Friday 23 January 2015

Hitchens: Islam and the "contagion of fear"


An oldie but a goodie.  Hitchens in scintillating form, and relevant as ever to the agonies over free speech in light of the Hebdo massacres.
After his speech, he talks to Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, for which Rushdie was fatwa'd to death by Khomeini in 1989. As Rushdie drily notes, Khomeini is dead and he's still alive....
Clearly the South China Morning Post online editor caught this contagion of fear yesterday, when they removed my letter on free speech, that they'd published in the print edition.
[LATER: the letters editor reckons it's just a "glitch" and he'll get it put back online.
LATERER: the letter is back online here, behind registration wall].