Ambassador killed -- something tells me there is more to it

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Re: Ambassador killed -- something tells me there is more to

Postby Nordic » Thu Sep 20, 2012 4:08 pm

8bitagent wrote:If someone made a hardcore gay film depicting Christ and Paul engaging in sex acts on a pile of bibles with Mary looking on, I doubt we'd see a single violent protest by Christian groups.


You're not living in the same country as I am. Also, you're not even paying attention. You're really just being an asshole with this.
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Re: Ambassador killed -- something tells me there is more to

Postby 8bitagent » Thu Sep 20, 2012 4:23 pm

Nordic wrote:
8bitagent wrote:If someone made a hardcore gay film depicting Christ and Paul engaging in sex acts on a pile of bibles with Mary looking on, I doubt we'd see a single violent protest by Christian groups.


You're not living in the same country as I am. Also, you're not even paying attention. You're really just being an asshole with this.


NSFW cartoon image, but I think it gets the point across
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Re: Ambassador killed -- something tells me there is more to

Postby bks » Thu Sep 20, 2012 4:42 pm

A bit of a Rorschach for you. Whose side are you on? For me the winner is clear:

This is an exchange of letters to the editor by authors Salman Rushdie, John le Carré, and Christopher Hitchens in the British daily The Guardian. Rushdie wrote his initial letter to a speech by le Carré, excerpted in the November 15, 1997, issue of the The Guardian, in which le Carré complains of having been unfairly labeled an anti-Semite the previous fall in The New York Times Book Review. Rushdie, who lives under sentence of death by the Iranian government since early 1989, upbraids le Carré for sympathizing with the Islamic fundamentalists who would seek to murder him.

November 18, 1997,

John le Carré complains that he has been branded an anti-Semite as a result of a politically correct witch-hunt and declares himself innocent of the charge. It would be easier to sympathize with him had he not been so ready to join in an earlier campaign of vilification against a fellow writer.

In 1989, during the worst days of the Islamic attack on The Satanic Verses, le Carré wrote an article (also, if memory serves, in The Guardian) in which he eagerly, and rather pompously, joined forces with my assailants.

It would be gracious if he were to admit that he understands the nature of the Thought Police a little better now that, at least in his own opinion, he's the one in the line of fire.

Salman Rushdie

November 19, 1997

Rushdie's way with the truth is as self-serving as ever. I never joined his assailants. Nor did I take the easy path of proclaiming him to be a shining innocent. My position was that there is no law in life or nature that says great religions may be insulted with impunity.

I wrote that there is no absolute standard of free speech in any society. I wrote that tolerance does not come at the same time, and in the same form, to all religions and cultures, and that Christian society too, until very recently, defined the limits of freedom by what was sacred. I wrote, and would write again today, that when it came to the further exploitation of Rushdie's work in paperback form, I was more concerned about the girl at Penguin books who might get her hands blown off in the mailroom than I was about Rushdie's royalties. Anyone who had wished to read the book by then had ample access to it.

My purpose was not to justify the persecution of Rushdie, which, like any decent person, I deplore, but to sound less arrogant, less colonialist, and less self-righteous note than we were hearing from the safety of his admirers' camp.

John le Carré

November 20, 1997,

I'm grateful to John le Carré for refreshing all our memories about exactly how pompous an ass he can be. He claims not to have joined in the attack against me but also states that "there is no law in life or nature that says great religions may be insulted with impunity."

A cursory examination of this lofty formulation reveals that (1) it takes the philistine, reductionist, radical Islamist line that The Satanic Verses was no more than an "insult," and (2) it suggests that anyone who displeases philistine, reductionist, radical Islamist folk loses his right to live in safety.

So, if John le Carré upsets Jews, all he needs to do is fill a page of The Guardian with his muddled bombast, but if I am accused of thought crimes, John le Carré will demand that I suppress my paperback edition. He says that he is more interested in safeguarding publishing staff than in my royalties. But it is precisely these people, my novel's publishers in some thirty countries, together with the staff of bookshops, who have most passionately supported and defended my right to publish. It is ignoble of le Carré to use them as an argument for censorship when they have so courageously stood up for freedom.

John le Carré is right to say that free speech isn't absolute. We have the freedoms we fight for, and we lose those we don't defend. I'd always thought George Smiley knew that. His creator appears to have forgotten.

Salman Rushdie

November 20, 1997

John le Carré's conduct in your pages is like nothing so much as that of a man who, having relieved himself in his own hat, makes haste to clamp the brimming chapeau on his head. He used to be evasive and euphemistic about the open solicitation of murder, for bounty, on the grounds that ayatollahs had feelings, too. Now he tells us that his prime concern was the safety of the girls in the mailroom. For good measure, he arbitrarily counterposes their security against Rushdie's royalties.

