“Nothing justifies a fatwa, a death sentence”was indignant the chief editor of the newspaper Charlie HebdoSaturday August 13, after the attack on British writer Salman Rushdie. “At the time of writing, we do not know the motivations of the author of the knife attack”, writes Riss, one of the few survivors of the 2015 terrorist attack in Paris, in a post. Before adding, ironically: “Was he revolted against global warming, against the decline in purchasing power or against the ban on watering flowerpots because of the heat wave?“
“Let’s then take the risk of saying that he is probably a believer, that he is just as probably a Muslim and that he committed his act even more probably in the name of the fatwa launched in 1989 by the Ayatollah Khomeini against Salman Rushdie, and condemned him to death”, continues the publication director of the weekly. The founder of the Islamic Republic had asked for the death of the writer that year, after the publication of the novel The Satanic Verse.
“Freedom to think, reflect and express oneself has no value for God and his servantscontinues Riss. And in Islam, whose history has often been written in violence and submission, these values simply have no place because they are so many threats against its hold on people’s minds.
The editor rejects the idea that “the fatwa against Salman Rushdie was all the more revolting because what he had written in his book was absolutely not disrespectful of Islam”. This reasoning, according to him, is of “great perversity because it induces that, conversely, disrespectful remarks towards Islam would justify a fatwa and a punishment, even if it was fatal”. Riss castigates the passage of “little mediocre spiritual leaders, intellectually nil and often culturally ignorant”.
“It will have to be repeated again and again that nothing, absolutely nothing justifies a fatwa, a death sentence, of anyone for anything.”
Riss, editor of the newspaper “Charlie Hebdo”
In January 2015, the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo, in Paris, had been the victim of an Islamist attack which left 12 dead, including the cartoonists Charb, Cabu and Wolinski, after having published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. This attack had aroused worldwide emotion, and Salman Rushdie had then expressed his “solidarity with Charlie Hebdo“.
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