Memory

[karen2205]

I intended posting this a couple of weeks ago; I vaguely remember the death threat made against Salman Rushdie in 1988 after he published The Satanic Verses. I was 7 in 1988. Everything was very simple back then, what he said might have been rude, but that's no excuse to threaten to kill someone. I wonder how much that early experience contributed to my libertarian-ness?

Comments

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

I don't think you have to be a libertarian to think people ought not to be killed for expressing opinions!

Did you read Hanif Kureishi's "The Black Album", which uses the Rushdie fatwa as a hinge in the story of a young British Asian boy at a rather tatty inner-city college? One of the best bits of hay made of the whole thing.