Satan’s Child

Its almost 35 years since Rushdie’s book The Satainc Verses was published, and a fatwa was issued against him.
His assassin wasn’t even born then. Hadi Matar is only 24. (I’d like to say “would-be assassin”, but it doesn’t look good for Salman right now.)

.I remember reading a novel around that time, I think it was Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, about the riots which ensued in the UK over the book. Sez one towelhead to another: “You are insane if you don’t realize that this is our moment.”
Oh, it was! Cue the rise of Al Quaeda and the devastation of 9/11.

Rushdie was given sanctuary in the home of the late lamented Christopher Hitchens, in n act of extreme personal courage. Hitchens wrote the book God is Not Great, a scornful refutation of the “Allahu akbar!” yell which we all knew would probably be the last sound we’d ever hear.

But…35 years!

I read sump’n interesting about Chautauqua, the name of the annual summer festival, kinda a Christian intellectual retreat, the praying man’s Burning Man, where this stabbing happened. Recently it was taken over by a Rev. Ms. Joan Campbell. I dk if she is a Methodist, like the founders of Chtauqua and of the mobile Chautauquas around the country, designed to elevate and enlighten the masses, but she decided a couple years ago that the festival should be more “interfaith”, and lamented the lack of a “Muslim presence”.

Welp, Holy Joan, you’ve got one now. Howja like it?

And little Hadi! What was he told, what did he hear, as a mere toddler growing up in New Jersey, to cause him to decide to make the Ayatollah Komeni’s fatwa dream come true?

S’like the Good Book sez (somewhere):

“The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”