sir Salman, who has a new book out later this year, told the Hay Festival that an "important moment" came for him when he and his wife Eliza "went back to the scene of the crime to show myself I could stand up where I fell down". "It will be nice to talk about fiction again because ever since the attack, really the only thing anybody's wanted to talk about is the attack, but I'm over it." Sir Salman recently told Radio 4's Today programme that he was "pleased" the man who tried to kill him had received the maximum possible prison sentence. The Midnight's Children and Satanic Verses writer was left with life-changing injuries after the incident - he is now blind in one eye, has damage to his liver and a paralysed hand caused by nerve damage to his arm. Last year, Sir Salman published a book titled Knife reflecting on the event, which he has described as "my way of fighting back". The attack came 35 years after Sir Salman's controversial novel The Satanic Verses, which had long made him the target of death threats for its portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad. In November, the author will publish a short story collection, The Eleventh Hour, his first work of fiction to be written since the stabbing. Security was tight for Sir Salman's event, with sniffer dogs present and bag checks leading to a 15-minute delay. He waved at the audience as he entered the stage and humbly gestured to them to stop applauding before joking that: "I can't see everyone - but I can hear them." He said he was feeling "excellent" although there "were bits of me that I'm annoyed about, like not having a right eye. But on the whole, I've been very fortunate and I'm in better shape that maybe I would have expected." In a wide-ranging discussion, Sir Salman also touched on US politics, declaring that "America was not in great shape". In an apparent reference to President Donald Trump, Sir Salman spoke about "the moment of hope, that image of Barack and Michelle Obama walking down the mall in DC with the crowds around them... people dancing in the streets in New York. And to go from that to the orange moment that we live in, it's, let's just say, disappointing. But he said he was still positive about the future. "I think I suffer from the optimism disease... I can't help thinking somehow it will be alright." Speaking about free speech, he said "it means tolerating people who say things you don't like". He recalled a time when a film "in which I was the villain", made around the time of the uproar over Satanic Verses, was not classified by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) "because it was in a hundred ways defamatory" but he asked them to allow its release. "So they gave it a certificate... and nobody went, you know why? Lousy movie. And it taught me a lesson. Let it out and trust the audience. And that's still my view. "I think we do live in a moment when people are too eager to prohibit speech they disapprove of. That's a very slippery slope" and warned young people "to think about it." When asked about the effect of AI on authors, Sir Salman said: "I don't have Chat GPT... I try very hard to pretend it doesn't exist. Someone asked it to write a couple of hundred words like me... it was terrible. And it has no sense of humour." Despite being considered one of the greatest living writers, Sir Salman joked that authors "don't even have that much money... except the two of us (him and host Erica Wagner) and those who write about child wizards... the Taylor Swift of literature," referring to JK Rowling. "Good on her." Rushdie 'pleased' with attacker's maximum sentence Salman Rushdie to release first fiction since stabbing Salman Rushdie: Losing an eye upsets me every day Succession creator Jesse Armstrong is writing about rich people again Jacqueline Wilson says she wouldn't return to Tracy Beaker as an adult
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First Post
16-05-2025
- First Post
Salman Rushdie attacker sentenced to 25 years for 2022 onstage stabbing
Hadi Matar, 27, who stabbed and partially blinded novelist Salman Rushdie onstage at a Western New York arts institute in 2022 was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Friday read more Defendant Hadi Matar arrives for his trial on charges of second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault dating to an attack on Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie, at Chautauqua County Court in Mayville, New York, US, on February 11, 2025. Reuters File The man who stabbed and partially blinded novelist Salman Rushdie onstage at a Western New York arts institute in 2022 was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Friday for an attack that also wounded a second man, the district attorney said. Rushdie, 77, has faced death threats since the 1988 publication of his novel 'The Satanic Verses,' which Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader, denounced as blasphemous, leading to a call for Rushdie's death, an edict known as a fatwa. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Hadi Matar, 27, a US citizen from Fairview, New Jersey, was found guilty of attacking the author in the Chautauqua County Court in Mayville, New York, in February. He faced a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison on the attempted murder charge. Video that captured the assault shows Matar rushing the Chautauqua Institution's stage as Rushdie was being introduced to the audience for a talk about keeping writers safe from harm. Some of the video was shown to the jury during the seven days of testimony. 'He's traumatized. He has nightmares about what he experienced,' Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said after the sentencing hearing, referring to what Rushdie suffered. 'Obviously this is a major setback for an individual that was starting to emerge in his very later years of life into society after going into hiding after the fatwa.' Also hurt in the attack was Henry Reese, co-founder of Pittsburgh's City of Asylum, a nonprofit that helps exiled writers. He was conducting the talk with Rushdie that morning. Schmidt said Matar was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the second degree attempted murder charge stemming from the attack against Rushdie and seven years for a second degree assault charged for the stabbing of Reese. The sentences will run concurrently. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Rushdie, an atheist born into a Muslim Kashmiri family in India, was stabbed with a knife multiple times in the head, neck, torso and left hand. The attack blinded his right eye and damaged his liver and intestines, requiring emergency surgery and months of recovery. Matar did not testify at his trial. His defense lawyers told jurors that the prosecutors had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt the necessary criminal intent to kill needed for a conviction of attempted murder, and argued that he should have been charged with assault. Matar's attorney Nathaniel Barone said his client will file an appeal. 'I know if he had the opportunity, he would not be sitting where he's sitting today. And if he could change things, he would,' Barone said. Matar also faces federal charges brought by prosecutors in the US attorney's office in Western New York, accusing him of attempting to murder Rushdie as an act of terrorism. Prosecutors accuse him of providing material support to Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Matar is due to face those charges at a separate trial in Buffalo.
Daily Tribune
23-02-2025
- Daily Tribune
Man Found Guilty of Attempting to Kill Salman Rushdie
AFP | New York, United States An American-Lebanese man was found guilty on Friday of attempting to kill novelist Salman Rushdie by storming a stage and repeatedly plunging a knife into the "Satanic Verses" author. Hadi Matar faces up to 25 years in prison and will be sentenced in April after being convicted of attempted murder and assault charges related to the 2022 attack. Matar's legal team had argued that he was a victim of persecution following Iran's 1989 fatwa calling for Rushdie's murder over supposed blasphemy in "The Satanic Verses." Rushdie described the attack as a 'stab wound in my eye, intensely painful, after which I was screaming because of the pain," adding that he was left in a 'lake of blood.' He recalled the moment, saying, 'It occurred to me I was dying' before being helicoptered to a trauma hospital. Matar was found guilty of stabbing Rushdie about 10 times with a six-inch blade, which was shown to witnesses and the court. Jurors heard closing arguments from both prosecutors and defense lawyers before deliberating for less than two hours. Matar also shouted pro-Palestinian slogans during the trial.
