'Intifada of the imagination': Salman Rushdie, Shireen Abu Akleh, and the colonial violence of free speech

“Freedom of expression has since its inception been integral to settler colonialism.” — Darcy Leigh

Israel’s colonial forces recently raided offices of prominent Palestinian human rights organisations in the midst of night. Not only were the offices shut down and workers expelled, they sealed doors and proclaimed they were “terrorist” bases.

Of course, this went unnoticed by the Western media, which was still entrenched by the attack on Salman Rushdie the week prior. From war criminals including Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid and Tony Blair, to liberal feminist Margaret Atwood and one of the largest Marxist publications, we were told it was time for all to be defending Rushdie, a ‘martyr’ of free speech.

Rushdie first came to prominence after the release of his second novel, Midnight’s Children, which was considered one of the 21st century’s most celebrated literary works. He was a voice of dissent; from his support for the Palestinian cause to his anti-racism in Thatcherite Britain, which he noted needing to be purified from the “filth of imperialism”.

Certainly not considered a hero of free expression then, he was constantly ridiculed in the media and dismissed as a radical. It was only when his political persuasion shifted, countering previous support for struggles against colonialism and racism, that he rose to such a title.

"It begs the question—especially by those Iraqis, Afghans, Palestinians, Yugoslavs, Lebanese, Arabs and Muslims who he supported invasions and occupations against— to what cause, exactly, is Rushdie a martyr to?"

After being subject to the 1989 fatwa issued by Iran’s Ruhollah Khomeini following the release of his book The Satanic Verses, which was dismissed as an anti-Islam polemic, Rushdie was forced into years of hiding.

Rushdie would emerge as the West’s latest intellectual in propagating orientalist, colonial fantasies. He would go on to support US imperial interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his infamous post-9/11 New York Times piece, ‘Yes, It’s About Islam’, he wrote that the “world of Islam” could only attain “freedom” through adoption of “secularist-humanist principles of which the modern is based”. The “Orientals,” we were told by Rushdie, could not be liberated by their own will but rather needed to be liberated.

Rushdie became a celebrity, though his dalliances were not limited to Hollywood stars but also war criminals such as Shimon Peres and Tony Blair, who were responsible for the murder of thousands.

Today, Rushdie continues to repeat one of the oldest orientalist mantras, reducing violent settler colonialism in Palestine to merely an “old quarrel” between Jews and Arabs.

The controversy surrounding ‘The Satanic Verses’ and the polemical Iranian fatwa have generated episodes of deadly violence over the decades.
@KZiabari explores Iran’s the complex legacy surrounding the Salman Rushdie affair https://t.co/zNZ4XbzC92

— The New Arab (@The_NewArab) August 18, 2022

It begs the question—especially by those Iraqis, Afghans, Palestinians, Yugoslavs, Lebanese, Arabs and Muslims who he supported invasions and occupations against— to what cause, exactly, is Rushdie a martyr to?

On the colonised, the Fanonian maxim goes, “We revolt, simply because we want to breathe.”

The four-fifths of humanity which Fanon writes as living under the yoke of imperialism, their concept of “freedom of expression” is about a struggle that cannot be divorced from its relation to land—a completely unrecognised phenomenon in the liberal definition of free speech.

Whilst Rushdie may have lived on, those around the world fighting for a world in which they are allowed to breathe, such as Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian American journalist who was murdered by Israeli colonial forces, did not receive similar eulogisations as a martyr of free speech.

The entire world has seen the scenes of torture in Abu Ghraib—where Iraqis were hurled around on leashes during the invasion Rushdie championed. Yet, we are told by the so-called Western ‘left’ that “people have an understandable will to celebrate Rushdie”. How easily we see principles of anti-racism, anti-war, and the lives of the colonised are cast aside whenever the liberal lamentation of free speech is on the table.

In 1994, Edward Said hastily lionised Rushdie as “intifada of the imagination”. Today, we also see progressive voices disingenuously revive and reapply that title to Rushdie —a token orientalist celebrity, Zionist and right-wing zealot—ideologies of which Said dedicated his life fighting against, and which he was not around to witness the full fruition of in his former friend.

Intifada, a sacred word in the Arabic language, cannot be divorced from its relation to the colonial condition; denoting a complete rejection of colonial subservience and an embrace of revolution.

Rather, it is Shireen Abu Akleh who is today’s “intifada of the imagination”. Even in death, Shireen Abu Akleh was degraded, when Israeli bullets shot at her casket during her funeral, and the cause of her death, to this day, is pathetically contested.

"Whilst the progressive sees it appropriate to debate whether Rushdie’s past should be celebrated, the colonised already banished him to the dustbin of history long ago"

This is echoed in the words of revolutionary Palestinian poet and writer Mohamed El-Kurd, who writes “What is a fact in Arabic, is debatable in English”.

The same can be applied to the Rushdie situation today, where, rather than taking a view from the lived experiences of the colonised, the progressive joins the ranks of their supposed enemy in praising a man who was complicit in justifying the murder of millions. Whilst the progressive sees it appropriate to debate whether Rushdie’s past should be celebrated, the colonised already banished him to the dustbin of history long ago.

On this phenomenon, Fanon continues that the European peoples “must wake up and shake themselves and stop playing the stupid game of the Sleeping Beauty”—that those in the imperial core, especially the progressive, must first realise and reject such colonial chauvinism, if we are to reach a more liberated world.

Shireen Abu Akleh noted “perhaps it is not easy to change reality, but at least I was able to convey its voice to the world”. The contrast is clear: the colonised fight for freedom and are murdered for attempting to merely convey reality, whilst the West labels the epitome of freedom in being able to vilify, in the most befouling of ways, the religion of more that one billion adherents within the domain of ‘literature’, whilst also directly appeasing colonial, orientalist representations of Muslims and Arabs.

We must recognise the hypocrisy of media proliferation where colonial questions are concerned, and deeply examine for what cause is true “freedom of expression”.

Today, it is Shireen Abu Akleh who is the intifada of the imagination. It is the Palestinian civil rights groups; it is Ahmad Manasra, a Palestinian child detained by Israel’s colonial system since the age of fourteen; it is Khalil Awadeh, who resisted detention with one of the longest hunger strikes in history. It is Salma Al-Shehab, the Saudi student and mother, who was sentenced to thirty-four years in prison merely for showing support of women’s rights. It is the Black and African freedom fighters imprisoned in colonial jails for fighting for liberation.

It is they, as Fanon concludes, in their struggles to breathe, who will set afoot a new human being.

Rida Jawad is an Iraqi writer. His research interests focus on examining political economy and role of imperialism in the Arab region, as well as exploring anti-colonial resistance movements in the wider regions of Asia and Africa, be that through art, literature, film, law, or militancy. 

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.