This essay, on Salman Rushdie and blasphemy, both religious and secular, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 16 February 2025, under the headline “When it’s illegal to cause distress to believers, call it for what it is: a secular version of blasphemy”. “Whatever the attack was about, it wasn’t about The Satanic Verses.” So insists Salman Rushdie in Knife, his “Meditations After an Attempted Murder”, written after he almost lost his life in a ferocious assault in Chautauqua, a small town in […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: blasphemy, bookburning, burning poppies, emile durkheim, hadi matar, knife, lord scarman, martin frost, matthew hale, qur'an, sacred, salaman rushdie, syed shahabuddin, the satanic verses