How Salman Rushdie has been a scapegoat for complex historical differences

Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses was published more than 30 years ago – some years before Rushdie’s attacker, Hadi Matar, was born. But the insult to Islam felt by Rushdie’s detractors seems to have endured regardless of the decades that have passed.

The Chautauqua Institution, southwest of Buffalo in New York, is known for its summer lectures — and as a place where people come seeking peace and serenity. Salman Rushdie, the great writer and influential public intellectual, had spoken at the centre before.

On Friday, he was invited to speak on a subject very close to his heart: the plight of writers in Ukraine and the ethical responsibility of liberal nation-states towards them. Rushdie has been an outspoken defender of writers’ freedom of expression throughout his career.