Did benighted Brits knight Rushdie?
Is it possible that the powers-that-be in Great Britain didn't know what they were doing when they sought to honor Salman Rushdie with knighthood? It is not only possible, it seems likely. At NRO's Corner, Stanley Kurtz has been following the stories suggesting the Brits had something completely different than a "cartoon statement" in mind. Kurtz reports:
Apparently, the committee that recommended Salman Rushdie for a knighthood had no idea that Rushdie’s selection would be taken as an insult by vast sections of the Muslim world. On the contrary, they believed that honoring Rushdie would actually improve Britain’s relations with countries like Pakistan. Whether you think knighting Rushdie was a smart move or not, the fact that the decision was taken in colossal ignorance of its actual symbolic significance shows how profoundly clueless large sections of the European elite must be about the nature and extent of the challenge from the Muslim world.In subsequent posts Kurtz has linked to this BBC story and this recent column by a key proponent of Rushdie's knighthood, with respect to which Kurtz comments:That certainly casts European rejection of critics like Walter Laqueur and Mark Steyn in a new light. The picture here is of an utterly naive multiculturalism, incapable of perceiving even the most fundamental challenges posed by unassimilated Muslim immigrants–and their home countries.
The authors of the Danish cartoons may have greatly underestimated the reaction they’d provoke, but at least they understood the inherently provocative nature of what they were doing. In fact, that’s why they did it. I’d assumed the folks who chose to honor Rushdie were attempting to make a point along the lines of the cartoons. Yet, incredibly, they were merely acting in ignorance....
The opening paragraph on what the response to the Rushdie knighthood might have been is obviously an only slightly exaggerated version of what Heawood and the others were hoping for. Heawood is now claiming that "no-one expected" actual dancing in the streets. But it's clear that he and his compatriots were in fact expecting a slightly more subdued version of the fantasy response he lays out. If you want to know what the folks who gave Rushdie his knighthood were actually thinking, the first paragraph of Heawood's piece is more or less it. And as I argued in "Clueless Brit-Lits," it reveals the mad post-modernist fantasy-land the British left (and especially the American academic left) now inhabit.
JOHN adds: This ties in, I think, with my observations yesterday about the weirdness of Britain's Foreign Secretary suggesting that Muslims ought to be happy about Rushdie's award.
UPDATE: Reader Peter Rice writes:
The British Government has provided security guards for Rushdie for many years at great expense. They are VERY well aware that many want to kill him, in particular the Government of Iran.Mr. Rice adds a PS:
This seems to be more of an in your face action by Tony Blair (he has a very bit part in preparing the Queen's Honours lists).
I believe that Tony Blair caused the knighthood to be given to Rushie to create a "teaching moment" for the always caring left wingers in the UK, to provide one more example of how extreme were so many Muslims in the UK.The question raised in the heading remains open; Mr. Rice's observations must be taken into account in arriving at an answer.
I am a retired diplomat (of the US Dept. of State) and served in India soon after Rushdie starting to be hated for what he wrote.
I watched much BBC news from there and elsewhere and their reports of the several efforts to kill Rushdie and the security provided (I believe it was by MI5) by the British Govt. for him, security that likely cost several million US dollars per year (several men on duty at all times, more when he was in public, 168 hours per week means a security detail of perhaps 10).
Rushdie has been a MAJOR issue for the English speaking Muslim countries (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and to a lesser extent in northern Nigeria) where people watch the BBC and travel often to the UK.
This was also a MAJOR issue in Iran by official action of their government and religious leaders.
The overseas (outside the UK) reaction was likely of no real concern to Tony Blair since it was just more of the same, more hatred of anyone who speaks or writes anything that is declared to be against Islam.
I vaguely remember a fuss in India while we were there about Rushdie wanting to travel to India and the Government of India forbidding his travel to India for fear of communal discord (aka mass killings).
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