"The fatwa remains active, and although Iran's government has distanced itself from Mr Khomeini's decree, a quasi-official Iranian religious foundation added a further $500,000 to the reward in 2012."
| | US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken earlier accused Iran state media of gloating over the attack. www.bbc.com |
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2022 5:21 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Poetic Thought
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2022 1:53 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Poetic Thought
On Sunday, August 14, 2022, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:
On this people's planet, Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times and died on the spot, in a pool of blood on the Senate floor. Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie, no stranger to death threats, was stabbed 15 times and survived.
Israel National News and The Jerusalem Post were among the first to commiserate with the author of the accursed Verses of Satan who narrowly escaped death. It could be unreasonable to expect that the Ayatollahs and Revolutionary Guards should be shedding any crocodile tears, rather it would have been more reasonable and appropriate to believe that if Rushdie had perished in the attack there would have been some open celebrations and much rejoicing in those quarters in the name of loving and hating for the sake of Allah!
In trying to catch up with the conversation about the latest atrocity, namely the reprehensible butchering of Salman Rushdie in an attempted assassination which was ably perpetrated on American soil, perhaps, due to a lapse in security, some questions have to be answered and a few background matters have to be clarified, to grasp the bigger picture.
Some actions - good or bad - are to be judged by the fallout. In this case, at this precipitous moment, all eyes are back on the Islamic Republic of Iran from where the original fatwa was issued. Today, it's worth repeating that this one thing's for sure: you'll not find any crocodile tears pouring or falling out of the eyes of the Ayatollahs.
In the meantime, Chidi and poetry are at liberty to conspire and coincide with reality or divert from the Ayatollahs' emotional realities, instability, and, given all the freedom of speech and the uncertainties that the Hereafter can offer them, Chidi and poetry, PEN member Kenneth Harrow and Tony Adepoju the cosmologist who would like to distribute free copies of Rushdie's Verses so that the readers as judges eventually know what the hell they are talking about, these three gentlemen are also at liberty to subjectively or objectively represent or misrepresent, to their heart's content, the meaning of the whole bloody scene over there in New York and the forces of the long since rescinded death-penalty fatwa, the Islamic Republic of Iran having withdrawn the forces of opprobrium and the bounty money that was supposed to reward the he, she or transgender, whoever it be who would fulfil the command-ment, "death to Rush-die"
I had read and enjoyed some of the linguistic frequencies in " Midnight's Children" and what I then regarded as an iconoclastic phantasmagoria entitled "The Satanic Verses", at least a full year before the fatwa was issued. It was during a very intense, hectic period during which I was a student of Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh and a frequent visitor to him in London - I visited him seven times in 1988 and once in Cologne when he opened a new Khanqah there and was privileged to meet Annemarie Schimmel there that same year. I can only guess how Dr. Nurbakhsh or Seyyed Hossein Nasr - another visitor I met in London that year or his beloved son Dr. Alireza Nurbakhsh - the current Pir - who back then presented me with some precious recordings of classical Iranian music, I wonder - back then, what fellow travellers Lenny Lewishon and Terry Graham thought about the fatwa on Rushdie's authorship attempting to portray the battle between good and evil. Especially Terry who was very vocally scornful of what he often referred to as " legalisms"...
It looks like Hadi Matar is a lone lunatic still nursing a grudge based on a fatwa that will surely be attributed as a motive, even if the fatwas was issued a few decades before he was born and the fervour had died down since; but since Mr Matar is of Lebanese ancestry, the fertile imagination of conspiracy theorists will probably want to link him up with a chain of command stretching back to Sheikh Nasrallah of Hezbollah that is currently foaming at the mouth about "obliterating" the holy Land. Probably time for Sheikh Nasrallah to go back into hiding….
Since in the public imagination, the crime is associated with what was once the contract on Rushdie's head, the main question here is, is there any reason why Iran should be anxious to draw such negative attention to itself in the present circumstances - in the context of all the other uncertainties - the failure to achieve an agreeable nuclear deal with The Great Satan - the possibility of more punitive sanctions on an already cash strapped economy- like sanctions still being imposed on Russia, the Abraham Accords - brokered by Trump, the standoff between Iran and their main regional enemies namely the Saudis plus the Gulf States, and not least of all, the current ( 2022) precarious Israel - Iran relations and the volatile Hezbollah - Israel tensions which can flare into an all-out war at any time - mainly due to - despite Lebanon's devastated economy which is presently on life support, Hezbollah's overconfidence and their underestimating their adversary…
Today, what can, could, would, should, Iran benefit by drawing this kind of hostile attention to itself? To tell you the honest truth, at first, I thought that it was some underhand machinations directed at Rishi Sunak - to throw him into the limelight - another British Indian featuring so prominently in International relations…
Rushdie's claim to fame, The Satanic Verses was published at a time when tensions were still running high between the The Revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran and the Wild West - in the aftermath of the eight-year-long Iraq - Iran War which was kick-started by Saddam when he invaded Iran, occupied and destroyed much of Iran's oil refineries in Abadan in the Siege of Abadan - it took the stalwart Iranian's a whole year to kick Saddam's devils out of that town, - and don't forget that during the whole of that war, Saddam was supported by the aforementioned Wild West in league with the major Sunni Arab nations, with the exception of Gaddafi's Libya. During that war, Kuwait which also has a sizable Shia minority population was ostensibly paying "protection money" to Saddam - ironically, to shield them from their good friend Iran - and after the war, Kuwait's refusal or reluctance or inability to pay the outstanding "protection money" resulted in Saddam invading and occupying Kuwait. In the meantime, according to a conservative estimate, by the end of the war, Saddam himself was owing more than $800 billion to Uncle Sam and allies who had bankrolled Saddam's war effort - in fact, the war came to an end at the point where Iran could not buy or obtain much-needed weapons from anywhere, not even China or Brazil; some guys in the know were already dancing in anticipation of Iran's Impending "defeat", a full year earlier; now we know that Iran, having learned that lesson is in no hurry to allow that to happen again. As fate would have it, the Ayatollahs prayed to Heaven, Uncle Sam invaded Iraq, and eventually, Saddam of Halabja infamy was hanged. Of course, if Saddam had indeed been in possession of any weapons of mass destruction, Baby Bush would not have invaded Iraq or engaged in other wars at the exorbitant cost detailed here - just as Mr Biden would think more than twice before invading North Korea, or China, or a nuclear-armed Iran.
What has all this got to do with the attempt on Rushdie's life? Maybe, absolutely nothing, if we think that Rushdie represents the freedom of speech that some people so despise…
--On Sunday, 14 August 2022 at 11:40:03 UTC+2 Kenneth Harrow wrote:
thank you chidi.if rushdie is attacked, we are all attacked.
i have no shortage of criticisms of rushdie's liberal positions; but, but, but, disagreement is one thing; shutting him down, killing him, is another.ken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM <chidi...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2022 3:51 AM
To: USA African Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Poetic ThoughtIf a Rushdie is threatenedAnd we retreatInto the sanctum of silence,If a Rushdie is attackedAnd our spirits submergeInto the pool of procrastination,If a Rushdie is killedAnd we just shrug,A part of us dies,Our most essential partDies.
(C) Chidi Anthony Opara
#2022Poeticthought
--
Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Founder/Publisher of, www.publicinformationprojects.org )
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