generalspeaking: IRAN + Hezbollah = Lebanon

Wednesday, August 17, 2022

IRAN + Hezbollah = Lebanon

"I was expecting him to come back motivated. To complete school, to get his degree and a job."
"But instead he locked himself in the basement. He had changed a lot, he didn't say anything to me or his sisters for months."
Silvana Pardos,mother of Hadi Matar

A 24-year-old New Jersey man has been arrested and charged after stabbing controversial author Salman Rushdie onstage.

"Regarding the attack against Salman Rushdie in America, we don't consider anyone deserving [of] reproach, blame or even condemnation, except for [Rushdie] himself and his supporters."
"In this regard, no one can blame the Islamic Republic of Iran. We believe that the insults made and the support he received was an insult against followers of all religions."
"[Iran did not] have any other information more than what the American media has reported."
"Salman Rushdie exposed himself to popular anger and fury through insulting the sacredness of Islam and crossing the red lines of over 1.5 billion Muslims and also red lines of followers of all divine religions."
Nasser Kanaani, spokesman, Iranian Foreign Ministry

Salman Rushdie. (Flickr/Greg Salibian)

Imagine that: the Islamic Republic of Iran voicing sympathy for other religions, expressing concern over their hurt feelings with respect to the viewed perceptions of authenticity of their sacred scriptures, their prophets, their faith in the Divine. And Iran certainly led the way when Salmon Rushdie wrote and published his excitably-controversial The Satanic Verses . In it, his thinly veiled novel depicting the Prophet Muhammad and doubts over the Koran's word of God, and allusions to unsavoury aspects of both, led Iran's revolutionary leader to put a price on Rushdie's head with a fatwa to kill.

The front cover of the book “The Satanic Verses” by author Salman Rushdie (AP Photo/Dave Caulkin)

For 35 years Rushdie has lived under that fatwa, resolute in his dedication to writing his sardonic thoughts and perceptions irrespective of who took offence. His was not the only offence to stir the faithful to a state of primitive killing rage. There was also the dozen cartoons published by the Jyllands-Posten, and other depictions of Muhammad that caused worldwide rioting, resulting in deaths. And who can forget the gunmen who stormed the Paris publishing offices of Charlie Hebdo killing 12 staffers, injuring another dozen?

The Western world at that time was horrified by all these events and the Medieval-era vicious backlash.

Reaction in the West was quick to condemn the followers of Islam whose raw hatred of critics of their Prophet and their religion sent hordes of terrorists striking Western democracies. That most victims of Islamic carnage were Muslims themselves was of less concern. Now it is. The public mood has shifted with the current adoption of 'woke' culture.

Rushdie himself at one point commenting: "We are living in the darkest time I have ever known. If the attacks against Satanic Verses had taken place today, these people [his defenders within the literary world and elsewhere] would not have defended me, and would have used the same arguments against me, accusing me of insulting an ethnic and cultural minority." This, from a man who never voluntarily forfeited his own cultured devotion to Islam.

The 24-year-old attacker who knifed Rushdie on stage in New York had been born in the United States of Lebanese parents who migrated to the U.S. They had come from Yaroun in southern Lebanon close to the Israeli border. While his mother and his siblings continue to live in the U.S., his father returned to his native village of Yaroun. Matar holds Lebanese citizenship, as a Shiite, and recently spent a month there. With, it seems, Hezbollah, a creature terrorist proxy of Iran.

Following the attack on Rushdie, Iranian media had a hey-day of celebration. Celebration that broke out generally within the worldwide Muslim community, with gloating and satisfaction expressed that the fatwa, still simmering and very much alive, had a champion. And perhaps next time around, another motivated champion would have more success. Like those who had already murdered two of the novel's translators.