May we take it, then, that he would have had no objection if The Satanic Verses had been written and published for free and distributed gratis from unattended stalls? This might have at least satisfied those who appear to believe that the defense of free expression should be free of cost and free of risk.

As it happens, no mailroom girls have been injured in the course of eight years' defiance of the fatwah. And when the nervous book chains of North America briefly did withdraw The Satanic Verses on dubious grounds of "security," it was their staff unions who protested and who volunteered to stand next to plate-glass windows in upholding the reader's right to buy and peruse any book. In le Carré's eyes, their brave decision was taken in "safety" and was moreover blasphemous towards a great religion! Could we not have been spared this revelation of the contents of his hat - I mean head?

Christopher Hitchens

November 21, 1997

Anyone reading yesterday's letters from Salman Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens might well ask himself into whose hands the great cause of free speech he has fallen. Whether from Rushdie's throne on Hitchens's gutter, the message is the same: "Our cause is absolute, it brooks no dissent or qualification; whoever questions it is by definition an ignorant, pompous, semi-literate unperson."

Rushdie sneers at my language and trashes a thoughtful and well-received speech I made to the Anglo-Israel Association, and which The Guardian saw fit to reprint. Hitchens portrays me as a buffoon who pours his own urine on his head. Two rabid ayatollahs could not have done a better job. But will the friendship last? I am amazed that Hitchen's has put up with Rushdie's self-canonization for so long. Rushdie, so far as I can make out, does not deny the fact that he insulted a great religion. Instead he accuses me - note his preposterous language for a change - of taking the philistine reductionist radical Islamist line. I didn't know I was so clever.

What I do know is, Rushdie took on a known enemy and screamed "foul" when it acted in character. The pain he has had to endure is appalling, but it doesn't make a martyr of him, nor - much as he would like it to - does it sweep away all argument about the ambiguities of his participation in his own downfall.

John le Carré

November 22, 1997

If he wants to win an argument, John le Carré could begin by learning how to read. It's true I did call him a pompous ass, which I thought pretty mild in the circumstances. "Ignorant" and "semi-literate" are dunces' caps he has skillfully fitted on his own head. I wouldn't dream of removing them. Le Carré's habit of giving himself good reviews ("my thoughtful and well-received speech") was no doubt developed because, well, somebody has to write them. He accuses me of not having done the same for myself. "Rushdie," says the dunce, "does not deny he insulted a great world religion." I have no intention of repeating yet again my many explications of The Satanic Verses, a novel of which I remain extremely proud. A novel, Mr. le Carré, not a gibe. You know what a novel is, don't you, John?

Salman Rushdie

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Re: Ambassador killed -- something tells me there is more to

Postby MacCruiskeen » Thu Sep 20, 2012 8:02 pm

Salman Rushdie is living proof (if any were needed) that a wholly unreadable writer can become a millionaire. The fatwa was even more lucrative, and much easier to acquire, than a Nobel Prize.

If the CIA were running the fatwa he would be dead by now. If I were running the fatwa, the most he would have to worry about would be a custard pie. But it would be a big one, and extremely soggy.
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Re: Ambassador killed -- something tells me there is more to

Postby compared2what? » Thu Sep 20, 2012 9:26 pm

MacCruiskeen wrote:Salman Rushdie is living proof (if any were needed) that a wholly unreadable writer can become a millionaire. The fatwa was even more lucrative, and much easier to acquire, than a Nobel Prize.


I'm utterly indifferent to him, myself. I agree that his name -- and possibly fortune, though I don't really know -- was made by the fatwa. And he was clearly an active participant in that process, not just a bystander. But I don't think there's anything terribly culpable about that. It seems to me like he's always done real work out of real conviction, irrespective of whether I like the first or share the second. I mean, maybe I'm wrong. But I wouldn't have said he was running a con when he wrote that (or any) book. So I'd also say he was entitled to his beliefs/tastes/standards/whatevers. It's not like reading him is mandatory.

If the CIA were running the fatwa he would be dead by now. If I were running the fatwa, the most he would have to worry about would be a custard pie. But it would be a big one, and extremely soggy.


That would indeed be a great improvement. Why aren't you in charge yet, anyway?

I thought he won the letters debate hands down, even with Hitchens as his Flava Flav. Respectable showing by Le Carre, all the more impressive because he's wrong, but he's still wrong.

