Is Salman Rushdie a Voltaire for our age?

His fierce defence of PEN America’s prize for Charlie Hebdo’s defiant provocations recalls the Enlightenment hero, but sets Rushdie against other public figures

Poster of Voltaire (left) left by the public near Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris a month on from the terrorist attacks which left 12 dead in February. Photograph: Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images

John Dugdale

Friday 1 May 2015  The Guardian

The troubles at PEN America have been bubbling up since March, when the US branch of the international organisation that defends endangered writers and fights censorship announced Charlie Hebdo would receive its freedom of expression award for courage at its annual fundraising gala in New York on 5 May.

This decision prompted letters to PEN questioning the decision, notably from Peter Carey, who accused PEN of being blind to France’s “arrogance” towards “a large and disempowered segment of their population” (ie Muslims) and Deborah Eisenberg, who also saw the Charlie Hebdo cartoons as “anti-Islamic” and argued there was a “critical difference” between “staunchly supprting expression that violates the acceptable and enthusiastically awarding such expression”.
More