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We could expect . . .
What we have discovered instead is a
deeply ingrained timidity when the issue
of fundamental civil liberties is raised.
One is not talking about figures so
loathed in our history; we are not talking about communists, pornographers,
or the targets of "tabloid television." We
are not dealing with a fringe political idea
or so unpopular a concept as, say, our
own Atheism. We are instead dealing
with a novelist, somebody most people
would never hear of in the course of
their daily lives were they not part of
that insular group which consumes
"modern fiction" with the appetite of a
glutton. After all, Viking printed only
50,000 copies of The Satanic Verses in
first edition hardback, knowing that a
goodly portion of them might be sold to
remainder houses, or sent to the "bargain table" of chain bookstores. Rushdie
had already written other novels like
Grimus, Midnight's Children (winner of
the 1981 Booker Prize), Shame (winner of the French
Prix du Meilleur Livre Étanger), and a book about Nicaragua, The Jaguar Smile.
Rushdie was a very bright light in a relatively small social and intellectual world. It took Ayatollah Khomeini to push The Satanic Verses into the second and third printings and beyond — into the news and onto the best-seller list.
“At the end of his wrestling match with the
Archangel Gibreel, the Prophet Mahound falls
into his customary, exhausted, post-revelatory
sleep. . . . When he comes to his senses in that
high wilderness there is nobody to be seen, no
winged creatures crouch on rocks, and he
jumps to his feet, filled with the urgency of his
news. ‘It was the Devil,’ he says aloud to the
empty air, making it true by giving it voice.
‘The last time, it was Shaitan.’ That is what he
has heard in his listening, that he has been
tricked, that the Devil came to him in the
guise of the archangel, so that the verses he
memorized, . . . were not the real thing but its
diabolic opposite, not godly, but satanic. He returns
to the city as quickly as he can, to expunge the foul verses
that reck of brimstone
and sulphur. . . .
“After the repudiation of the Satanic verses,
the Prophet Mahound returns home. ...”
- "Mahound"
The Satanic Verses
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When Khomeini did throw
down his gauntlet to the world,
the world hesitated, stumbled,
and hid. There was a thin veneer
of disapproval, even a mild curiosity. Who was Salman Rushdie? What does this book say?
Why does it "offend" Moslems?
Deeper, more profound questions about civil liberties were
ignored.
B. Dalton and Waldenbooks,
the nation's two largest chain
bookstores, quickly announced
that they were withdrawing
The Satanic Verses from their
shelves. The atmosphere at
Viking Press, though, was one
of open defiance to Khomeini
— extra security was hired and
Viking's British division announced that it was going
through with plans for the British edition. Yes, the book would
be printed; it soon fell upon independent
booksellers, many of them members of
the American Booksellers' Association,
to distribute The Satanic Verses.
Timid in Tucson
My own experience with The Satanic
Verses may be somewhat typical of
what independent booksellers throughout the country encountered. As the
controversy over the book grew, I decided to carry the novel (most of my
inventory is used and rare books; the new
books are in specialized areas of interest
such as art, photography and Americana). I contacted my new book distributor,
the Ingram Co.
Ingram: Ingram, this is Shirley, may I
help you?
Me: Hello, Shirley, I'm calling from
GOODBOOKS in Tucson, Arizona,
and I wanted to see about ordering
some copies of The Satanic Verses.
I don't have an ISBN or a catalogue
number for ordering though . . .
Ingram: (interrupting): We have no information on this book. What is your
control number?
Me: Last name Goeringer, G-O-E-R-I-N-G-E-R, first name Conrad.
Ingram: What is your zip code?
Me: 85705. (By now I realize that this is
not the usual procedure when I order
books. Are they verifying who I am?)
Ingram: What is your address?
Me: 431 N. Fourth Avenue.
Ingram: We do not have this book in
stock anywhere, or in any of our
warehouses.
Me: (frustrated) Yes, I know, you said that ...
Ingram: Would you like to place an
order?
Me: (sighing relief, then whooping for
joy!) YES! (I love you, Shirley!)
I never did meet Shirley, but I sure did
receive shipments of The Satanic
Verses.
My next task was advertising. Copies
were nowhere to be found in Tucson except at two independent bookstores.
