Outgrowing the Past, or Not

Outgrowing the Past, or Not

Rushdie is recovering.

Police identified his attacker as Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey.

“The Satanic Verses” stimulated death threats after it was published in 1988, with many Muslims regarding as blasphemy a dream sequence based on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, among other objections. In that sequence, the Prophet was depicted as considering a sort of polytheism, then rejecting it. Rushdie’s book had already been banned and burned in India, Pakistan and elsewhere before Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death in 1989.

That means that the fatwa is older than the attacker.

And the past has a legacy.