--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On Friday, a septuagenarian novelist got up to speak in front of a bunch of septuagenarians in New York like he had many times before. There was at least one 24-year-old in the crowd, which wasn't cause for alarm until it was. Renowned author Salman Rushdie was stabbed multiple times at a speaking engagement in western New York state on Friday.
--:-- Robin Wright: I think everyone in the literary world, foreign policy worlds, were absolutely flabbergasted. There'd been a widespread assumption that the fatwa had been settled. It was also an attack that played out at the Chautauqua Institution, which is arguably the most idyllic corner of America.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I asked her how she reacted when she saw the news on Friday that Salman Rushdie had been repeatedly stabbed at a speaking event in New York.
--:-- Robin Wright: I was so glad because of the insults Salman Rushdie had made against our prophet. And the fatwa issued against him finally worked.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a sad chapter in the life of the outspoken writer, author of the controversial novel, The Satanic Verses. No one saw this brutal attack coming, even though for more than 30 years, Iran has had this fatwa declared against Salman Rushdie.
--:-- Robin Wright: But it turns out that 30-year fatwa was never really about Rushdie or his writing at all. It really was a tragic, historic coincidence.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's Incoming on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from the FIFA World Cup, of all things. The FIFA World Cup 26 is coming to North America next summer. It is the ultimate celebration of sports and culture.
--:-- Robin Wright: I've been going to Iran since 1973, almost every year. I covered the monarchy and I covered the revolution and the Iran-Iraq war.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I asked her how she reacted when she saw the news on Friday that Salman Rushdie had been repeatedly stabbed at a speaking event in New York.
--:-- Robin Wright: I think everyone in the literary world, foreign policy worlds, were absolutely flabbergasted. There'd been a widespread assumption that the fatwa had been settled.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a sad chapter in the life of the outspoken writer, author of the controversial novel, The Satanic Verses. No one saw this brutal attack coming, even though for more than 30 years, Iran has had this fatwa declared against Salman Rushdie.
--:-- Robin Wright: But it turns out that 30-year fatwa was never really about Rushdie or his writing at all. It really was a tragic, historic coincidence.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's Incoming on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from the FIFA World Cup, of all things. The FIFA World Cup 26 is coming to North America next summer. It is the ultimate celebration of sports and culture.
--:-- Robin Wright: I've been going to Iran since 1973, almost every year. I covered the monarchy and I covered the revolution and the Iran-Iraq war.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I asked her how she reacted when she saw the news on Friday that Salman Rushdie had been repeatedly stabbed at a speaking event in New York.
--:-- Robin Wright: I think everyone in the literary world, foreign policy worlds, were absolutely flabbergasted. There'd been a widespread assumption that the fatwa had been settled.
--:-- Robin Wright: It was also an attack that played out at the Chautauqua Institution, which is arguably the most idyllic corner of America. I have spoken on that same Chautauqua stage, the amphitheater several times, and thousands of people come to hear discussions of serious issues of our times.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Rushdie was talking about freedom of expression, had a big audience, and that a young man could breach security, run onto the stage. Everything about it was just shocking.
--:-- Robin Wright: Salman Rushdie was born in Mumbai. He was educated in Britain. He started writing, and published books that instantly won wide attention. My favorite is Midnight's Children, which is about the independence of India.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And his fourth book was the one that created the great controversy. It was called The Satanic Verses.
--:-- Robin Wright: It seems to me completely legitimate that there should be dissent from orthodoxy, not just about Islam, but about anything. There were passages in this book that included dreamlike, satirical passages that indicated human weaknesses of the prophet and questioned his credibility as a messenger from God.
--:-- Robin Wright: I think it seems to be very, one of the things that a writer can do is to say, here is the way in which you're told you're supposed to look at the world. But actually, there are also some other ways.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Satanic Verses is actually a difficult book. It's not quite as gripping a read as Midnight's Children. I read it several times and never made it all the way through.