Like my own supplies, theirs seemed to
be intermittent, depending on the printed availability of the book. Inside most
new books is a numbering system on
the verso page which indicates which
printing the volume is. I watched that
number rise steadily with each shipment, and I knew that Viking was working
furiously to meet the public demand.
Waldenbooks and B. Dalton and George
Bush may have been silent about The
Verses, but somebody in America at
least was curious enough to buy a book!
Keeping my trusty Smith and Wesson
9mm behind my counter in easy reach,
I arranged for advertising. The Tucson
Weekly is our only "independent" paper
in Tucson, and often dares to go where
no "establishment" paper has gone before. The Arizona Daily Star and the
Tucson Citizen are both staid, community rags which gnaw at their consciences
about naked breasts in the movie advertisements. No, go with the Weekly.
I ended up running two advertisements. The first had a snarling picture of
Khomeini with the caption "DON'T
LET THIS GUY TELL YOU WHAT
YOU CAN'T READ," followed by a plug
for the book, informing people that it
was available at cost. I copied the ad and
mailed it to the local media along with a
press release elaborating on why my
store was openly selling Rushdie's book,
even displaying multiple copies in the
front window. (No, I don't carry plate
glass insurance!)
I followed that ad with another which
included an "open letter" about censorship, pointing out similarities between
the religiosity of Ayatollah Khomeini
and our own "home grown" ayatollahs
who have a censorship agenda of their
own.
Both ads managed to attract public
and media attention, good reaction
from customers (many of whom purchased the novel) — and now even the
chain bookstores carry Salman Rushdie's book. Sales remain brisk: it is now
"safe" to sell The Satanic Verses, and
Khomeini's fanatics appear to have
gone in search of new targets.
It was an outrage that Waldenbooks
and B. Dalton, in effect, gave in to the
threats of a religious bigot thousands of
miles from their corporate offices. Waldenbooks claimed it was withdrawing
Rushdie's novel "for the protection of
employees" in the light of threats. Indeed, a publishing company and
newspaper in New York was bombed after
denouncing Khomeini, and Cody's
bookstore in Berkeley was dynamited,
presumably for openly selling the book.
To my knowledge, no surveys were ever
made within the B. Dalton or Waldenbooks organizations about what exactly
the employees thought about this issue;
some television coverage included interviews with workers who wanted to sell
the novel!
There was a curious and somewhat
chilling silence from the White House
and other governmental quarters about
the Rushdie affair. Of course, with so
many governmentalists busy defending
censorship of books, magazines, videos,
and other material (to "fight drugs" or
"combat pornography," the two often
linked in the public imagination), it was
difficult to defend Satanic Verses on the
basis of so libertarian a notion as freedom of expression. With religionists on
both the "left" and the "right" picketing
convenience stores and movie theaters,
protesting their own peculiar notion of
"obscenity," we are not exactly in a
social climate which embraces freedom
and tolerance.
Instead, we were implored by so
many to "understand" the outrage of
Moslems and "look deeper" into the issue of why Khomeini ordered
somebody murdered for merely writing words
onto paper. We were told that "many"
found the book "offensive" and "blasphemous," that it "insulted their religious beliefs."
"How would we feel if our
religious values were mocked?"
Mobs in Tehran, death threats from
the ayatollah, the banning of Rushdie's
book in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Bangladesh, India, other Islamic countries, even in South Africa, all of this was
because religionists were "offended."
We should "empathize" and "respect
their sentiments."
The Vatican newspaper agreed with
Islamic mullahs that The Satanic Verses
was offensive and blasphemous and
should not be read. New York's John
Cardinal O'Connor chimed in that the
book was "offensive" and "blasphemous," and he would not waste time
reading it.
In Britain, the Thatcher government
— so loathe to have government interfere in the business of business — was
fresh from a round of prosecutions with
the Official Secrets Act and the whole
incident from Peter Wright's memoir,
Spycatcher. Mr. Wright dug up the
corpse of the Kim Philby affair, suggesting that Sir Hollis, once head spook,
may have instead been in the service of
Soviet Intelligence. The government
went to court in order to ban Spycatcher
— undoubtedly, some crafty KGB sleuth
deduced that — yes! — the Kremlin
could learn what it already probably
knew by, perhaps, buying the book outside of the United Kingdom.