I'm curious as to whom bks picked as the clear winner, though. I can see how all three of them might be viable for true, good reasons according to taste, with none of which I personally can really argue (much). But at the same time, I totally agree that it would be almost politically impossible for any single person not to see one of them as the clear winner.
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Re: Ambassador killed -- something tells me there is more to

Postby compared2what? » Thu Sep 20, 2012 9:32 pm

justdrew wrote:
Iamwhomiam wrote:Sorry. I cannot for one moment believe Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is actually a Copt.

Anyone who knew the true purpose of this film would also have known the plight of the Coptic community once it was seen or heard about by local Muslims.


yeah, seriously. I think there may be some kind of "Egyptian Coptic christian" cult-like entity operating in Texas atm, he may come from that kind of thing. From what I could see it wasn't made up of Egyptian emigrants, but American's who "converted"


I could easily believe that he had any and/or every religious background you care to name. He wouldn't be typical of any of them. But few large groups of people are totally crackpot-, asshole- and criminal-free, when you get right down to it.

Horrendous and utterly undeserved bad fortune for the Copts if they're stuck with him, though. I couldn't agree with that part more.
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Re: Ambassador killed -- something tells me there is more to

Postby justdrew » Thu Sep 20, 2012 9:36 pm

compared2what? wrote:
justdrew wrote:
Iamwhomiam wrote:Sorry. I cannot for one moment believe Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is actually a Copt.

Anyone who knew the true purpose of this film would also have known the plight of the Coptic community once it was seen or heard about by local Muslims.


yeah, seriously. I think there may be some kind of "Egyptian Coptic christian" cult-like entity operating in Texas atm, he may come from that kind of thing. From what I could see it wasn't made up of Egyptian emigrants, but American's who "converted"


I could easily believe that he had any and/or every religious background you care to name. He wouldn't be typical of any of them. But few large groups of people are totally crackpot-, asshole- and criminal-free, when you get right down to it.

Horrendous and utterly undeserved bad fortune for the Copts if they're stuck with him, though. I couldn't agree with that part more.


So when exactly did he emigrate? Are there public records on such things?

cause I can't help but think that given his life of lies, it's possible he's never even been to Egypt.
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Re: Ambassador killed -- something tells me there is more to

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 20, 2012 10:00 pm

Nakoula claims to have attended services at the Coptic Orthodox Church in Los Angeles, but the church's Bishop Serapion initially said none of his priests recognised the fraudster as a congregant.

The bishop later told the AP he confirmed with a priest in Bellflower, California, that Nakoula had once gone to the parish but had not been to services in a long time.
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Re: Ambassador killed -- something tells me there is more to

Postby MacCruiskeen » Thu Sep 20, 2012 10:18 pm

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Re: Ambassador killed -- something tells me there is more to

Postby MacCruiskeen » Thu Sep 20, 2012 10:21 pm

compared2what? wrote:
MacCruiskeen wrote:
If the CIA were running the fatwa he would be dead by now. If I were running the fatwa, the most he would have to worry about would be a custard pie. But it would be a big one, and extremely soggy.


That would indeed be a great improvement. Why aren't you in charge yet, anyway?.


Because I am too good for this world.

I thought he won the letters debate hands down, even with Hitchens as his Flava Flav. Respectable showing by Le Carre, all the more impressive because he's wrong, but he's still wrong.


Ach, Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris... Why are they so fucking insufferable? Smirky-faced, floppy-haired, soppy-voiced, self-satisfied drips, one and all.

One thing I like about religious people is this: At least they don't think they are God.
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Re: Ambassador killed -- something tells me there is more to

Postby MacCruiskeen » Thu Sep 20, 2012 10:54 pm

Many prominent atheists are also wealthy. Try discussing their wealth in their presence.

It is not irrelevant.
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Re: Ambassador killed -- something tells me there is more to

Postby compared2what? » Thu Sep 20, 2012 11:00 pm

justdrew wrote:
compared2what? wrote:
justdrew wrote:
Iamwhomiam wrote:Sorry. I cannot for one moment believe Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is actually a Copt.

Anyone who knew the true purpose of this film would also have known the plight of the Coptic community once it was seen or heard about by local Muslims.


yeah, seriously. I think there may be some kind of "Egyptian Coptic christian" cult-like entity operating in Texas atm, he may come from that kind of thing. From what I could see it wasn't made up of Egyptian emigrants, but American's who "converted"


I could easily believe that he had any and/or every religious background you care to name. He wouldn't be typical of any of them. But few large groups of people are totally crackpot-, asshole- and criminal-free, when you get right down to it.

