Salman Rushdie: Five Years of Fear

"Salman Rushdie is still a man with no fixed address. Rushdie is still in hiding writing nearly every day making public appearances on occasion but effectively under threat marked as with an incandescent X on his chest and black. "

So reads a small card that booksellers across America and around the world will distribute with every purchase of books today Five years to the day after late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei proclaimed that the Indian born English author must die for slighting Islam in his novel. The Satanic Verses, the card serves to remind us of Salman Rushdie's Predicament.

As Paul Aster, the novelist who originally planned the campaign, explained to The New York Times last week, "We wanted to make it very broad to touch as many people as possible. I think of this little brochure as a call to contemplation not so much a call to action."

The call to widespread contemplation is a noble one, something akin to trickle down consciousness, But more is required.

Harvard for instance could extend an open invitation to Rushdie to speak here. President Bill Clinton and other politicians should embrace Rushdie openly without the fear demonstrated by Clinton's backsliding last November when Rushdie visited the president at the White House. And some further public denunciation of Iranian actions might also help.

No one knows better than Salman Rushdie that sometimes the blessings of liberty require more than just words.