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Elections are commonplace. They take place all over the world. Some are inadvertently comic, such as the recent elections to the Presidency of the United States. Others are however, more lethal. They actually engage issues of life and death.
One such election took place recently in the country nation called Iran.
Now why do I find Iran of an uncanny relevance to the physical, and intellectual environment in which I find myself today. It is because, as an itinerant foreigner through world academia, I cannot help but observe that, in several countries, but most notoriously in the United States and Canada, the world of intellect and originality appears to under siege. Indeed it would appear that in places, it already lies prostrate before a tenacious encroachment on the integrity of creativity, enquiry and expression.
The enemy, in the view of this benighted alien, may described as a blind minotaur let loose in a maze of ideological confusions on whose horn quite a few academics, to my knowledge, have been impaled. In the name of this pagan deity - let us begin with a few banal examples - in the name of this deity, it has become a problem for some - especially those in the public eye - to wish Jews "Happy Hannukah", Christians "Merry Christmas", or Moslems "Barka de Sallah".
The solution is to simply wish everyone - Happy Holidays - as did an announcer on the PBS to my hearing, actually correcting himself in midstream and apologizing for his slip. Any specificity would, it seemed, be considered discriminatory to the other religions. In the name of this beast, workers no longer take pride in the ancient dignity of labour but must be addressed as "partners" or "associates." And on a more lethal range, art professors, if they are male, are forbidden to engage in that time-honoured exercise of drawing or painting female nudes - this would be sexist. And so on and so forth down the road of a neo-fascism that disguises itself under the name of - surely, you have guessed the name of this deity - Political Correctness.
Now what, you are beginning to ask yourselves, have elections in Iran got to do with this new orthodoxy? Or indeed with a hundred other imbecilities that deserve to be carefully documented in a textbook of intellectual epidemology.
Well, the fact is that Political Correctness is not, alas, confined only to the grotesque or the banal, but extends the lethal. But first the news, as the radio or TV anchorperson - note, I gemuflect before the Beast - as the anchorperson would say - first, the news.
President Khatami, a reformist and a scourge in the hide of the ultra-conservative clergy of Iran, has just been returned to office with an increased majority by the electorate of that nation - seventy-six percent of the vote, no less. In short, the people of Iran have just demonstrated, once again, that they desire change from the narrow world of their spiritual gaolers.
Indeed the recent elections are only another stage in their struggle, a fiercely waged contest that has resulted in the closure of newspapers, in the imprisonment of writers and editors, the exile of several intellectuals and indeed the extra-judicial killings of reformists, scholars and intellectuals like you and me. Now why do I think that this should matter to especially to Canada, and in particular Canadian academia.
Itıs all due to a personal experience - I invite you to accompany me on a visit, some years ago, to another university, which shall be nameless, where I was being honoured just as I am today.
It also fell to me on that occasion to sing for my supper - I was required to make the acceptance speech, and that I regret to say, was when I acquired an additional accolade, most unexpected and certainly most unwelcome. I was awarded no less than the red badge of courage. For it was after my speech that I first encountered the prevailing view that it was now considered "politically incorrect" to speak out in condemnation of the incitement to murder of a fellow writer.
You do remember who Salman Rushdie is, I hope. He was that rather - admittedly - careless writer who tampered with the Islamic Holy Writ and earned a fatwa - that is, death sentence - for his temerity. And I found that it was not simply sections of the university that had succumbed to this revisionist creed but quite a sizable portion of the intellectual and artistic community in that state.
Now, I imagined at the time that there might have been some exaggeration in this perception during my stay of a mere week of lectures, seminars, media interviews and interaction with writers and artists in their watering holes. Alas, since that visit, I have come into knowledge of the palpable results of such a school of thought. I have encountered fugitives from other inquisitional cauldrons of Political Correctness whose careers had been blighted for failing to bow before the winds of the new conformism.
The hallowed community of thought and creativity on that occasion appeared to be divided mainly in two: a minority of notional sophisticates who espoused the now "politically correct" view on Salman Rushdie with nothing short of religious fervour, and - two - the rest, who had been cowed, literally bludgeoned into submission.
