The Surprisingly Shallow, Stupid World of Salman Rushdie

Ever since the February day in 1989 when Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini declared Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, “blasphemous against Islam,” I have pulled for Salman Rushdie. I confess to having read none of his books and knew little of his politics, but this Indian-American author struck me as the ultimate embodiment of man’s fight for freedom. 

And then — sigh! — I read his new memoir, Knife. The “knife” in the title refers to the weapon used by a young New Jersey Muslim named Hadi Matar. Matar stabbed Rushdie very nearly to death on the amphitheater stage of the Chautauqua Institution in August 2022. The stabbing was inconvenient. Had Rushdie been shot, ideally by a guy in a MAGA hat, the shooting would have justified his anxiety about America’s “insane gun violence and equally insane Trump and Trumpublicans.” 

Although Rushdie sees himself as “an icon of free speech,” Chautauqua is not exactly a hotbed of the same. In 2002, I was banned from ever again speaking at this liberal enclave as a result of a talk I gave on the media’s pro-Islam, anti-Christian bias. “Islamic extremists in America,” I argued, “have proven to be exactly the bogeyman that the media have long imagined the Christian right to be — patriarchal, theocratic, sexist, homophobic, anti-choice, and openly anti-Semitic.” 

This was too much reality for the Institute’s director of religion. She took to the pages of the Chautauqua Daily to report, “Jack Cashill stepped outside the boundaries of civil discourse. Several of his comments were not only provocative, but potentially harmful.” Unknown to me, this historically Christian community was desperately trying to attract Muslims. If no one else, they got Hadi Matar. So convinced were the Chautauqua worthies that Islam was a religion of peace, they left Rushdie defenseless.

If Rushdie himself were unprepared, it was because he had been focusing his attention on the wrong enemy. For all his international experience, Rushdie has the knowledge base of a guy who gets his news — and his attitude — from the ladies on “The View.” In one very telling passage, he comments favorably on the human ability to learn from one’s own experience, a talent that he attributes to himself as well. (READ MORE: Banned Books Week in the Age of Biden)

“There were probably exceptions to this principle,” he writes, “but very few of the people who ought to regret their lives — Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Adolf Eichmann, Harvey Weinstein — ever do so.” Do we need to know any more about this man?

Trump was nearly two years out of power when Rushdie was attacked. At the time, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, the White House, the media, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and the intelligence community. And yet as he saw things, “America was torn in two by the radical right.”

“The right had a new agenda too,” writes Rushdie, “one that sounded a lot like an old one: authoritarianism backed up by unscrupulous media, big money, complicit politicians, and corrupt judges.” He offers no evidence for any of this Bizarro-world nonsense. Yes, conservatives championed the First Amendment, he concedes, but for all the wrong reasons: “The First Amendment was now what allowed conservatives to lie, to abuse, to denigrate. It became a kind of freedom for bigotry.”

An American citizen since 2016, Rushdie contemplates leaving should Trump win in 2024. “If he is re-elected this country may become impossible to live in,” he tells his son. What might keep him here, he continues, is that “Brexit Britain is pretty awful too.”

Rushdie mentions President Joe Biden only once and that is to thank him and Jill for the condolences they sent him after the attack. Wrote Biden, “”And today, we reaffirm our commitment to those deeply American values in solidarity with Rushdie and all those who stand for freedom of expression.”

Those “who stand for freedom of expression” definitely did not include the sitting president. A year after the 2022 attack, well into his recovery, Rushdie had no excuse for his ignorance of  Missouri v. Biden. The judges of the 5th Circuit Court nicely summed up Biden’s disdain for free speech: “On multiple occasions [White House] officials coerced the [social media] platforms into direct action via urgent, uncompromising demands to moderate content.”

For those free speech icons who cared to know, the judges added specifics: “Privately, the officials were not shy in their requests — they asked the platforms to remove posts ‘ASAP’ and accounts ‘immediately,’ and to ‘slow down’ or ‘demote’ content. In doing so, the officials were persistent and angry.”

Said the judges in summary, “The Supreme Court has rarely been faced with a coordinated campaign of this magnitude orchestrated by federal officials that jeopardized a fundamental aspect of American life.” I guess they didn’t talk about this ruling on Manhattan’s dinner party circuit where Rushdie remains a prized trophy guest.

Rushdie does not just pick on the powerful. What I found most troubling was his gratuitous abuse of the one man in America who knows what it is like to live as Rushdie has. In February 2012, George Zimmerman ran into his own Hadi Matar, a young aspiring MMA artist named Trayvon Martin.

Nearly a half-foot taller than Zimmerman, Martin beat him nearly to death and might have succeeded had his victim not pulled out his gun and shot him. Having watched the trial, written a book about the case,  and consulted on another book and film, I have gotten to know George well. He was transparently innocent from day one. Without the corrupting influence of racial groups, he never would have been arrested. (READ MORE: Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cops)

Following his acquittal by an all-female jury, George has had to live his life in the shadows. In 2015, a would-be assassin’s bullet missed him by inches. In 2020, rap mogul Jay-Z put out the equivalent of a fatwa on his life. George lives today under an assumed name. He never stops looking over his shoulder.

It is people like Rushdie who have kept him on edge. Writes Rushdie after watching a BLM rally, “The spirit of Young Trayvon Martin, whose murder by George Zimmerman, and Zimmerman’s disgraceful acquittal, had inspired the movement that became Black Lives Matter, was also in the air.”

If Rushdie knows no more India and Islam than he does about America, he may deserve the enemies he has.

Jack Cashill’s new book — Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6 — is now available for purchase.

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