Horrendous and utterly undeserved bad fortune for the Copts if they're stuck with him, though. I couldn't agree with that part more.


So when exactly did he emigrate? Are there public records on such things?

cause I can't help but think that given his life of lies, it's possible he's never even been to Egypt.


Sure. I have no opinion on the matter at all, really. But I therefore can't really exlude any, either.

In a casual-appraisal type of a way, he just seems to me like a real type that's not formally recognized as one. So I'm not exactly sure what to call it. But it's basically a category for some guys who emigrate to the U.S. from places other than Western Europe and any one of a very wide variety of cultural-religious traditions whose members have been born into fixed-class generational semi-poverty since time immemorial. And...I guess they're usually but not always minorities where they came from, too.

I think that maybe there's a type like that who tends to go a little nuts wrt seedy criminal activities while remaining, in some way, oddly innocent. Or seeming so, anyway. Because....As I hypothesize it, based on nothing:

Being a prosperous pater familias is a pretty big deal for most guys, no matter where they come from or what their backgrounds are. I guess it seems to me like this subset has been desperate for the chance to be Mr. Successful for a little too long. So when they get it....Actually, it's not so much that they totally overdo the scheming and wheeling-dealing aspects of their business enterprises as that they totally don't have any judgment at all about what's socially acceptable criminal business behavior and what isn't.

I can see how that might not be a very easy thing to figure out in a culturally foreign environment that also happened to be the United States. I mean, when you're from here, naturally, you know perfectly well which criminal business endeavors are regarded with awe and admiration and which aren't without thinking about it. But there's not really any discernible logic to it.

Anyway. That's my half-baked theory. In case it needs saying: No condescending or bigoted sentiments intended at all. There's nobody like that in my family tree, afaik. But there totally could have been, if only the people in my family were fun enough to do that sort of thing. They're certainly not too good for it.
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Re: Ambassador killed -- something tells me there is more to

Postby bks » Fri Sep 21, 2012 12:00 am

c2w? wrote:

I thought he won the letters debate hands down, even with Hitchens as his Flava Flav. Respectable showing by Le Carre, all the more impressive because he's wrong, but he's still wrong.

I'm curious as to whom bks picked as the clear winner, though. I can see how all three of them might be viable for true, good reasons according to taste, with none of which I personally can really argue (much). But at the same time, I totally agree that it would be almost politically impossible for any single person not to see one of them as the clear winner.


Looks like I may be about to learn something! Because Le Carre is the clear winner to me. Here's the nub of it, from Rushdie:
I'm grateful to John le Carré for refreshing all our memories about exactly how pompous an ass he can be. He claims not to have joined in the attack against me but also states that "there is no law in life or nature that says great religions may be insulted with impunity."

A cursory examination of this lofty formulation reveals that (1) it takes the philistine, reductionist, radical Islamist line that The Satanic Verses was no more than an "insult," and (2) it suggests that anyone who displeases philistine, reductionist, radical Islamist folk loses his right to live in safety.


But Rushdie does not understand what Le Carre' says. Le Carre does not hold to (1). He merely claims that, from the perspective of the offended, The Satanic Verses reads like an insult. The implicit point is clear: though you and I may agree there's no rational basis for their being insulted by it, you can't keep them from being insulted if they feel insulted by it. That is, Rushdie does not get to set the cross-cultural terms for what counts as an insult, and he certainly understood this before he picked up his pen. He may think their reading of TSV is philistine, reductionistic, etc. etc., and it may very well be all of that. But Rushdie should know that proving a philistine is a philistine isn't going to change how the philistine feels (and why would Rushdie expect it to? Given that they're philistines, after all. Which they very well may be!).

Rushdie's point (2) has two problems. First, it confuses what is with what ought to be. One shouldn't be threatened for writing a novel, everyone agrees, including Le Carre. But Rushdie was threatened, and it may even have been foreseeable that he would be threatened (though I'd like to know why Le Carre believes this).

Second, Rushdie did not lose his "right" to live in safety. That right, if he has it, is extended to him by his being the member of a liberal polity. He continues to enjoy that right (its just that like all rights, there are limits on what can be done to enforce it). His right to live in safety, such as it is, doesn't extend beyond the confines of the society that issues it, and the neighboring countries who also respect it. Rushdie is wrong if he thinks he (or anyone) has a "right" to live in safety wherever they go, provided they have only written novels. What I believe he means (and should say) is that he ought to be able to live in safety wherever he goes, despite whatever may have been written in a novel bearing his name. And I agree. And so does Le Carre.
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Re: Ambassador killed -- something tells me there is more to

Postby compared2what? » Fri Sep 21, 2012 1:26 am

bks wrote:Looks like I may be about to learn something!


