Satanic Verses author refuses to back down after being accused of using ‘McCarthy era’ language in attack on six writers who withdrew from PEN gala over award to satirical magazine

Salman Rushdie and Francine Prose have clashed publicly on Facebook over Charlie Hebdo, with the author of The Satanic Verses telling Prose that “our fellow artists were murdered for their ideas and you won’t stand up for them”, and that “I hope that our long alliance can survive this. But I fear some old friendships will break on this wheel.”

Prose took to Facebook to elaborate on her decision to withdraw from next week’s PEN gala in New York over the free speech organisation’s decision to present the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo with the PEN/Toni and James C Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award. Twelve people were murdered by gunmen at the magazine’s offices earlier this year, and PEN’s American branch has said that it “deserves to be recognised for its dauntlessness in the face of one of the most noxious assaults on expression in recent memory”.

Two dozen writers join Charlie Hebdo PEN award protest Read more

But Prose, along with the writers Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi, made clear earlier this week her concerns over the choice of recipient by withdrawing from the gala. More than 20 additional writers, including Junot Díaz and Joyce Carol Oates, have since put their names to a letter, printed in full in Vulture, which says that by selecting Charlie Hebdo as the winner of the prize, “PEN is not simply conveying support for freedom of expression, but also valorising selectively offensive material: material that intensifies the anti-Islamic, anti-Maghreb, anti-Arab sentiments already prevalent in the western world”.

Prose, an award-winning novelist and former president of PEN American Center, asked on Facebook, “Why is it so difficult for people to make fine distinctions?”. She said that the writers opposing the PEN award support free speech and free expression, and “stand fully behind Charlie Hebdo’s right to publish whatever they want without being censored, and of course without the use of violence to enforce their silence.”

“But the giving of an award suggests that one admires and respects the value of the work being honoured, responses quite difficult to summon for the work of Charlie Hebdo. Provocation is simply not the same as heroism,” she wrote, going on to take issue with “the usually sensible intelligent Salman Rushdie’s readiness to call us ‘fellow travellers’ who are encouraging Islamist jihadism, and also to label us, on Twitter, as ‘six pussies’.”

Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) .@JohnTheLeftist @NickCohen4 The award will be given. PEN is holding firm. Just 6 pussies. Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character.

“I can only assume he meant our feline dignity and was not implying that we are behaving like people who have vaginas. It would be sad to think that a writers’ organisation cannot discuss free speech without resorting to political accusations and sexual insult,” she wrote.

Rushdie, who has been vehement in his support of PEN’s choice and who tweeted earlier this week that “the award will be given. PEN is holding firm. Just 6 pussies. Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character”, responded to Prose’s post, pointing to his already-stated regret in using the word “pussies”.

But he made it clear he wasn’t backing down on another allegation, made in a letter to PEN earlier this week, in which he described Prose and the five other authors to have withdrawn as “the fellow travellers” of “fanatical Islam, which is highly organised, well funded, and which seeks to terrify us all, Muslims as well as non-Muslims, into a cowed silence”.

His Facebook post repeated the allegation: “‘Fellow travellers’, yes. No question of that. As for ‘fine distinctions’, here’s what I see. Our fellow artists were murdered for their ideas and you won’t stand up for them. I’m very sorry to see that. I think you’ll find the vast majority of the PEN membership will be sorry, too.”

I admire Charlie Hebdo's courage. But it does not deserve a PEN award | Francine Prose Read more

Prose said the phrase had “attained great currency during the Army-McCarthy hearings, when it was used to smear and ruin the lives of many innocent people by suggesting a relation with the communists plotting to bring down our country”, and that while she “sympathise[s] with the dead cartoonists … if I am going to stand up, I feel that my time is more usefully spent standing up for the living: the journalists throughout Latin America and the Middle East risking their lives to tell the truth about the world we live in”.



Describing himself as “immensely saddened” by the situation, Rushdie told Prose he used the phrase knowingly, because Prose, Carey, Ondaatje, Cole, Kushner and Selasi had chosen to “make a political ACT”, by pulling out of the gala.

“What the act says is that you judge CH as being at fault. And by making that public judgment, the act, not any words you say, places you in the enemy camp. It just does,” he wrote.

“In politics you can’t both be for and against. Your act says you are against. And that makes you (plural) fellow travellers of the fanatics. I wish it were not so, but it is, and when Peter Carey asks if it’s even a free speech issue, and calls PEN self-righteous for taking it up, and then attacks the entire nation of France for its arrogance; and when Teju Cole says that Israel is the cause of anti-semitism; then you have some very unfortunate bedfellows indeed. I hope that our long alliance can survive this. But I fear some old friendships will break on this wheel.”