Salman Rushdie pulls out as commencement speaker at California college over protest threats

California has become woke central, so lots of radicalized lefties.

Um, CMC is known as the most conservative of the “prestigious” liberal arts colleges.

He wrote a book, didn’t apologize and kept truth telling.

Of course he’s hated by the mob.

I’m glad he survived that barbarian attack.

I'd have more sympathy for Rushdie if The Satanic Verses wasn't such a mediocre book. The literary equivalent of the Charlie Hebdo caricatures of the prophet Muhammed. If you're going to put your safety on the line, make it for something that's more than the cultural equivalent of a bag of burning shit on a porch.

I don’t think it’s a great book either, and I don’t hold Rushdie in high esteem as a novelist, but after Midnight’s Children they weren’t going to turn him down.

I’m really proud the UK government stood behind him. I don’t know if that would be the case today. There were minority opinions, like Roald Dahl, who between cheating on wives and being a smug cunt said he opened himself up to these attacks. I disagree. This is not the Middle East. You can write a book or paint about anything you want even if it’s mediocre.

He only has one eye now

[Quote] There were minority opinions, like Roald Dahl, who between cheating on wives and being a smug cunt said he opened himself up to these attacks.

Dahl is an anti semite, so fuck him

Gee, can't imagine why he might be wary of Islam...

R3 is against the right to protest

Commencement speakers are so unnecessary. No one listens to them and they just make the ceremony longer.

R9, are you defining the word protest as putting a hit out on someone because you don't agree with what they wrote?

John le Carré was, strangely, very critical of Rushdie, but, apparently, they had a rapprochement many years later.

He should just have brought Padma with him who could say to the protesters," Please pack your knives and go."

Is there still a fatwa against him??

[quote]In 1998, Iran’s former president Mohammad Khatami said the fatwa was “finished”, but it was never officially lifted and has been reiterated several times, occasionally on the anniversary, by ... Iran’s religious officials.

[quote]On August 12, 2022 at around 10:47 a.m. EDT,[2] an attacker rushed the stage of Chautauqua Institution, where Rushdie was about to give a talk about the United States as a safe haven for exiled writers. The assailant stabbed him fifteen times with a knife, straining to continue the attack even as several people held him back.

[quote]Hadi Matar is a dual national, a citizen of both the U.S. and Lebanon

[quote]...after a 2018 trip to Lebanon to visit his father, Matar had changed, growing increasingly isolated and focused on his Islamic faith.

Should have stayed with Dad, in the country that shares his values.

[quote]Is there still a fatwa against him??

NOPE! That was dropped years ago. That's why it was a surprise he got attached anyways. But some guy that was not even born when he first wrote the book.

[quote] That's why it was a surprise he got attached anyways.

Oh, dear x2.