Nah. I just read it differently.

Because Le Carre is the clear winner to me. Here's the nub of it, from Rushdie:
I'm grateful to John le Carré for refreshing all our memories about exactly how pompous an ass he can be. He claims not to have joined in the attack against me but also states that "there is no law in life or nature that says great religions may be insulted with impunity."

A cursory examination of this lofty formulation reveals that (1) it takes the philistine, reductionist, radical Islamist line that The Satanic Verses was no more than an "insult," and (2) it suggests that anyone who displeases philistine, reductionist, radical Islamist folk loses his right to live in safety.


But Rushdie does not understand what Le Carre' says. Le Carre does not hold to (1). He merely claims that, from the perspective of the offended, The Satanic Verses reads like an insult. The implicit point is clear: though you and I may agree there's no rational basis for their being insulted by it, you can't keep them from being insulted if they feel insulted by it. That is, Rushdie does not get to set the cross-cultural terms for what counts as an insult, and he certainly understood this before he picked up his pen.


Personally, I don't think that's what Le Carre is saying. But if I did, I'd agree with every part of it except the last sentence.

I don't think Rushdie is arguing that he gets to set the cross-cultural terms for insults; he's arguing that in a free society, there should be a universal presumption that no culture gets to issue death threats against novelists whose books it finds offensive. And while I have no idea whether he thought it through at all before he picked up his pen, I doubt that he did. Because it really wasn't a thing before it happened, IIRC. No precedent, to speak of.

Also....I skimmed rather than read the book. But I wouldn't have said it was intentionally blasphemous in a million years if it hadn't already been an issue. I thought it was magical realism that was too gimmicky to be my cup of tea, which struck me as a credible, likely, and sufficient explanation largely because I'd seen it before. It was unfortunately fashionable, for a while.

Anyway. Le Carre. As I read it, the reason he says "no law in life or nature" is that he can't say what he wants to more forthrightly without basically saying, "Oh, fuck the law of the land. Holy authority has a higher prerogative." Because "law" is a very loaded word to use in that context. And he's always been an exceptionally sophisticated writer wrt to that kind of nuance, especially relative to genre. So. If he wasn't trying to suggest that the fatwa represented a higher order of moral imperative than anything a puny, little mortal court of law could come up with, I don't know why he'd use it. That's what it suggests. Same for "impunity." He's going out of his way to ring changes on words that have secular crime-and-punishment connotations in that sentence, basically. And there's also that "great" in "great religions." I mean, it's not that I think Islam's not great or anything. But if it'd had been me, no qualifier being necessary, I just would have said "religions."

Please don't hate me because I'm a close reader. It's the only way I know.

He may think their reading of TSV is philistine, reductionistic, etc. etc., and it may very well be all of that. But Rushdie should know that proving a philistine is a philistine isn't going to change how the philistine feels (and why would Rushdie expect it to? Given that they're philistines, after all. Which they very well may be!).

Rushdie's point (2) has two problems. First, it confuses what is with what ought to be. One shouldn't be threatened for writing a novel, everyone agrees, including Le Carre. But Rushdie was threatened, and it may even have been foreseeable that he would be threatened (though I'd like to know why Le Carre believes this).

Second, Rushdie did not lose his "right" to live in safety. That right, if he has it, is extended to him by his being the member of a liberal polity. He continues to enjoy that right (its just that like all rights, there are limits on what can be done to enforce it). His right to live in safety, such as it is, doesn't extend beyond the confines of the society that issues it, and the neighboring countries who also respect it. Rushdie is wrong if he thinks he (or anyone) has a "right" to live in safety wherever they go, provided they have only written novels. What I believe he means (and should say) is that he ought to be able to live in safety wherever he goes, despite whatever may have been written in a novel bearing his name. And I agree. And so does Le Carre.


Again, different reading on my end, but otherwise, legitimate points all, barring the last one, which is ultimately a judgment call.

Oh, wait. Plus possibly one other. I think you're maybe being a little too dismissive of Rushdie's experience. IIRC, there were real death threats of a kind that would lead a reasonable person to fear real death. I mean, real people associated with the book were stabbed and shot as a part of that fatwa, that much I do remember. Or maybe under color of it, who knows? But at least as I remember it, while it was definitely being politically exploited at the state level on all sides, Rushdie himself wasn't really a major (or starting) player in that arena back then. He wasn't even very visible, was he?

Maybe I don't remember.
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