Salman Rushdie is living proof of the importance of free speech – Scotsman comment

Edinburgh International Book Festival has done well to secure the involvement of one of the most important writers and thinkers of our time
Scotsman comment
By Scotsman comment
Published 16th Apr 2024, 04:55 BST
Salman Rushdie has expressed concern about the growing acceptance of restrictions on freedom of speech (Picture: Ilya S Savenok/Getty Images for The Center for Fiction)Salman Rushdie has expressed concern about the growing acceptance of restrictions on freedom of speech (Picture: Ilya S Savenok/Getty Images for The Center for Fiction)
Salman Rushdie has expressed concern about the growing acceptance of restrictions on freedom of speech (Picture: Ilya S Savenok/Getty Images for The Center for Fiction)

With respect to the other guests at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, the event’s biggest draw is likely to be a writer who will not even be there. Instead, two years after he was nearly killed in a knife attack, Salman Rushdie will appear live from his home in New York to discuss his new memoir.

There can be few people with such a keen understanding of the importance of free speech, after Iran’s late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a religious decree in 1989 that called for his murder over his fourth book, The Satanic Verses, which was deemed blasphemous.

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“A lot of people, including a lot of young people, I'm sorry to say, have formed the opinion that restrictions on freedom of speech are often a good idea,” he recently told the BBC. “Whereas of course, the whole point of freedom of speech is that you have to permit speech you don't agree with.”

Rushdie is an important person, with much to teach us, and the book festival has done well, in these troubled times, to secure his involvement.

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