THE attack on Salman Rushdie is a bloody reminder that bigotry is a knife to the throat of free speech.
Not only in that of Putin Russia or Afghanistan below the Talibanbut also in America and the free West.
The British author was stabbed as he prepared to speak about the importance of the US as a refuge for persecuted writers.
Just hours later, JK Rowling was warned “you’re next” after simply tweeting she hopedRushdie would be good.
In this age of hatred with saliva stains, that was enough.
Rushdie has been a courageous champion of our most precious freedom for more than three decades.
He took on both Islamist extremists who want to kill freedom of speech, and awakened Western culture fighters who wanted to cancel it.
In 1989, in response to Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, Iran has issued a fatwasentence him to death for blasphemy.
Rushdie continued to write and advocate for free speech.
But too many Western politicians, intellectuals and writers unequivocally refused to defend him.
In 2015, Islamic gunmen killed the staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
The American PEN writers’ organization organized an event to honor the dead, but several top writers boycotted it, claiming Charlie was “Islamophobic.”
Rushdie told them, “If you believe in the value of free speech, then you must believe in the value of free speech that you don’t like.”
In Britain we have abolished our outdated blasphemy laws.
But in the past 30 years, an informal ban on “blasphemy” against Islam has gripped Western culture.
Because we send all the best wishes to Rushdielet’s also recognize that freedom of speech – the lifeblood of democracy – is on a life support machine in our supposedly free societies.