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Saturday 4 July 2009

‘We have been wimpish about defending our ideas’

Salman Rushdie tells Matthew d’Ancona that the idea at the heart of his new novel set in 16th-century Florence and India is that universal values exist and require robust champions

The corollary of this recognition, he thinks, should be a much more robust defence of the core values that offer the only chance of global co-existence — notably freedom of expression.

‘We have to get thicker-skinned. If we end up going on being this thin-skinned, we’re going to kill each other. So we need to have the ability to hear unpalatable stuff. What would a “respectful” cartoon look like? The form itself requires disrespect — so you either have the form, or you don’t… I think we’re being extremely wimpish at the level of ideas. People must be protected from prejudice against their person. But people cannot be protected from prejudice against their ideas — because otherwise we’re all done.’

And who, exactly, is being ‘wimpish’? Well, for one, ‘the idiotic Archbishop [of Canterbury] who says there can’t be one law for everyone. That slide into cultural relativism is very, very dangerous. This is supposed to be a really intelligent man. Yet that was a schoolboy mistake. How could anybody who knew the history of this country seriously offer the thought that there should not be one law for everyone, that people would not be equal before the law? It seems to me that the basic principles on which any free society is based are freedom of expression and rule of law — that’s it. If you have those, then you have the foundations of a free society and if you don’t have those, you don’t. So to say “we will voluntarily give up one of those pillars” and not to see that it brings the whole house tumbling down is stupid.’

When I interviewed him in 1993, Rushdie warned presciently of the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in Europe. A fortnight after the article appeared, the World Trade Center was attacked for the first time. The novelist’s own situation has, of course, radically improved. But the skies in 2008 are darker.

‘I’m less optimistic, actually. Firstly I think the level of hostility and distrust in the world is much greater than it used to be, mutually. Whether it is Arab newspapers saying that Americans knocked down the Trade Center themselves in order to make possible an attack on the Arabs, or whether it is the reflex bigotry that can happen in the West, I think we are further from each other than we have been for a long time — and we are badly led, we have been very badly led for a very long time. I was talking to my older son last year, and he said he didn’t see this age of violent terrorism ending in his lifetime. I thought, “What a sad idea that is.” I hope he’s wrong — because if not we’ve really screwed up the world for our children.’

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