This article originally appeared in Culture Wars magazine – republished with permission of the author.
On Friday, August 12, a 24-year-old New Jersey resident by the name of Hadi Matar stormed the stage in western New York where the Anglo-Indian author Salman Rushdie was scheduled to speak and stabbed him 15 times before he was subdued by a security guard and members of the audience.1
The assault was immediately labeled “an assault on freedom of thought and speech”2 and Rushdie was praised as “an inspirational defender of persecuted writers and journalists across the world.”3
Missing from news accounts was the role which Rushdie played as an agent provocateur in a campaign designed to provoke violent responses from the Islamic world, which would be then turned around to demonize that Islamic world.
No one would know who Salman Rushdie was if he hadn’t written The Satanic Verses as the inauguration of an ongoing assault on Muslim culture which has continued to this day and has been revived by Matar’s assault for further weaponization.
The Satanic Verses paved the way for the Danish cartoon crisis which unfolded on September 30, 2005, after the Danish periodical Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons ridiculing the prophet Muhammad.4
Then as now the assault on Islamic sensibilities was justified in the name of “freedom of thought and speech.” But in the light of subsequent events it became clear that the point of these intentionally reckless and provocative acts was the Islamic reaction, which included protests around the world, “including violence and riots in some Muslim countries.”5
In September 2012, the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, aping Jyllands-Posten, published a series of cartoons which were deliberately calculated to offend the sensibilities of Muslims, including a cartoon which “depicted Muhammad as a nude man on all fours with a star covering his anus.”6
What followed was so predictable that one had to conclude that provoking violent reaction was part of the plan from the beginning. On January 7, 2015, two Muslim gunmen forced their way into the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo and opened fire, killing twelve staff members and wounding 11. During the attack, the gunmen shouted Allahu Akbar and “The Prophet is avenged.” Eager to cash in on the unprecedented publicity the attack afforded them, the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo upped the print run for the following week’s edition from 60,000 to one million, then to three million, and then to five million copies.
Eventually, every European head of state showed up at a march sporting “Je suis Charlie” buttons celebrating what was a deliberate attempt to provoke violence for political ends.
Since then, ridicule of Islamic culture has become institutionalized not only in journalistic outlets but on Internet platforms like Twitter, whose seemingly innocent entry #hijab is actually a portal to hardcore pornography depicting women wearing the hijab but otherwise naked engaging in various forms of perverted sexual activity. Twitter also has an entry #Mitpachat, which is the name for the orthodox Jewish head covering for women that is equivalent to the hijab, but no porn is allowed on this site.
As anyone familiar with the Israelis’ use of pornography against Palestinians in Ramallah in 2004 already knows, pornography is a weapon which, like blasphemous cartoons, is itself a form of violence and often creates violence.
Journalism played a crucial role in this psychological warfare campaign against Islam. Nothing epitomized the wretched state of journalism in the U.K. and the U.S. better than the recent article by Stephen Pollard in the Telegraph condemning the stabbing of Salman Rushdie. “Stephen Pollard,” according to one observer, “is a rabid Zionist, an unprincipled propagandist and liar,” but nevertheless in good standing with the British media and Establishment, despite the many rulings against the Jewish Chronicle, which he edits. Pollard has written for all of Britain’s mainstream media outlets, including the Evening Standard, the Daily Express, The Times, the Daily Mail, The Independent, and the Sunday Telegraph in spite of the risk of libel suits against any newspaper which hires him as a writer.
In September 2010, the Spectator had to pay damages and costs to the organizers of the Islam Expo resulting from a defamation case involving a blog post written by Pollard and published in July 2008.
During his tenure as editor of the Jewish Chronicle, the Press Complaints Commission handed down 14 rulings against the paper forcing it to pay damages for libel on several occasions throughout his tenure. The effect those damages had on the paper’s bottom line became apparent in April 2020 when the Jewish Chronicle announced that it was going into voluntary liquidation despite a planned merger with the Jewish News because of Pollard’s reckless disregard of the truth. In spite of this dismal journalistic track record, Pollard is still the go to guy when the mainstream media want opinions on topics vital to Jewish interests, which is how he sees the Rushdie affair.
Pollard claims that “Tehran never rescinded the fatwa against Sir Salman Rushdie” because “it’s incapable of change.”7 Pollard ends his article by claiming that “the fatwa on Sir Salman Rushdie is not an aberration. It is how this monstrous criminal regime operates.”8
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken claimed that Iran had been inciting violence, ignoring the fact that the Iranian government denied any involvement with the man who attempted to kill Rushdie.9 The same government spokesman who denied any involvement between Iran and Matar added that “Freedom of speech does not justify Salman Rushdie’s insults on religion.” The fatwa has never formally been rescinded.
As someone who has earned his living by writing for over 40 years, I can sincerely say that no writer should be condemned to death in absentia for something that he has written. As a writer, I am against fatwas of this sort, but I mean all fatwas even if they do not go by that name.