--:-- Robin Wright: But for Muslims, it was considered blasphemous. And so that generated, in October 1988, protests. And governments like India's banned the book altogether.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Iranians didn't do anything for six months. But it wasn't until there were attacks in Pakistan in February 1989 that Ayatollah Khomeini, the revolutionary leader in Iran, began to exploit the outcry in the wider Muslim world and called on all Muslims to kill Rushdie as well as any publishers and any translators of his book anywhere in the world.
--:-- Robin Wright: So do we know if the Ayatollah ever read the Satanic verses?
--:-- Robin Wright: Ayatollah Khomeini's son Ahmed once told me that his father had never read the Satanic verses and even implied that it would have been an insult to suggest that he should read the Satanic verses.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: By word of mouth, a fact was put out there, kind of fake news, and people jumped on it. And Khomeini issued the fatwa to draw attention away from problems at home.
--:-- Robin Wright: The fatwa was totally a political and historical coincidence. The publication of the book in October 1988 intersected with a growing political problem in Iran as it came out of an eight-year war with Iraq, as it faced open divisions within the clergy about their role in power and whether they had failed during the first decade.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Iran at the time faced a sanctioning of basic foodstuffs and fuel. There was a lot of discontent at home, and Khomeini wanted to use this fatwa as a way to refocus attention on other issues when his own government faced serious political and sometimes existential challenges
--:-- Robin Wright: So it really was a tragic, historic coincidence. It might not have happened if the book had come out at another time.
--:-- [Sound effects: A musical theme plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Good job! Job! You got a f***ing fuckwap! I got fatwa! You got fatwa! No!
--:-- Robin Wright: The word fatwa is thrown around a lot. I think there was a whole season of Curb Your Enthusiasm built around how much Larry David liked saying it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I understand you have a new project, something you're working on.
--:-- Robin Wright: Yes, yes. I've written a musical for Broadway. It's called Fatwa. Fatwa. Fatwa.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what is a fatwa?
--:-- Robin Wright: A fatwa is a... A fatwa is issued by a cleric. There have been millions of fatwas over the history of Islam.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are fatwas that have disagreed profoundly with each other, and many Shiite and Sunnis disagree, the clerics disagree over the nature of the fatwas and the type of instructions they give.
--:-- Robin Wright: But Ayatollah Khomeini had tremendous power as the leader of the revolution and the de facto leader of the Iranian state. He had the ultimate voice.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so this fatwa was arguably far more powerful than many other fatwas.
--:-- Robin Wright: He was not just a political or spiritual leader. His word was law, not just to Iranian hardline fundamentalists, but all across the Middle East.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What happened was Khomeini died four months after he issued the fatwa. And Salman Rushdie was still alive.
--:-- Robin Wright: So the fatwa lingered out there and has now for 33 years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's the initial reaction to this declaration, to this order to murder people who work in publishing?
--:-- Robin Wright: It was widely condemned in the West. Needless to say, the British government was particularly concerned and immediately began providing guards for Rushdie because he had to go into hiding, particularly as more and more attacks were coming out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Somewhere in London, no one but Scotland Yard knows exactly where, Rushdie holds up in a series of flats, moving to another location every time Scotland Yard's special branch thinks it prudent that he do so.
--:-- Robin Wright: But it eventually led to Britain breaking off relations with Iran.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There were deep diplomatic consequences. It affected Iran's trade with the international community, its relations as a pariah state for almost another decade.
--:-- Robin Wright: And so it had grave repercussions. And of course, for other people. It had consequences as well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Japanese translator was stabbed to death. Hitoshi Igarashi, an expert on Islam and professor at the University of Tsukuba, was found dead this morning in front of an elevator near his office.
--:-- Robin Wright: He had been stabbed several times. The assailant has still never been caught.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Norwegian publisher was attacked near his home, and the Italian translator was also stabbed.
