Salman Rushdie al Festival delle Letterature

DECEMBER 1999: ISLAM AND THE WEST
The relationship between the Islamic world and the West seems to be living through one of the famous "interregnums" defined by Antonio Gramsci, in which the old refuses to die, so that the new cannot be born, and all manner of "morbid symptoms" arise. Both between Muslim and Western countries, and inside Muslim communities living in the West, the old, deep mistrusts abide, frustrating attempts to build new, better relations, and creating much bad blood. For example, the general suspicion felt by many ordinary Egyptians about America's motives has created a heightened, almost paranoiac atmosphere around the investigation of the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990. Now, all information pointing to the pilot Gameel al-Batouty's responsibility for the aircraft's fatal dive is believed to be tainted, in spite of indications that (a) he pulled rank to take over the controls from the co-pilot, even though it wasn't his shift, and (b) the now-notorious religious mutterings immediately preceded the aircraft's steep downward plunge. Meanwhile, theories exonerating the pilot are being propounded in Egypt almost daily - it was the Boeing malfunctioning, it was a bomb in the tail, it was a missile, and in any case it was America's fault. The many proponents of these "anti-American" theories see no contradiction in believing with great fervour notions for which there is as yet no shred of proof, while vilifying the FBI for seeking to draw premature conclusions from such evidence as there is.
A more dispassionate version of events is needed. The FBI is perhaps excessively prone to seeing air disasters as crimes rather than accidents. That was certainly a problem after the TWA 800 crash. On that occasion it was the National Transportation Safety Board that eventually made the case for a systems failure causing an explosion in a fuel tank. But this time it's the NTSB's preliminary examination of the data that has thrown up the possibility of a pilot suicide.
The much-criticized leakiness of the investigating bodies can also be seen as reassuring: with so many loose tongues around, in the end the truth will out. By contrast, the state-controlled press in Mubarak's Egypt is likely to reflect that government's nationalistic unwillingness to concede Egyptian responsibility for the crash, which could further damage the tourist trade.
Unreason and emotion have by now thoroughly politicized this investigation. Let us hope that those who fear a US cover-up do not create an atmosphere in which American and Egyptian politicians and diplomats do in fact seek to cover up the truth in the interest of their bilateral relations.
Muslims living in the West also continue to feel defensive, suspicious and persecuted. Hard on the heels of the dispute about the EgyptAir tragedy comes a demand in "multi-faith Britain" that all religious beliefs, not just the established Church of England, be protected from criticism. The West's alleged "Islamophobia" means that Islamic demands for the new law are by far the loudest.
It is true that in many Western quarters there is a knee-jerk reflex that leads to anti-Islamic rushes to judgment, so that British Muslims' sense of injury is frequently justified. But the proposed solution Is the wrong cure, one which would make matters even worse than they are. For the point is to defend people but not their ideas. It is absolutely right that Muslims - that everyone - should enjoy freedom of religious belief in any free society. It is absolutely right that they should protest against discrimination whenever and wherever they experience it. It is also absolutely wrong of them to demand that their belief-system - that any system of belief or thought - should be immunized against criticism, irreverence, satire, even scornful disparagement. This distinction between the individual and his creed is a foundation truth of democracy, and any community that seeks to blur it will not do itself any favours. The British blasphemy law is an outdated relic of the past, has fallen into disuse, and ought to be abolished. To extend it would be an anachronistic move quite against the spirit of a country whose leadership likes to prefix everything with the word "new".
Democracy can only advance through the clash of ideas, can only flourish in the rough-and-tumble bazaar of disagreement. The law must never be used to stifle such disagreements, no matter how profound. The new cannot die so that the old can be reborn. That would indeed be a morbid symptom.
Once again, a clearer form of discourse is needed. Westem societies urgently need to find effective ways of defending Muslims against blind prejudice.
And Islamic spokesmen must likewise stop giving the impression that the way to better relations - the path to the new - requires the creation of new forms of censorship, of legal blindfolds and gags.

