When the satanic verses Salman Rushdie in 1988. The Arab world was marked by the end of the war between Iran and Iraq, the defeat of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan and the first Palestinian intifada. In this convulsive scenario, a fatwa or statement issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, On February 14, 1989, the assassination of Rushdie caused a controversy. Saudi Arabia organized in March 1989 a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, during which king fahd He called for tolerance.
Al-Azhar University (Cairo) rejected the Iranian fatwa, arguing that any death sentence must be passed by a court. For their part, a large number of intellectuals and activists from the Muslim world then expressed their solidarity with him. At the initiative of writers and artists, on March 24, 1989, a petition was published in the Lebanese daily As-Safir “in defense of the writer’s right to life.”
The reaction to the attack on the writer on August 13 is somewhat different from that of 1989. In Iran, some citizens praise the brutal stabbing, others say it hurt free speech, and several senior officials say it was a plot to derail negotiations with Washington. on the nuclear issue.
As in 1989, Saudi Arabia and other leaders are seeking to prevent Iran from presenting itself as the main protector of the Muslim world. At the same time, the Arab media of the Gulf countries and the Maghreb soberly covered the attack, publishing news from international agencies without further comment.
The Al-Arabiya network explicitly mentions the Lebanese origin of the aggressor Hadi Matar, who, in his social media accounts, declared closeness to Shiite extremism and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. In India, conservative Muslim groups have decided not to speak out about the attack on Rushdie for fear of reprisals from the ruling Hindu fundamentalist party.
The attack on Salman Rushdie, 33 years after Khomeini’s fatwa, comes as the popular uprisings that erupted in 2011 have waned and intensified the power struggle in the region; the end of Palestinian hope in the face of Israeli advances and the decline of international solidarity; multipolar international system and the fragmentation of global governance.
The return of Russia and the assertion of China place enormous weight on a multilateral system that is faltering in its normative foundations and its workability. The dilemma and emphasis is the same today as it was in 1989: the societies of the region are caught between the sword of the old state demons and the wall of bigotry.
MARTHA TAVIL
* El Colmex Explorer
Source: Heraldo De Mexico
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