Rushdie’s attacker: a warrior for cancel culture

Hadi Matar, who has been sentenced to 25 years in jail for attempting to murder Sir Salman Rushdie, says he acted alone. His family say that, in the run-up to the savage August 2022 knife attack that left the British Indian author blind in one eye and without the use of a hand, Matar had become ‘increasingly isolated’.

No doubt nobody told Matar to try to murder Rushdie, or assisted him in stabbing the author of The Satanic Verses 15 times on stage in New York. He alone is responsible for that attack.

But the Islamist knifeman’s own statements suggest that he was motivated by a hatred of free speech that is shared by many among the West’s woke elites today. When it comes to believing that people should be punished for using ‘insulting’ words, and particularly for criticising Islam, Matar is far from alone. In trying to murder Rushdie, he effectively acted as the armed, extremist wing of Western cancel culture.

Matar did not give evidence in his February trial, where he was found guilty of attempted murder and assault. Before being sentenced last week, however, the assailant stood and made a revealing statement to the court.

Matar said he supports free speech, but also believes in a ‘difference between attacking things that are sacred, and freedom and speech’. He said he values respect, whereas: ‘Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people. He wants to be a bully, he wants to bully other people. I don’t agree with that.’

Sound familiar? Matar’s message was basically, ‘I believe in free speech, but…’ – the cri de coeur of just about every Anglo-American liberal in our censorious times. The ‘buts’ he wants to attach to restrict free speech include words that ‘disrespect’ and ‘insult’ others – otherwise known as ‘offensive’ and ‘hateful’ speech, key leftist excuses for censorship.

And the central distinction this Islamist wanted to impose at knifepoint was apparently between freedom of speech and ‘attacking things that are sacred’ to him. He would find plenty of agreement with that among those, from the UK Labour government downwards, who are effectively pushing to introduce new blasphemy laws to protect Islam from legitimate criticism they deem ‘Islamophobic’.

In his slurs against Rushdie as a ‘bully’, the attempted murderer himself sounds like a violent example of what Julie Burchill brilliantly characterises as a ‘crybully’ – those who claim victimhood on the basis of their identity, in order to justify attacking, silencing or even trying to kill those whose views they don’t like.

There is a long history here with Rushdie of course, who has been under threat of death since Iran’s supreme leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for Sir Salman’s execution after the publication of his novel, The Satanic Verses, in 1988. Matar had previously said about the author, in a 2022 New York Post story: ‘I don’t think he’s a very good person. He’s someone who attacked Islam.’ He praised Khomeini for demanding Rushdie’s head for writing a book based on the life of the Prophet Muhammad.

Of course, most left-liberal luvvies of the Western cultural elites did not actually endorse the fatwa. But neither did they rally to the defence of Rushdie and freedom of speech. Instead, they tutted about the ‘offensive’ content of his novel. The long-term abandonment of Rushdie is one of the worst examples of moral cowardice and political betrayal in modern cultural history. Perhaps it was no wonder that, almost 35 years after the Rushdie affair, a crazed Islamist could imagine he was doing the right thing by stabbing the author on stage.

The sentencing judge, David Foley, at least seemed to grasp the wider significance of the case for freedom of speech. He said it was no coincidence that Matar had tried to kill Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institution, a summer retreat that prides itself on the free exchange of ideas. ‘We all have the right to have our own ideals; we all have the right to carry them’, Foley said. ‘But when you interfere with someone else’s ability to do that by committing a violent act, in the United States of America, that has to be an answerable crime.’

We might also recall that the only thing Matar said during his trial, in words aimed at the watching media as he entered the court, was ‘Free Palestine’ – another familiar obsession of Western liberals. The bizarre suggestion that trying to kill a liberal, British Indian novelist in America had something to do with opposing Israel captures the toxic cocktail of anti-Western sentiments that unite Islamists and leftists today.

As public confirmation of this unholy alliance, shortly after Matar was jailed for trying to murder Rushdie, student protesters in California prompted him to pull out of his planned keynote speech at Claremont McKenna College’s commencement ceremony. His crime? Criticising pro-Palestinian US campus protests for not taking a stand against Hamas. ‘I feel that there’s not a lot of deep thought happening’, Rushdie told German broadcaster RBB last year about the demonstrations. ‘There’s an emotional reaction to the death in Gaza, and that’s absolutely right. But when it slides over towards anti-Semitism and sometimes to actual support of Hamas, then it’s very problematic.’ The student protesters effectively agreed with the Islamist would-be assassin that Rushdie should not be allowed a platform for such ‘insulting’ opinions.

Back in 1989, when the protests against Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses erupted in Britain and worldwide, I wrote an editorial in the now long-deceased Living Marxism magazine, entitled ‘Defend the right to be offensive’. Some 35 years later, the Rushdie case should remind us that it has never been more important to take a stand for unfettered free speech, with no buts.

Mick Hume is the editor-in-chief of europeanconservative.com and a visiting fellow at MCC. He worked in communications for Reform UK during the 2024 General Election campaign.