JANUARY 2000: TERROR VS. SECURITY Now that the big Y2K party's over, think for a moment about the covert, worldwide battle that took place on and around Millennium Night. Behind the images of a world lit up by pyrotechnics, united for one evanescent instant by gaiety and goodwill, the new dialectic of history was taking shape. We already knew that capitalism vs. communism was no longer the name of the game. Now we saw, as clearly as the fireworks in the sky, that the defining struggle of the new age would be between Terrorism and Security.
I was one of the ten thousand gathered in London's Millennium Dome, that same Dome off which James Bond bounces while fighting the forces of terror in the latest 007 film. The audience knew - after hours of waiting to be frisked on a cold railway platform, how could it not? - that a mammoth security operation had been launched to safeguard the showpiece event. What few of us knew was that a bomb threat had been made, using an IRA code word, and that the Dome came within an inch of being evacuated.
For days, the world had been hearing about nothing but terrorism. The US had spoken the current bogeyman's name - "Osama bin Laden" - to frighten us children. There were arrests: a man with bomb-making equipment found at the US-Canada border, a group in Jordan. Seattle cancelled its celebrations. One of the leaders of the Aum Shinrikyo cult was released, and Japan feared a terrorist atrocity. President Chandrika Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka made history by surviving a suicide bomber's attack. There were bomb hoaxes at a British racetrack and a soccer stadium. The FBI feared the worst from apocalyptic groups and lunatic-fringers. But in the end - apart from poor George Harrison, wounded by one such lunatic - we got off relatively lightly.
Almost all of us, that is, because there was also the Indian Airlines hijack. The events at Kandahar airport have left no fewer than four governments looking pretty bad. Nepal, proving that Kathmandu deserves its terrorist-friendly reputation, allowed men with guns and grenades to board a plane. The Indian government's capitulation to the terrorists was the first such surrender to hijackers in years; what will they do when the next aircraft is seized? And finally, terrorists trained in Taliban camps and holding Pakistani passports disappeared from Afghanistan into, very probably, Pakistan. Thus was a largely defunct form of terrorism given a new lease of life.
Some knees jerked predictably. An Islamist journalist, writing in a liberal British paper of the sort that would be banned in Islamist countries, complained that the "terrorist" tag demonizes members of freedom movements struggling against violent, oppressive regimes. But terrorism isn't justice-seeking in disguise. In Sri Lanka it's the voices of peace and conciliation who are getting murdered. And the brutal Indian Airlines hijackers do not speak for the people of peaceable, vandalized Kashmir. The security establishment rightly regards the non-explosive Millennium as a triumph. Security is, after all, the art of making sure certain things don't happen: a thankless task, because when they don't happen there will always be someone to say the security was excessive and unnecessary. In London on New Year's Eve the security operation was on a scale that would have made citizens of many less fortunate nations convinced that a coup was in progress. But none of us thought so for an instant. This was security in the service of merry-making, and that is something we can be impressed by, and grateful for. And yet there is cause for concern. If the ideology of terrorism is that terror works, then the ideology of security is based on assuming the truth of the "worst-case scenario". The trouble is that worst-case scenarism, if I may call it that, plays right into the hands of the fear-creators. The worst-case scenario of crossing the road, after all, is that you'll be hit by a truck and killed. Yet we all do cross roads every day, and could hardly function if we did not. To live by the worst-case scenario is to grant the terrorists their victory, without a shot having been fired.
It is also alarming to think that the real battles of the new century may be fought in secret, between adversaries accountable to few ofus, the one claiming to act on our behalf, the other hoping to scare us into submission. Democracy requires openness and light. Must we really surrender our future into the hands of the shadow warriors? That most of the Millennial threats turned out to be hoaxes only underlines the problem; nobody wants to run from imaginary enemies. But how, in the absence of information, are we, the public, to evaluate such threats? How can we prevent terrorists and their antagonists from setting the boundaries within which we live?
Security saved President Kumaratunga, but many others died. The security at George Harrison's fortress-home didn't stop the would-be assassin's knife; it was his wife's well-swung table-lamp that saved him. In the past, security didn't save President Reagan, or the Pope. Luck did that. So we need to understand that even maximum security guarantees nobody's safety. The point is to decide - as the Queen decided on New Year's Eve - not to let fear rule our lives. To tell those bullies who would terrorize us that we aren't scared of them. And to thank our secret protectors, but to remind them, too, that in a choice between security and liberty, it is liberty that must always come out on top.

OCTOBER 2001: THE ATTACKS ON AMERICA In January 2000's column I wrote that «the defining struggle of the new age would be between Terrorism and Security», and fretted that to live by the security experts' worst-case scenarios might be to surrender too many of our liberties to the invisible shadow warriors of the secret world. Democracy requires visibility, I argued, and in the struggle between security and freedom we must always err on the side of freedom. On Tuesday September 11, however, the worst-case scenario came true.
They broke our city. I'm among the newest of New Yorkers, but even people who have never set foot in Manhattan have felt her wounds deeply, because New York in our time is the beating heart of the visible world, tough-talking, spirit-dazzling, Walt Whitman's «city of orgies, walks and joys», his «proud and passionate city - mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!» To this bright capital of the visible, the forces of invisibility have dealt a dreadful blow. No need to say how dreadful; we all saw it, are all changed by it, and must now ensure that the wound is not mortal, that the world of what is seen triumphs over what is cloaked, what is perceptible only through the effects of its awful deeds.
In making free societies safe - safer - from terrorism, our civil liberties will inevitably be compromised . But in return for freedom's partial erosion, we have a right to expect that our cities, water, planes and children really will be better protected than they have been. The West's response to the September 11 attacks will be judged in large measure by whether people begin to feel safe once again in their homes, their workplaces, their daily lives. This is the confidence we have lost, and must regain.

Salman Rushdie