Rushdie on liberal collapse. posted by Richard Seymour

From The Guardian :

How disappointing it is to read that Ian Jack (Beyond belief, Saturday Review, January 1) was happy to see the freedom of speech of Murdoch employees (including himself) defended by the massed ranks of the Metropolitan police "and their horses" at Wapping in 1986 and 1987, but, in the face of protests by a few religious thugs, is a lot less certain - "would that have been wise?" - about the wisdom of defending the rights of the playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti and the menaced theatre where her play Behzti was staged.
Mr Jack comes perilously close to the currently fashionable Blairite politics of religious appeasement at all costs. He goes on: "The state has no law forbidding a pictorial representation of the Prophet ... but I never expect to see such a picture. On the one hand, there is the individual's right to exhibit or publish one; on the other hand, the immeasurable insult and damage to life and property that the exercise of such a right would cause. In this case, we understand that the price is too high." What condescending nonsense - and it's ignorant, too. I have before me many examples of the long Islamic tradition of pictorial representations of the Prophet - from Timurid Herat, for example, and from Iran. Should we now censor ourselves because the current potentates of the Islamic faith are more repressive than their predecessors? Do we have no principles of our own?

The continuing collapse of liberal, democratic, secular and humanist principles in the face of the increasingly strident demands of organised religions is perhaps the most worrying aspect of life in contemporary Britain. That even Mr Jack's principles are wobbling is a sign of how serious the problem is.
Salman Rushdie
London

It was astonishing how many 'left' authors, journalists and celebrities were prepared to believe and argue that Rushdie invited his fatwa on himself, and he is perfectly placed to see how such allegedly 'tolerant' gestures often conceal racist contempt. ("Is it wise to be stirring these people up?") There is, however, one blind-spot in Rushdie's argument. True, he picks up on Blairite 'religious appeasement', but it should be pointed out that the latter is contiguous with increased state repression of Muslims. The 'incitement to religious hatred' law is an example of how New Labour would rather defend the right of Muslims not to hear unpleasant things about the Prophet than defend their right not to be locked up without trial, or held in island prisons where torture and beatings are said to be widespread. They appeal to Muslims in the most reactionary, inept and condescending ways (think of the 'faith schools' debacle, Oona King sending 'Eid Mubarak' cards out to any constituent with an Asian-sounding name...), rather than on universalising principles of human rights and social justice. An 'incitement to religious hatred' law is easier for them than ceasing arms sales to Israel, withdrawing from Iraq, demanding the end of Guantanamo-style prisons etc.

That touches on another point. Rushdie fingers 'strident' religious outfits for forcing the collapse of 'liberal, democratic, secular and humanist' ideals. No. These ideals are being gutted from within. There is growing evidence that the Abu Ghraib torture rituals were known of and approved from above . The plans for permanent Guantanamo-style prisons are an extension of this logic, in which the Geneva conventions are seen as "quaint" by US officials, and the term 'human rights' is reduced to a cynosure of imperialist discourse. The Patriot Act, the Prevention of Terrorism Act and countless copies across the world formalise the growing authoritarianism of Western liberal democracies, and the increasing impatience of ruling elites with the very formulae by which they once legitimised their rule against communist insurgency - human rights, freedom of speech and organisation, right to trial by one's peers etc etc.

The liberal collapse should be seen as a symptom of the termites within rather than a reaction to the exigencies of some religio-cultural dispute.