This is really horrible:
"I have now been informed by intelligence sources ... that paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld may be on their way to Jaipur to 'eliminate' me."
-- Salman Rushdie, in a statement. The author has withdrawn from India's biggest literary festival, saying that he feared assassination after influential Muslim clerics protested against his participation.
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Reading something like this really hits home to me that even with all of the problems here in the U.S., we still have that power to write whatever we want and really not fear violent retribution. Written retribution? Definitely. But not fear of lynching, shooting, death, torture, etc? Not so much. Books still get banned, and sometimes they aren't published or widely distributed, but mostly actions are aimed at the books themselves.
ReplyDeleteAnd then I think about the pending election in November and it frightens me to think of how this might change depending on who wins the election. There are a lot of small freedoms that we take for granted here in this country.
You make some very good points here, Maggie.
ReplyDeleteOf course, as you know, Rushdie has been under a death sentence fatwa for many years now but the drama had kind of settled down until this. It's all very troubling indeed.