I just finished reading Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, by Salman Rushdie in which he recounts his experiences and thoughts during and after being stabbed 15 times on August 12, 2022.
Rushdie is perhaps the most famous living author in the world. He is most known for his novel The Satanic Verses, and its aftermath, where the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa–an order to kill Rushdie. That was in 1989.
Rushdie went into hiding, protected by the British Intelligence services. But after about 10 years he decided to come out and live a more normal public life. Everything seemed to be going pretty well, though he was told that there were six credible potential threats on his life, which were discovered and averted.
He later moved to America, to New York City. He met and married his present wife, Eliza. Then, when Rushdie appeared at the Chatauqua Institute to speak at a conference (ironically, the theme of the conference was providing a safe space for writers) a man dressed in black ran up on the stage and stabbed him 15 times. The man had spent months living in his mother’s basement, playing video games and filling his head with radical Islamic sermons he saw online. He said he admired the Ayatollah Khomeini.
The threats on Rushdie’s life, both from the Ayatollah’s fatwa and from the stabbing, were outrageous and evil.
Rushdie barely survived the attack. His recovery was long and drawn out. He lost an eye and the knife had had cut several nerves, including on his face and left hand. His liver was stabbed. There were many secondary difficulties, including unwanted reactions to medication and unexpected procedures to drain fluids.
Though covered by medical insurance, there were some things that insurance did not cover, including a $16,000 dental appliance that helped to compensate for the severed nerve near his mouth.
He included embarrassing things in his story. One of them was being overweight at the time of the stabbing and being asked about it by the paramedics because of the medivac helicopter’s weight limit. He also told of his difficulty with going to the bathroom and other humbling things.
Plus, he had to deal with paparazzi. Just getting privacy meant extra security and expense.
I admired his candor and transparency. He included things that we might want to leave out if the story was about us. This made me quite sympathetic to Rushdie. Just in case that we think famous people ‘get all the breaks’, this book reminded that sometimes they do not.
I wished more writers had this kind of candor. Too often writers, including Christian ones, don’t seem real or transparent. Their writing–from newsletters to articles to (especially) social media– too often seems packaged…like it was meant to promote something. Give me more grit and honesty and less promotion.
That being said, while I praise Rushdie for his transparency, I have to say that his political and religious beliefs are the opposite of mine in almost every possible way. And he expresses them to the point of irritation.
On politics he seems to characterize my side (the conservative side) as mindless reactionaries.
On the religious side, he is very clear about his atheism. He makes sure we know about it.
One would think a near death experience would make one think about God and the afterlife, but such was not the case here.
It’s not like he doesn’t know about Christian things. He tells of being moved by Christian music when he was a student at Cambridge University. He speaks of his medical recovery as a miracle (doesn’t a miracle presuppose a supernatural power?). Earlier in the book, Rushdie spoke of a premonition that something bad was going to happen at the event where he got stabbed. Wouldn’t such a premonition make you wonder about God or at least a higher power?
He seems to appreciate the Bible, at least parts of it and even quoted from 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I away childish things.” But he grossly misapplied it. Paul was speaking of growing up into maturity of Christian love and unity. But Rushdie takes it to mean maturing to a point where you don’t need religion. He says, “We no longer need the parentlike authority figure(s) of a Creator or Creators to explain the universe, or our own evolution into ourselves. And we–or, let me more modestly say, I–have no need of commandments, popes, or god-men of any sort to hand down my morals to me. I have my own ethical sense, thank you very much. God did not hand down morality to us. We created God to embody our moral instincts,” (pg. 227). He also said, “My godlessness remains intact. That isn’t going to change in this second-chance life,” (pg. 229).
Hebrews 4:2 spoke of unbelieving Israelites who heard the truth and saw miracles, but “…the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.” Rushdie knows some things about God and Christianity but has not united them with faith. It’s sad. It’s like he built a fortress against God.
I contrasted Rushdie’s comments with something that was said during the Grammy awards a few days ago. I didn’t watch the show, I heard it was pretty bad except for the testimony of the singer Jelly Roll, who won three awards and gave strong praise to Jesus for saving him. He combined his knowledge with faith. He said, “Jesus is for everybody.” He’s right.
I said a prayer for Salman Rushdie before writing this article.