Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

In 1994, the elderly Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed while he was walking down a street near his home. Many think that his attacker was motivated by Mahfouz’s writing, which offended some Muslims, and by Mahfouz’s defense of Rushdie after Khomeini declared a death edict against him. Even before Rushdie himself was stabbed, he felt guilty that Mahfouz’s defense of him might have contributed to that attack, and he wondered about the mentality of a person who could stab an elderly man in this way. After being attacked himself, he wondered about the A.’s state of mind.

Rushdie imagines speaking with the A. and creates a transcript of this theoretical interview, imagining four separate sessions. In the first, Rushdie’s first question to his attacker is about the A.’s use of the word “disingenuous” in the interview he gave after being arrested. He questions whether the A. actually knows what this word means; when the A. demonstrates that he does, Rushdie asks whether his supposed disingenuousness is really a sufficient motive for attempted murder. He asks whether the attacker finds his own mother disingenuous because of the A.’s claims that she failed to teach him religion properly, and the A. responds with silence. The A. expresses the belief that Rushdie is a kind of minor devil; he developed this belief after being exposed to a view of Islam promoted by “Imam Yutubi” (141). The A. says that Islam must be defended, and Rushdie asks, “By any means necessary?” (141). When the A. cites the source of this quote as Malcolm X, Rushdie corrects him, saying that the original source is Frantz Fanon. The attacker says that he does not know who this is. Rushdie asks the A. about his gym membership, pointing out that the A.’s choice to cancel it before attacking Rushdie indicates that he understood he would not be resuming his previous life. He tells the A. that he is trying to understand why someone so young would knowingly commit an act that would ruin his life. The A. responds that he was willing to make the sacrifice to serve God. Rushdie questions how he can be so certain that his faith is the truth. The A. responds that he follows the Quran. Rushdie questions the legitimacy of the Quran as the word of God.

In the second interview session, Rushdie imagines asking the A. about his trip to Lebanon, asserting that the A.’s family saw a big change in him after this trip and that it influenced his religious perspective. The A. confirms this and explains that he learned that violence is justified against the enemies of Islam. Rushdie asserts that he is not an enemy of Islam and has been unfairly demonized. He explains that he is a figure of love, not hate, that he has written many characters that sympathetically portrayed Muslims, and that he has protested political discrimination against them and publicly supported a controversial mosque proposed for the World Trade Center site. He talks about opposing death penalties and edicts because once an execution is been carried out, redressing mistaken convictions is impossible. Rushdie accuses his attacker of being too young and too influenced by video games to understand the reality and permanence of death.

In the third installment of the imagined interview, Rushdie calls his attacker an incel and an angry loner and says that he thinks the A. was really trying to kill someone who had rejected him romantically. If the A. had been successful in love, Rushdie thinks, he would not have been angry enough to resort to violence. He then asks the A. a question he has wanted to ask for some time: whether, as Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living, and whether the A. engages in meaningful introspection. The A. replies that this is self-indulgent and that individuals are unimportant: He finds meaning through being God’s servant.

In the final session, Rushdie wonders whether the A. was just a lonely young man who was easily influenced during his trip to Lebanon because he lacked a father figure growing up. He notes that people who knew the A. when he was younger considered him a smart, kind-hearted person and wonders if he harbored some secret cruelty all along, or if the trip to Lebanon and the influence of fundamentalists on YouTube planted and nurtured the seed of cruelty. He concludes that his attacker’s fundamental flaw is the lack of a sense of humor.

Rushdie ends the chapter with a few thoughts about the importance of art and free speech. One of art’s most important functions is to challenge orthodoxies. Art is indispensable and will outlast any who oppose it. Nevertheless, Rushdie questions the old cliché that anything that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.