--:-- Robin Wright: So there have been a lot of consequences for Rushdie, for his publishers, and in the diplomatic world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it sounds like the West on some level came to Rushdie's defense, but were there people who sympathized with the Ayatollah?
--:-- Robin Wright: There were some people who tried to parse the issue by condemning the fatwa, but expressing understanding for the fact that some Muslims may be hurt or offended by passages of the book.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Even Jimmy Carter, whose presidency was destroyed by Ayatollah Khomeini, denounced the book, calling it an insult to the sacred beliefs of our Muslim friends.
--:-- Robin Wright: And meanwhile, what happens to Rushdie in the years after the fatwa was issued?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For nine years, he went underground.
--:-- Robin Wright: After the fatwa was originally deemed to be settled by the British government and by the reformers in the Iranian government, Rushdie reemerged gradually, sometimes with little or no protection.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, he did a cameo on Bridget Jones' diary. It's like a whole theory of short fiction and of the novella.
--:-- Robin Wright: And of course, the problem with Martin's definition of the novella is that it really only applies to him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He became the public face of freedom of expression campaigns around the world. He was a widely sought speaker.
--:-- Robin Wright: He continued to publish books and to go out and promote them and talk about the ideas in them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he became much more accessible. and he lived in New York and acted like anyone in New York does, visible on the street sometimes.
--:-- Robin Wright: And was there a sense through all of this, through cameos and movies and marrying Padma Lakshmi, that maybe this whole fatwa thing was over with?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, what was very interesting was that Khomeini died and a reform movement emerged in Iran.
--:-- Robin Wright: Its emergence was the political crisis that led Khomeini to issue this fatwa.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But nine years later, its proponents had won the presidency, and they wanted to end the tensions over the fatwa.
--:-- Robin Wright: It wanted to renew relations with Britain and other Western countries and deal with the fatwa itself.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so there were talks between the Iranians and the Brits, and they agreed to terms to Restore Relations, which basically centered over lifting the fatwa.
--:-- Robin Wright: And I had breakfast with President Mohammed Khatami, who was the leader of the reform movement, when he came to the United Nations in 1998.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he told me and a small group of journalists over breakfast that we should consider the Salman Rushdie affair completely over.
--:-- Robin Wright: And there was a broad sense in the intelligence communities in the West, and even among many in the Middle East, that the issue had been settled.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The problem is a fatwa lives on forever.
--:-- Robin Wright: And it continued to be a football between Iranian reformers and hardliners.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The current Supreme Leader in 2017 was asked, as one does in a fatwa, whether Khomeini's fatwa was still valid.
--:-- Robin Wright: And in 2017 Ayatollah Kamini said that the imam fatwa is as it was In other words it was still alive
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Again, not much was made of that.
--:-- Robin Wright: But in a very interesting coincidence, or maybe not, five days before the attack on Rushdie, one of the Iranian hardline publications reprinted the fatwa in full.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the timing was very striking.
--:-- [Sound effects: A musical theme plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Rewards. Built Rewards says it lets you earn points on your rent. By paying rent through Built, they say you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, perhaps a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and so much more.
--:-- Robin Wright: Your home isn't just where you sleep, it's your community, and Built wants you to go out and do things in the community.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can eat at your favorite local restaurants, then earn more points.
--:-- Robin Wright: You can get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can enjoy exclusive experiences just for Built members every month.
--:-- Robin Wright: When you're ready to travel, they say Built points can be converted to miles or hotel points all around the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by joining built.com slash explained.
--:-- Robin Wright: That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from Macy's. It's almost fall, and that means it's time to cycle your wardrobe to the cold setting.
--:-- Robin Wright: Because while everyone loves a breezy summer outfit, let's be real, layering is even more fun.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's why Macy's Fall Fashion Guide has everything you need to piece together the perfect look for you.
--:-- Robin Wright: It's your one-stop shop for fall's latest trends and must-haves, curated by their experts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Add a statement shoe to your collection, like the calf hair loafers from Steve Madden.
