BBC News reports that "Salman Rushdie is among a dozen writers to have put their names to a statement in a French weekly paper warning against Islamic "totalitarianism"."
The writers say the violence sparked by the publication of cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad shows the need to fight for secular values and freedom.
The statement is published in Charlie Hebdo, one of several European papers to reprint the caricatures.
[snip]
Almost all of those who have signed the statement have experienced difficulties with Islamic militancy first-hand, says the BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Paris.
They include Dutch MP and filmmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali and exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen.
The statement and information about the signers are below the fold.
Full text: Writers' statement on cartoons
After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism.
We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.
Recent events, prompted by the publication of drawings of Muhammad in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values.
This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field.
It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism between West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.
Like all totalitarian ideologies, Islamism is nurtured by fear and frustration.
Preachers of hatred play on these feelings to build the forces with which they can impose a world where liberty is crushed and inequality reigns.
But we say this, loud and clear: nothing, not even despair, justifies choosing darkness, totalitarianism and hatred.
Islamism is a reactionary ideology that kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present.
Its victory can only lead to a world of injustice and domination: men over women, fundamentalists over others.
On the contrary, we must ensure access to universal rights for the oppressed or those discriminated against.
We reject the "cultural relativism" which implies an acceptance that men and women of Muslim culture are deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secularism in the name of the respect for certain cultures and traditions.
We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", a wretched concept that confuses criticism of Islam as a religion and stigmatisation of those who believe in it.
We defend the universality of the freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit can exist in every continent, towards each and every maltreatment and dogma.
We appeal to democrats and free spirits in every country that our century may be one of light and not dark.
The signers:
- Salman Rushdie - Indian-born British writer with fatwa issued ordering his execution for The Satanic Verses
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Somali-born Dutch MP. Writer of the film Submission which led to the assasination of Theo Van Gogh by an Islamist in November 2004. She lives under police protection.
- Taslima Nasreen - exiled Bangladeshi writer, with fatwa issued ordering her execution. A doctor, her positions defending women and minorities got her in trouble with an Islamist group "Destroy Taslima" and to be persecuted as "apostate."
- Bernard-Henri Levy - French philosopher born in Algeria, engaged against all the XXth century "isms" (Fascism, antisemitism, totalitarism, terrorism), he is the author of La Barbarie à visage humain, L'Idéologie française, La Pureté dangereuse, and more recently American Vertigo.
- Chahla Chafiq - Iranian writer exiled in France, a novelist and an essayist. She's the author of "Le nouvel homme islamiste, la prison politique en Iran " (2002). She also wrote novels such as "Chemins et brouillard" (2005).
- Caroline Fourest - French writer, essayist, editor in chief of Prochoix (a review that defends liberties against dogmatic and integrist ideologies), author of several reference books on « laicité » and fanatism : Tirs Croisés : la laïcité à l'épreuve des intégrismes juif, chrétien et musulman (with Fiammetta Venner), Frère Tariq : discours, stratégie et méthode de Tariq Ramadan, et la Tentation obscurantiste (Grasset, 2005). She receieved the National prize of laicité in 2005.
- Irshad Manji - Ugandan refugee and writer living in Canada, currently a Fellow at Yale University. Internationally best-selling author of "The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith." She speaks out for free expression based on the Koran itself.
- Mehdi Mozaffari - professor of Iranian origin exiled in Denmark. Author of several articles and books on Islam and Islamism such as Authority in Islam: From Muhammad to Khomeini, Fatwa: Violence and Discourtesy, and Globalization and Civilizations.
- Maryam Namazie - Writer, TV International English producer; Director of the Worker-communist Party of Iran's International Relations; and 2005 winner of the National Secular Society's Secularist of the Year award.
- Antoine Sfeir - director of French review, Les cahiers de l'Orient, examining Middle East, born in Lebanon. Has published several reference books on Islamism such as Les réseaux d'Allah (2001) and Liberté, égalité, Islam : la République face au communautarisme (2005).
- Ibn Warraq - US academic of Indian/Pakistani origin
- Philippe Val - director of Charlie Hebdo