Tag Archives: rushdie

Indo-British author Salman Rushdie has slammed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s failure to condemn a spate of attacks on free speech, saying it is giving rise to “thuggish violence” in the country. Rushdie said in a television interview the Hindu nationalist prime minister’s silence over a rise in attacks on …

The world’s biggest book fair opens in Frankfurt this week under a cloud of controversy with Iran calling on all Muslim nations to boycott the exhibition because Indo-British author Salman Rushdie has been invited to speak. Organisers defended the choice, saying freedom of expression was a key theme at this …

British author Salman Rushdie’s first novel in seven years will be released in September. The title, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, is a reference to the collection of folk tales known as the Arabian Nights. It ‘blends history, mythology and a timeless love story to bring alive a …

Mumbai-born British author Salman Rushdie is to share the 2014 PEN Pinter Prize celebrating freedom of speech with a jailed Syrian journalist, lawyer and human rights activist, it was announced Friday, the same day that an Indian children's rights campaigner and a teenage Pakistani education activist were declared co-winners of this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

Rushdie named Mazen Darwish as the international recipient of the Prize he won back in the summer.

The PEN Pinter Prize - named after author and Nobel Literature Prize-winning British playwright Harold Pinter and awarded by the literary - is awarded annually to a British writer who champions free speech and is then shared with an 'International Writer of Courage' who has been persecuted for speaking out about his beliefs.

Darwish was the director of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression when he was arrested in February 2012 along with two colleagues.

The three have been charged with “publicizing terrorist acts.”

Rushdie said Darwish “courageously fought for civilized values — free expression, human rights — in one of the most dangerous places in the world.”

He said he hoped the prize would bolster calls for Darwish to be released.

In a statement read out at a ceremony at the British Library this week, Mr. Darwish referred to the fatwa issued against Mr. Rushdie in response to his novel “The Satanic Verses,” which led to the author spending years in hiding.

“Although we may have deeply disagreed with your views, we committed an unforgivable sin in the Arab world when we responded with indifference to the fatwas and calls for your death,” he said.

The violence in Syria is partly a result of that “collusion,” Mr. Darwish’s statement continued.

“What a shame this much blood has had to be spilled for us to realize, finally, that we are digging our own graves when we allow thought to be crushed by accusations of unbelief, calling people infidels, and when we allow opinion to be countered with violence,” he said.

“The disastrous consequences of this are clearly evident today across the Arab world, and especially in Syria, my country, where the ugliest forms of fascism and the dirtiest kinds of barbarism are practiced in the name of both patriotism and Islam in equal measure.”

Rushdie condemned Mr Darwish's imprisonment as "arbitrary and unjust" and warned of a "new age of religious mayhem and of the language that conjures it up and justifies it".

He attacked the "hate-filled religious rhetoric" that is influencing scores of young British Muslims to join what he called the "barbarians of ISIS". 

The language of religion, said Rushdie, “has been horribly mangled in our time”, by Christian extremists in America and by Hindu extremists in India, “but the overwhelming weight of the problem lies in the world of Islam, and much of it has its roots in the ideological language of blood and war emanating from the Salafist movement within Islam, globally backed by Saudi Arabia”.

Author Salman Rushdie has been awarded this year’s PEN/Pinter Prize in recognition of his support for freedom of speech and generosity towards other writers, the prize judges said on Friday. The prize, awarded by the British branch of the worldwide writers’ association, is named for the late playwright Harold Pinter, …

India will have a “bully” of a government if Narendra Modi is elected as Prime Minister, Booker-prize winning author Salman Rushdie has claimed. “I am pretty concerned about a Modi-run government.  The indications that it would be a fairly bullying government are already there.  We have already seen journalists and …

Prince Charles refused to support Sir Salman Rushdie during the British-Indian author’s fatwa because the heir to the throne believed Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses’ was offensive to Muslims, author Martin Amis claims. Amis – the best-selling author of ‘Money’ and ‘London Fields’ and a close friend of Rushdie – told …

A senior cleric in Iran has revived a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, a quarter century after the order was first issued over the author’s “blasphemous” novel ‘The Satanic Verses. Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami – a member of Iran’s “Assembly of Experts”, which is charged with electing and supervising the country’s leader …

Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie has revealed he was inspired to write more novels after he was forced into hiding by Islamic extremists more than a quarter century ago. Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival over the weekend, Rushdie said that the fatwa issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini over …

Author Sir Salman Rushdie has accused the chief minister of India’s West Bengal state of stopping his visit to Calcutta earlier this week. “The simple fact is the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee ordered the police to block my arrival,” he tweeted. Sir Salman was due to promote the Midnight’s Children …