--:-- Robin Wright: Or tap into your romantic side with flowy dresses from Cece and sheer pieces from INC.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can even throw in some textural layers for contrast, like a faux fur bomber jacket from Karl Lagerfeld Paris.
--:-- Robin Wright: Whether your old favorite sweater or coat is on its last threads, or you're just craving a new vibe to switch things up, Macy's has got you covered this season.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Find the perfect layering pieces for you by exploring the Macy's Fall Fashion Style Guide.
--:-- Robin Wright: Shop in-store or online at macy's.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What is first uttered in the impotence of an overheated apartment becomes the fate of nations.
--:-- Robin Wright: Who has not dreamed this dream of being king for a day?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the imam dreams of more than a day.
--:-- Robin Wright: Feels emanating from his fingertips the arachnid strings with which he will control the movement of history.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained, continuing with Robin Wright, the coverage of Rushdie's attack in the West has been one of shock and outrage.
--:-- Robin Wright: And, you know, this is an abomination of freedom of speech.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How was the news received in Iran?
--:-- Robin Wright: Hardline newspapers responded in outrageous ways to the attack against Rushdie.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They celebrated it. They celebrated Hadi Mattar, the 24-year-old Lebanese born in America who'd carried out this egregious attack.
--:-- Robin Wright: They called him a hero.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I heard the news on the TV and I was so glad because of the insults Salman Rushdie had made against our prophet.
--:-- Robin Wright: And the fatwa issued against him finally worked.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They should know that sooner or later, the right will always overcome.
--:-- Robin Wright: God willing, he pays for what he did.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One of the papers published a picture of Rushdie on a stretcher being carried away from Chautauqua with a headline, Satan on the path to hell.
--:-- Robin Wright: So hardliners celebrated this, and many of the papers are very close to the regime.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The editors are even appointed by the Supreme Leader.
--:-- Robin Wright: The government itself said that it had nothing to do with this attack and that Rushdie had just brought this on himself.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The initial sense is that this may have been a lone wolf attack, even though it was pre-planned and pre-staged.
--:-- Robin Wright: He's a kid who was born in the United States, lived in New Jersey.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He went back to Lebanon to visit one of his parents. They had divorced. in 2018, and he came back much more religious, his mother said, and she had a hard time connecting with him.
--:-- Robin Wright: There are questions about, on the basis of his social media accounts, which were filled with pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini, pictures of General Soleimani, who is the leader of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, whom the United States killed in a drone strike in January 2020.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Pictures of the former military chief of Hezbollah.
--:-- Robin Wright: So from his social media accounts on Twitter, on Facebook, there are indications that he had begun to follow the kind of ideas popular among hardliners.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We don't know what connections he ever made with anyone in Hezbollah or anyone in Iran.
--:-- Robin Wright: We may find that out down the road.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And how is the United States government responding?
--:-- Robin Wright: So the interesting thing about the Rushdie attack is that it intersects with two other points of tension with the United States and with the broader world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The first was the announcement just a few days before Rushdie was attacked by the American Justice Department.
--:-- Robin Wright: Today, the Department of Justice unsealed charging documents revealing an Iranian murder plot against John Bolton, the Trump national security adviser.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There were subsequent reports that other operations involved plots against former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, as well as other officials I know about but who have not gone public.
--:-- Robin Wright: They are all receiving now round-the-clock government protection from threats by Iran and its proxy Hezbollah from Lebanon
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The second crisis is the Iran nuclear deal which was negotiated by the Obama administration and finalized after two years of torturous diplomacy in 2015 and then abruptly abandoned by President Trump in 2018.
--:-- Robin Wright: The Biden administration has been trying to revive it because the Iranians turned around and accelerated their program, and they're now just days away from having produced enough enriched uranium to fuel a bomb, which is a critical step in building, producing, and packaging a nuclear weapon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's no secret that we have the technical capabilities to produce a nuclear bomb, but we do not want it, and we have not decided to do so.
