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Show opens, Host Robert Lipsyte in studio at desk, holding up book by Salman Rushdie, "The Satanic Verses". Talks about the controversy surrounding the novel, riots in Pakistan, the book taken off shelves at American bookstores and a price being put on Rushdie's head!

Cut to clip of Robert Stone reading at podium from Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses.

Audience applauding.

INSERT INTERVIEW

Akeel Bilgrami:
very serious debate about the authority of Revelation, there are lots of passages in the book, which I can see why a devout Muslim would be offended by. And those passages are by now quite well known cheat of Islamic symbols and figures in Islamic history, very reverently. And that's the reason why there is this outrage. But that's not it. But that's not the whole story by any means. The fact is that political parties and and governments, in particular in Iran and in Pakistan, are making a scapegoat out of a talented and and courageous writer to further their own short term political ends. That's one reason why there is such an outrage. They're exploiting the fundamentalist response in that way,

Robert Lipsyte
but there is a fundamentalist response to be exploited. And what caused that?

Akeel Bilgrami
Well, well, what causes it partly is the fact that in those countries, Islam still plays a very important role in the political and public life of the nation. They are not the historical antecedents, which allow Islam to recede from the political domain, to the domain of private and personal belief. By the historical antecedents, I mean, Islam has not undergone reformation, Islamic countries have not undergone industrial revolutions. What modernization they have undergone is is because of just one commodity, which is oil. They have arrived at a post capitalist situation of great wealth, without having undergone the modernization process of capitalism. I don't want to necessarily say that that is the only or the best way to undergo that process, but they just haven't undergone a process that Christian countries in which Christianity is predominant, have undergone. So that partly explains why when there is a book of this kind of in the is the feeling of being fronted, it becomes the sort of public issue that it has become, and why perhaps it doesn't happen in say, India or America, even though they are fundamentalists in those countries. And they are protests of this kind when, when people feel offended.

Robert Lipsyte
Now, in our stereotypical view of Islam, and of the third world countries, we can relate, of course, immediately to mobs in the street reacting to a holy man. But this morning in the New York Times, on the op ed pages, a Harvard professor said Salman Rushdie knew what he was doing. and a sense pointed a finger.

Akeel Bilgrami
Yes, but that's exactly it. You see, there is no doubt that this whole business has been exploited, as it is bound to be by the western press and the media to continue to reproduce it's caricatures of the Islamic world. Now, that is going to happen. The West is always going to be other an alien for the Islamic world, and vice versa, unless there is a growing body of moderate Muslim opinion. And that unfortunately, and I'm ashamed to say this because I am from a Muslim background is very slow to come to be.

Robert Lipsyte
What would you have Muslims in this country do for example,

Akeel Bilgrami
I think, right now they should stand up for the life and liberty of a writer who has been condemned to death by a man who has slaughtered every Muslim opponent in his own country, who has fought an insanely protracted and destructive war with an Islamic nation. Now, here is Muslim opinion, which says nothing about that, and, and is outraged by the fevered dreams of a character in a book. Now, that's where is the sense of judgment and proportion count amongst Muslims and under That changes, I don't see that the possibility of reform of the Reformation will exist in in the in the Islamic world.

Robert Lipsyte
We don't have much time left. But I mean, for many of those Muslims here, you know, who are are outraged. These are educated people who have in a sense, you know, lived abroad and understand how could they feel that same way?

Akeel Bilgrami
Well, you see, if you focus on individuals and their education, I don't think you will get to the heart of what the issues are. You have to look at the the history of Islam, and its relationship to the structures of the economy and topology, the countries in which it exists. And of course, they will be but but that's why we even have educated Christians and Hindus, that they are fundamentalist among them. So I think it's wrong to focus on individuals who are anomalous, but but to look at larger scale historical picture.

Robert Lipsyte
Akeel Bilgrami, thank you so very much for joining us.

Off set - reading from a passage in The Satanic Verses by Don DeLillo standing at mike.

Back in studio Host Lipsyte introduces next guest, Christopher Hitchens, Author,"Prepared for the Worst".

INTERVIEW CONTINUES:

Robert Lipsyte
But beyond that, you think Gorbachev will weigh in?

Christopher Hitchens
Well, its I think it must be a subject he wishes would go away to, because if there's one thing he doesn't want to have to talk about, its religious fundamentalism, the Soviet Union is obviously committed against religious fundamentalism, but it's also got a quite independent nationality problem of its own, I doubt we'll hear anything from the Orthodox communists. What is extremely interesting, I think, is that those who, in the United States make their living by the First Amendment, often quite a good living, as in my case, by the existence, of free speech and free expression and freedom of conscience, have actually been rather too inclined to see things from the Muslim point of view, even from the point of view of those who are offering death threats have been, I would say, an astounding number of people prepared to be too broad minded about that,

Robert Lipsyte
You're talking about writers,

Christopher Hitchens
writers, some political figures, some i can't for some reason seem to say the word religious properly today, but spiritual leaders, I'll call them Cardinal O'Connor of New York, who, pronouncing all the books that he hasn't read, and I in my judgment probably couldn't read, or tells the faithful not to read it, and that it's blasphemy, and only in passing has anything to say about a threat of murder against an innocent undefended individual. This is extraordinary.