This includes Jewish fatwas of the sort issued by Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which have been given carte blanche to confer the equivalent of the death sentence on anyone by denouncing their enemies as Nazis and anti-Semites.
This is precisely what happened to the Canadian trucker protest when Ya’ara Sachs, a member of the Canadian parliament, told the world that “Honk Honk” equals “Heil Hitler.” As soon as she stripped the truckers of their real identity, Finance Minister Christia Freeland was able to freeze their bank accounts in an act of violence that was more effective in silencing freedom of speech than anything that Hadi Matar did to Sir Salman.
In an incident eerily reminiscent of Matar’s attack on Rushdie, the SPLC, another Jewish domestic terrorist organization, issued a fatwa on the Family Research Council in Washington by placing that organization on its “hate map” because of its opposition to gay rights.
Inspired by the SPLC’s fatwa, Floyd Lee Corkins walked into the Family Research Council’s (FRC) headquarters on August 15, 2012 and opened fire on the staff. Corkins eventually “pleaded guilty to three charges, including a charge of committing an act of terrorism” after telling the FBI that “he wanted to kill anti-gay targets and went to the [Southern Poverty] law center’s website for ideas.”10 Faced with this evidence, FRC’s director Tony Perkins demanded that the SPLC “take responsibility for the shooting and take down their hate map.” Corkins, according to Perkins “had been given a license to perpetrate this act of violence by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center which has systematically and recklessly labeled every organization with which they disagree as a ‘hate group.’” Perkins’ comments, however, had no impact on the SPLC or their “hate map,” which still exists and still refers to the FRC as a hate group.11
Five years later, James Hodgkinson opened fire on a group of Republican Congressmen who were practicing for a charity baseball game, wounding then U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, U.S. Capital police officer Crystal Griner, congressional aide Zack Barth, and lobbyist Matt Mika.12 According to a report by the Washington Examiner, “The shooter blamed for Wednesday’s bloody attack on a Republican congressional baseball team shared a tie with the 2012 gunman who attacked the conservative Family Research Council in Washington. Both were fans of the Southern Poverty Law Center.”13 When asked how he got the idea of shooting Republican Congressmen, Hodgkinson told the FBI, “The Southern Poverty Law [Center] lists anti-gay groups…”. After finding the SPLC’s hate map on line, Hodgkinson also “liked” the SPLC on his Facebook page.
So what constitutes a “monstrous criminal regime”? Is a regime monstrous because it issues fatwas? Or because it carries them out without announcing them? As I said, I am against fatwas, but on the other hand, I recognize that the fatwa is a warning in advance, which is more that General Qassem Soleimani got when the United States murdered him in a drone attack in Baghdad on January 3, 2020. If Donald Trump had issued a fatwa against General Soleimani, Soleimani might still be alive today. Instead, he was lured to Baghdad under the false pretense that he was taking part in a peace mission.
Similarly, Israel routinely murders Iranian nuclear scientists, but it never issues fatwas as a warning that they have been targeted.
Between 2010 and 2012, Israel assassinated Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Razaeinejad, and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, all of whom were Iranian nuclear scientists. On November 27, 2020, the Israeli government assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh “in a road ambush using an innovative autonomous satellite-operated gun,” according to the BBC, which invariably focused on the James Bond-like technological gadgets the Israelis use to eliminate anyone they don’t like, rather than the suffering and death of their victims.14
Similarly, American politicians who were recipients of money from the Israel lobby, praised the killings. “Former speaker of House Newt Gingrich supported ‘taking out [Iranian] scientists,’ and presidential candidate Rick Santorum called the killings ‘a wonderful thing.’”15
The only difference between Israel and the “monstrous criminal regime” in Iran is that Iran warns you that you’ve been targeted. If the Israelis had issued a fatwa against Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American reporter for Al Jazeera who was covering a gun battle in Gaza, she might have stayed in her office that day. Instead, she was killed by an Israeli sniper, in what the Israelis claimed was an accident. The Palestinians, for their part, claim that Shireen was targeted deliberately as she tried to flee.
Pollard is a professional liar. Pollard’s article is full of lies, but even liars have a way of telling the truth in spite of themselves. Thanks to Pollard’s article we now know that the real point of the attack on Rushdie is the looming revival of the nuclear agreement with Iran. Pollard sets the stage for this revelation by creating a chronology of events:
On Monday, the EU put forward what it described as the “final” proposed text of a revived nuclear deal with Iran, a deal which has been under negotiation in Vienna since the arrival of Joe Biden in the Oval Office. On Friday morning, the Iranian state news agency reported that the EU’s proposed text “can be acceptable if it provides assurances” to Tehran over its key demands, quoting a senior Iranian diplomat.
Then he makes this remarkable statement:
The timing could hardly have been more instructive. Within hours of that report, Sir Salman Rushdie had been brutally attacked by a knife-wielding assailant.16
Pollard’s statement is capable of being interpreted in two ways: one obvious, the other absurd. If he is telling us that the Iranians deliberately sabotaged their own nuclear agreement, the idea is absurd. If he is telling us that he has insider knowledge of Israeli intelligence, that is completely plausible, which means it is also plausible to claim that the Israelis played a role in when the attack happened, as one more attempt at sabotaging peace with Iran.