--:-- Robin Wright: And so there's particular urgency.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so after 16 months of broad tensions, The Iranians have said they will give their answer finally now.
--:-- Robin Wright: And so we're at the denouement stage of that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But this all comes together at a time that while Biden prefers diplomacy in the run up to the midterm elections, doing a deal with Iran, given Rushdie, given the murder for hire plots, is going to be very hard politically.
--:-- Robin Wright: And so we're kind of back to the early tensions between the Iran and the United States 43 years ago at the time of the revolution.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this is also a moment where the original revolutionaries are beginning to die out.
--:-- Robin Wright: Khamenei, the supreme leader who's been in power for 30 years, he had prostate cancer a few years ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, the actuarial charts would tell you that time is beginning to run out for him.
--:-- Robin Wright: And the big question with the majority of Iranians now born since the revolution, the majority of voters born since the revolution, and the majority of Iranians really very tech savvy, very much connected to the outside world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, they're on TikTok and social media, and they're not as wedded to the strict religious ideology of the men who carried out the revolution.
--:-- Robin Wright: So the fate of the revolution is also at stake.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's a lot that's playing out in these separate events that are actually linked in terms of the future.
--:-- Robin Wright: So it's not beyond imagination that this attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie, years after people had stopped thinking about this fatwa, could play into some very important, decisive moments in Iran's political history?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And in U.S.-Iran relations, or relations even between the West.
--:-- Robin Wright: Rushdie remains a British citizen as well. He's been knighted by the queen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are a lot of people who have once again condemned Iran in the same way they did at the time the fatwa came out.
--:-- Robin Wright: You know, one of the questions is, is it acceptable? Are people who prefer diplomacy even willing to accept a nuclear deal again with Iran?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is a very tricky moment for President Biden and a tragic moment for Salman Rushdie in terms of his personal life.
--:-- Robin Wright: But it plays out in ways that affect us all.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, it may make some writers rethink how far they're willing to go, how creative they're willing to be.
--:-- Robin Wright: But I think in broad terms, in terms of the history of the moment, there's a real danger that the attack and the events that have played out over the last year and a half with the politics in Iran, the revelation of these death plots against Americans, most of which relate to our killing of General Qasem Soleimani in 2020, that the tensions between Iran and the United States play out in ways that if there isn't diplomacy, if there isn't resolution of our differences, that that leaves military options as the logical alternative.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And frankly, I fear that any war between Iran and the United States, financially involving other players, including Israel and some of our other allies, would be more difficult and more costly with more consequences than either of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
--:-- Robin Wright: And that's a fairly terrifying thought.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Robin Wright is a contributing writer for The New Yorker.
--:-- Robin Wright: She's also a senior fellow at not one, but two Washington think tanks. The U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our show today was produced by Avishay Artsy, mixed by Paul Robert Mounsey, and fact-checked by Laura Bullard with help from Hady Mawajdeh and Victoria Dominguez.
--:-- Robin Wright: The rest of the team at Today Explained includes Halima Shah, Amanda Llewellyn, Miles Bryan, and Victoria Chamberlain.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We had extra help this week from John Ahrens.
--:-- Robin Wright: Our editor is Matthew Collette.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our supervising producer is Amina Alsadi.
--:-- Robin Wright: Afim Shapiro is our director of sound.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My co-host is Noelle King.
--:-- Robin Wright: We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam Hassenfeld.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're on the radio in partnership with WNYC.
--:-- Robin Wright: Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you.
--:-- Robin Wright: We all have moments where we could have done better, like cutting your own hair.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, yikes.
--:-- Robin Wright: Or forgetting sunscreen, so now you look like a tomato.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ouch.
--:-- Robin Wright: Could have done better. Same goes for where you invest.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Level up and invest smarter with Schwab.
--:-- Robin Wright: Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Learn more at schwab.com.
