Rushdie visits UCSB
Sir Salman Rushdie, once
famously targeted for death by ayatollahs in Iran and known for his
iconoclastic views, lectured in UCSB’s Campbell Hall Sunday to laughter and
vigorous applause.
Before a nearly full house in the large auditorium,
Rushdie was introduced by fellow Indian author Pico Iyer.
Despite Iyer’s slighter build, he and Rushdie
resemble one another. Iyer recounted how two women in
a San Francisco hotel last week were looking at him and whispering to each
other that “there’s that famous author, Salman
Rushdie.”
Then Rushdie took the podium and immediately earned a
laugh by saying that he is often mistaken for Iyer.
Rushdie spoke for about an hour, recounting how a fatwa,
a death contract, was issued against him when his novel “The Satanic Verses”
was published. Calling the book “blasphemous against Islam,” Iran’s Ayatollah
Khomeini took to the airwaves on Radio Tehran to issue the fatwa on Feb. 14,
1989. Although the fatwa has receded into the background since then, Rushdie
has said he believes it is still in effect.
While living incognito in England, Rushdie was knighted
by Queen Elizabeth for his services to literature. He has won many literary
prizes and is in the process of finishing a new book for publication.
He urged the audience to be aware
that fundamentalist religions have always opposed public intellectuals and free
speech — and they still do.