On 3.5.89 an essay titled “Rushdie’s Book Is An Insult,” authored by former President Jimmy Carter, was published in the N.Y. Times. He condemned Ayatollah Khomeini’s “fatwa” — a decree calling for Rushdie’s murder — as “an abhorrent response,” but he also cut apoplectic Muslims a little slack.
Carter compared the Islamic outrage that greeted Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” to the lunatic conservative Christian fury provoked by Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (‘88) — an accurate analogy in that both firestorms arose out of rank fundamentalist ignorance. Except Carter said that he half-sympathized with (or at least understood in an emotional Christian-bedrock sense) the anti-Temptation mob.
Carter’s basic point was “try to see things from the Muslim perspective…if you do that their rage will become half-understandable ” His implication was that Rushdie had only himself to blame for poking the hornet’s nest.