This is precisely what Mohammad Marandi, one of the Iranian officials negotiating the new version of the JCPOA claimed when he reacted to the news of the attack on Rushdie.17 “I won’t be shedding tears for a writer who spouts endless hatred & contempt for Muslims & Islam. A pawn of empire who poses as a Postcolonial novelist,” Marandi tweeted, “But, isn’t it odd that as we near a potential nuclear deal, the US makes claims about a hit on Bolton… and then this happens?”18 Timing played a crucial role in Fahkrizadeh’s assassination as well. According to Robert Malley, who served as an advisor to President Barack Obama on Iran, the assassination of Mohsen Fahkrizadeh “was deliberately timed in order to make Biden’s attempts to negotiate with Iran more difficult.”19
Matar is now in custody, and according to Nathaniel Barone, his public defender, is “very cooperative.”20
If so, Mr. Barone should ask his client if anyone contacted him after he posted his pictures on Facebook and encouraged him. Then Mr. Barone should ask the FBI if they knew about Matar’s Facebook page. If they didn’t, then why are we paying them to spy on people they deem to be potential terrorists? If they did, what was the follow up on what they discovered? Did they contact Matar?
The FBI has a well-earned reputation as the main promoter of domestic terrorism through its notorious entrapment schemes which place weapons in the hands of people who otherwise would never have gone beyond hot air and crazy talk. Their collaboration with Dana Nessel, Michigan’s Jewish lesbian attorney general, who claimed she exposed with FBI help a plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, blew up in their face. This failed plot is an indication that the first thing Mr. Barone should do after talking to his client is subpoena FBI records. Merrick Garland’s raid on President Trump’s home in Mar a Largo is only the latest instance of Jewish meddling in American politics.
For decades now, Americans have allowed the Jews to drag them into one war after another, all of which were fought with Israel’s interests in mind. The Israelis and their Jewish supporters are eager to hold America’s coat while we beat up Israel’s enemies. Now, thanks to Stephen Pollard, we can see how the attack on Salman Rushdie fits into that pattern and act accordingly.
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(Endnotes)
1 Carolyn Thompson and Hillel Italie, “Agent: Rushdie off ventilator and talking, day after attack,” Aug. 13, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/salman-rushdie-on-ventilator-after-new-york-stabbing-5ea54212d71b95569ed85df7b0fb5fea
2 Joshua Goodman, “Author Salman Rushdie stabbed on lecture stage in New York,” Aug. 13, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/salman-rushdie-attacked-9eae99aea82cb0d39628851ecd42227a
3 https://apnews.com/article/salman-rushdie-attacked-9eae99aea82cb0d39628851ecd42227a
4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy
5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy
6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo#2012_cartoons_depicting_Muhammad
7 Stephen Pollard, “Naïve Westerners still refuse to accept the truth about Iran’s evil regime,” The Telegraph, Aug. 13, 2022, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/13/naive-westerners-still-refuse-accept-truth-irans-evil-regime/
8 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/13/naive-westerners-still-refuse-accept-truth-irans-evil-regime/
9 https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/FMfcgzGqPzDqZlHpGNWHtdPplVThjnGf?projector=1
10 Paul Bedard, “Southern Poverty Law Center website triggered FRC shooting,” Washington Examiner, Feb. 06, 2013, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/southern-poverty-law-center-website-triggered-frc-shooting
11 https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/southern-poverty-law-center-website-triggered-frc-shooting
12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shooting
13 Paul Bedard, “Support for Souther’ Poverty Law Center links Scalise, Family Research Council shooters,” Washington Examiner, June 14, 2017, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/support-for-southern-poverty-law-center-links-scalise-family-research-council-shooters
14 Frank Gardner, “Mohsen Fakhrizadeh: Iran scientist ‘killed by remote-controlled weapon,’” Nov. 30, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55128970
15 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55128970
16 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/13/naive-westerners-still-refuse-accept-truth-irans-evil-regime/
17 Journalist ID: 1316 (@IrnaEnglish), “Mirandi: Claims on Bolton assassination, Rushdie attack before nuclear agreement odd news,” Islamic Republic News Agency, Aug. 13, 2022, https://en.irna.ir/news/84851460/Marandi-Claims-on-Bolton-assassination-Rushdie-attack-before
18 https://en.irna.ir/news/84851460/Marandi-Claims-on-Bolton-assassination-Rushdie-attack-before
19 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohsen_Fakhrizadeh
20 Paul P. Murphy, Aya Elamroussi, Nicki Brown, Samantha Beech, Liam Reilly and Ray Sanchez, CNN, “Suspect in Salman Rushdie attack pleads not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and assault charges, attorney says,” CNN, Aug. 14, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/13/us/salman-rushdie-attacked-saturday/index.html