Thatcher declared that the Rushdie
book, however, would be available "subject to the rule of law and the Blasphemy
Acts."
If MI-5 doesn't get you, the High
Church of England will.
The Official Secrets Act empowers
the British state to ban anything deemed
to be a matter of national security; this
includes musty documents from the
Boer War, the First and Second World
Wars, up through newspaper interviews
with (suspected) IRA activists. The
Blasphemy Act prohibits the utterance
or publication of anything offensive and
demeaning to Jesus or the Church of
England.
For years in Britain, religious bodies
other than the "official Anglicans" have
been agitating to be included under the
umbrella of blasphemy statutes. Jewish
and Moslem organizations want official
protection for their own peculiar creeds,
but thus far have not been successful.
Usually, the blasphemy laws go hand-in-hand with countless national and
regional anti-obscenity laws which are
ammunition for militant fundamentalist
sects and censorship groups like Mary
Whitehouse's National Viewers and Listeners Association. If there is something
obscene, blasphemous, even vaguely
offensive, there is a law somewhere
which someone can try and use.
There were suggestions that The Satanic Verses be banned simply because
of the large number of Moslems residing
in the country who constituted a potential "fifth column." Many of these
persons, though, especially of Iranian extraction, left their respective homelands
to escape precisely the kind of censorship and religious meddling which was
being proposed.
Many large British corporations, of course, had lucrative
contracts with Iran and in other countries throughout the
Middle East. Was the pound
sterling more valuable than
human rights?
On the European continent,
West Germany, Italy, and
France quickly announced
that they would prohibit importation of Rushdie's book.
One had to settle for excerpts
published in the Communist
party daily paper in Yugoslavia. Which side of the Iron
Curtain was the free world on,
anyway?
In Canada, a Moslem group
filed a court action which delayed entry of shipments of
The Satanic Verses for up to
two weeks. A recently enacted
law there prohibits the publication or
distribution of so-called hate literature;
it was used in the prosecution of a man
who wrote a book questioning the existence of the Holocaust during World
War II. The Canadian government decided that the Verses did not constitute
racially motivated hate propaganda and
decided to allow entry of book shipments;
censorship is indeed a two-edged sword.
Meanwhile, back in the USA . . .
Undeterred by the Vatican and Cardinal O'Connor, a group of New York-
based writers, led by Norman Mailer, organized a public reading of The Satanic
Verses. By this time, it was getting "safe"
to publicly admit that, yes, you did support Salman Rushdie and freedom of
expression. The Nation was one of the few
periodicals to denounce the hesitation
on the part of many to defend the Bill of
Rights and so basic a notion as freedom
to read. There was still a strange alliance
between fundamentalist Christians busy
"empathizing" with their Moslem counterparts, and Khomeini's regime in Iran.
Perhaps much of the hesitation stems
from our growing lack of concern with
our own civil liberties. In our hysteria
about "problems" such as drugs or "pornography," there is a disturbing
willingness to suspend, even eliminate basic
freedoms to "stop crime" or bring the
nation "back to God." Politicians employ
an almost military terminology — there
is a "war" against crime, a "crackdown"
against pushers, a "battle" to "smash
smut" — and of course in a "war," civil
liberties can easily be forgotten.
Much of the silence in the face of
Khomeini's threats comes from our own
"caving in" to the antics and demands of
religious fundamentalists here. "Freedom of expression" seems to apply only
to what is deemed "responsible" expression, not that which happens to offend,
insult, blaspheme, or provoke. We have
more and more come to embrace an
anemic, insubstantial notion of freedom,
a safe freedom, a conditional freedom.
"There is no freedom to insult god..."
"There is no freedom of speech for
smut peddlers!"
"There shouldn't be freedom of expression for racists!"
'There shouldn't be freedom to publish material which offends me!"
Freedom of expression, the
right to explore and promote
and to extend all boundaries
of the written or spoken word,
thus becomes a "licensed"
privilege granted by the State,
to defend the political or ideological or religious establishments.
I'm still bogged down in The
Satanic Verses, not being much
of a fan of "modern fiction,"
Rushdie is very much the
wordsmith, though; he has
crafted an interesting tale
about good versus evil. Do we
know one from the other based
upon mere appearance, or on
content and deed?
For that matter, is there
anything real left in our notion
of being free?
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