Robert Lipsyte
Well, perhaps this is blaming the victim But once again, back to that op ed extraordinary op ed piece in which Rushdie he knew what he was doing. He called us down upon himself, a man this sophisticated in the theology of the religion knew that he was challenging them in a very mortal kind of a way.

Christopher Hitchens
Edward Said yesterday at the Penn reading made a very good point, I thought when he said that what angers many Muslims is the fact that Rushdie can demonstrate familiarity with their holy scripture. He knows it he was raised in it. He can use it very deftly and playfully they don't like the fact that he is, in a sense one of them. If I wrote a book saying I don't think much of Islam, they wouldn't care.

Robert Lipsyte
Well, that's what you're talking about this this threat to this question was at his opening doors, but we don't have much time left Chris, but did you do see a scenario? Do you see this thing falling of its own weight or kind of moving on?

Christopher Hitchens
No, I actually Now thinks that it is a Crux moment, I think that it does face those who believe in the ideas of the Enlightenment with an opportunity to defend them and say that we too have unalterable convictions that amount not to a faith but to a belief. And we can be offended by outrageous to that as well. And we must were called upon to stick up for them. And I think it also offers the Muslim world a free gift. We offer them at no cost to their Quran or their Prophet, the chance to share in the modernist idea that disagreement is limited by respect for the rights of others, and there are no losers. In that argument. Everyone can speak

Robert Lipsyte
very large. What you're saying in a sense is that this book could almost stimulate the Reformation.

Christopher Hitchens
Yes, I really hope so. Or yesterday, the leader, I suppose I should call it the convener of Al Azhar University, the center of Muslim learning in Cairo for nearly a millennium now said well, why doesn't the Muslim world produce a book answering Mr. Rushdie will if they do that they've entered the debate, they've entered the argument, and everyone should welcome that and approach it with confidence. And that's what makes it shameful that so many people in the past week have been trying to dodge the issue.

Robert Lipsyte
Christopher Hitchens, thank you so very much for joining us

Actress Claire Bloom standing at mike and reading a passage from the Satanic Verses.

INSERT INTERVIEW:

David J Garrow:
and Noble announced that they were restoring the Rushdie book to their shell,

Robert Lipsyte
You were victorious.

David J Garrow
I think we were victorious. And I think the employees of those chains who themselves felt uncomfortable working in stores where the book had been removed, their requests that it go back in counted for an awful lot as well. I think what we've seen the past six or seven days, is a real mass expression of opinion in this country, not simply on the part of writers alone, that this sort of censorship offends basic American values and threatens the first amendment rights of us all,

Robert Lipsyte
and also gave us a real sense of the concentration of power in distribution of books. I mean, there are awful lot of bookstores, were able to pull a book off the shelf and keep it from people that must have been scary.

David J Garrow
Yes. I think that some writers have had an awareness for a number of years now that Walden books and B Dalton do have a tremendously disproportionate influence on book sales book promotion. But when one gentleman the head of Waldenbooks out in Stamford, Connecticut, can make a one person decision and the book vanishes from hundreds and hundreds of stores. I think that brings home to people But much more starkly what a concentration of power the chains represent.

Robert Lipsyte
Do you think this will stimulate writers to do something about? I mean, there had always been some talk about maybe a few of the best selling writers would be asked that their books not be distributed through those chains, which really would have been, I guess, biting the hand that feeds them

David J Garrow
I think so long as Waldenbooks continues to keep the Rushdie book off its shelves, that a large number of American authors will ask we'll ask our publishers to withhold our books from Waldenbooks as well.

Robert Lipsyte
Has anybody done that?

David J Garrow
The Authors Guild today has called for that the writers union supports that position as well. Personally, I have the expectation that Waldenbooks will restore the Rushdie volume. Because I think the level of consensus that we've seen reflected the past few days, creates a public relations situation for Waldenbooks as a company that is simply doing them too much harm, to continue to remove the book. I think that the basic political lesson that we've all witnessed the past six or seven years with regard to international terrorism, namely that if you give in to one threat, remove this book, you simply create the precedent of encouraging other people to make other threats to try to get books banished, that they have some animus towards,

Robert Lipsyte
did you see any possibility of this kind of concerted action, continuing in terms of writers trying to take more control of the production and distribution of their books?

David J Garrow
I think there's a good deal of interest in the writing community in having more of an influence. And I think that there's in particular, a fairly widespread consciousness among writers that the overall effect of the book chains and as well as the overall effect of the increasing centralization, of power of publishing decision making in the hands of a very few multi imprint publishing companies are both troubling developments. The chains, as a general matter, stock, a less wide range of titles than independent booksellers. And I think that the, for example, the suit that independent booksellers have against the chains and against some publishers, because publishers have been giving the chains a financial discount volume per volume. That is a good deal more advantageous than the unit discount they give to independent booksellers. I think there's a great deal of interest in writers

Robert Lipsyte
ver interesting to see where it goes from there. David Garrow, thank you very much for joining us. This is the 11th hour. I'm Robert Lipsyte.

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