Sometimes people lead inadvertently – they lead when they have not the slightest intention of doing so. Such is the case with Salman Rushdie, the novelist and literary figure who twice over in his life did not bargain for his words carrying such weight.
The first time was in 1988, in the wake of the publication of his novel, The Satanic Verses. Surely in his book he intended satire and irreverence. Just as surely, he did not imagine the price he would pay for his provocation – forevermore a target on his back. So enraged, so offended by what Rushdie had written was Iran’s leader at the time, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that he issued a fatwa, a call for Rushdie’s death. This fatwa, now three and a half decades old, was never lifted. Which, so far as we know, explains why Rushdie was attacked last week, stabbed multiple times by a man who rushed onto the stage during what up to that moment had been the most peaceable of arts festivals.
Because he famously has been hunted beginning in 1988, Rushdie has long been a leader of the campaign for free speech. Specifically, he has fought for the right of writers to write what they see fit. But, in the wake of the near-fatal attack on him last week, his status as a leader was, again inadvertently, enhanced and advanced. It was further buttressed by the times in which we live. Times during which speech has become cheaper and easier, uglier and more outrageous, more incendiary and more violent.
Once Rushdie emerges from his recovery he will be anointed one of the most important leaders in the free world. The excellent British-American public intellectual, Simon Schama, his already pitted him against the might of authoritarians. “For all their suffocating triumphalism,” Schama wrote, “the enemies of the liberated word rightly fear that however many they incarcerate, torture, or kill, none of these brutalities can permanently entomb critical thought. Almost always, the achievements of artists outlive the squalid cruelty of tyrants.”
I have argued for many years that no weapons of leadership are more powerful than words. So, Salman Rushdie leading the charge against the dark is fine with me. Despite his never having campaigned for the honor – or bargained for how dearly it would cost him.