Be Careful with Muhammad! Salman Rushdie and the Battle for Free Speech (PDF Version)

The execution of the entire editorial staff of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, and the continuing attacks on their Paris headquarters, show that the battle for free speech still rages on with full fury. The trial of a dozen French Muslims, accused of complicity in the Charlie Hebdo killings, has started (October 2020). The struggle for absolute liberty of publication was initiated by Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988). Shabbir Akhtar’s Be Careful with Muhammad!, written originally as a critique of Rushdie’s provocation, remains relevant to current debates about the right to offend religious sensibilities.