Hovering around the two groups floated the vocal stormtroopers of genuine minority causes, clear-sighted, and cynical. Their agenda was limited but profitable - to exploit the moral confusion and social guilt that had been implanted in that Canadian community and thus obtain the maximum social benefits from such a situation. They were at least honest and unapologetic - I could understand and frankly, applaud their opportunism.
Ironically, Rushdie was himself making his first public appearance in a different part of that same Canada, in Ottawa, where he appeared on television in the company of the Prime Minister. Again, by a coincidence, an Institute of Islamic Studies had just boosted the price on the head of this writer by a million dollars. Since my mission at the university was in the nature of an ancient celebration, it seemed to me only appropriate that I should utilise my own membership space of the academic community to rebuke the new-sprung Murder Incorporated, insisting that the cause of learning in any field - including religion - cannot be served through censorship, especially of the terminal kind. I then went on to offer the Rushdie hunters what I considered a solution to the conflict in the true spirit of scholarship and also - since this was their major concern - a practical way of vindicating their religious dedication.
I shall repeat the terms of that offer yet again - who knows? It might just save another writer the experience of being hunted high and low for a dare of imagination.
Since print it was that gave the offence, quoth I, let that same print undo the offence. In short, I challenged the scholarly institute - as well as the original instigators of the fatwa - to offer a fraction of the total blood-money to a select consortium of writers - myself included, naturally - who would then come together to produce the most exemplary, inspiring exegetical work on the Life of the Prophet Mohammed ever written.
Imagine the product of a collaboration between poets and historians, theologians and epic narrators, philosophers, illustrators, etc.! If such a work failed become a universal best-seller, then the critics should be shot - they should accept that they have a crucial role to play in this, after all.
In my part of the world, my proposal would be considered a humane and ennobling recompense, a project of spiritual reconciliation, one that is faithful to the word of Islam which stands, above all for Peace.
Well, afterwards, I received the usual pats on the back for what I thought was some creative, original thinking but no, the word that kept cropping up was - "courageous." Now, that had me thoroughly baffled. Everyone appeared to stress this word, and with such feeling, that I wondered if the police had spotted some dacoits lurking around the commencement hall of that university looking for Salman Rushdie. But Rushdie was in Ottawa, not even in the state where I was, and hopefully I would have made my escape by the time they learnt that there was a Nigerian around who dared to condemn their odious mission.
It was not until dinner afterwards, that I learnt exactly against whom this "courage" was understood to have had been directed. No, it was not in the direction of the would-be killers of the writers but against the leaders of the new Canadian orthodoxy. Rushdie had become part of some a general cultural discourse; in the process, it was suddenly (or progressively) decided that he had not been sensitive to he cultural feelings of others, thus it was politically incorrect that his cause should be espoused! Murder it seemed, could be tolerated in the cause of Political Correctness.
I had apparently taken on, quite innocently, the new commisars of thought whose domination, in that area of intellectual exchange at least had become total. This was the unholiest out of all.
One professor, a Caucasian, was particularly effusive in his gratitude for my "David versus Goliath" act which, he confessed, he had longed to undertake but felt clearly disadvantaged on account of his race.
Inside my head, the questions tumbled over one anothers, absurd scenarios and melodramatic variations. Salman Rushdie somehow separated from his minders in Ottawa, hotly pursued by his dogged would-be assassins, dodges in and out of campus alleyways, hides, backtracks to a house that seems isolated and safe, knocks on the door, pleading for sanctuary. A head pops out, recognizes the face and screams at him, "Go away! This is a politically correct house."
Fugitive dashes to the faculty club, is met at the door by a smiling doctor of philosophy. "Ah, Salman, just wait outside while I telephone the Dean to find out what is the politically correct course of action to take," The reel runs on endlessly.
So now we come to the present, and what do we find? The people of Iran themselves appear to have committed to a path that repudiates policies that constrict thought, and freedom of expression. I do not suggest, for a single moment, that under the present political dispensation, a fatwa would be unthinkable for a deed considered an impiety or offensive to religious sensibilities. No, that is not the issue. The principle is contained in this simple question: when such circumstances arise, on which side should institutions of learning place themselves? On the side of power and constriction? Or on the side of freedom and creativity? I believe that the answer to that was given last week by the teeming masses of Iran.
Wole Soyinka
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