The author Salman Rushdie himself has experienced Islamist terror on his body. Now he warns the West that totalitarian forces are on the rise, also from the woke culture.

Nine months after he was stabbed on stage and blinded in one eye, author Salman Rushdie is issuing a powerful warning that freedom of expression in the West is at risk. Rushdie was then attacked by a Lebanese Islamist.

At the British Book Awards on Monday, where Rushdie was awarded the Freedom to Publish award, he delivered a message about freedom of expression. He did this in the form of a video message.

On receiving the award, Rushdie said he believes freedom of expression in the West is at a critical stage.

For Rushdie, it is not just about threats from the type of Islamist milieu he himself has been attacked by. He also points to the growing woke culture and the censorship it brings, such as censorship of politically incorrect books, etc.

Samnytt writes about the case:

Now I’m sitting here in the USA, I have to watch the extraordinary attack on libraries and books for children in schools. The attack on the idea of the library itself. It is quite remarkably alarming, and we must be very aware of it and fight hard against it.Read another book instead

Rushdie also criticised rewritings of older books to “adapt them to modern times”, thereby removing language deemed offensive.

According to Rushdie, books “must come to us from their own time and be of their own time”.

If it is difficult for someone to accept, they can read another book instead, he said.

He has also previously made strong statements against box censorship as part of the woke culture, see excerpt below.

It was on August 12, 2022 that Rushdie was stabbed when he was about to give a public lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York. The 24-year-old Lebanese Hadi Matar was arrested on the spot and charged with ill-treatment and attempted murder. Rushdie was seriously injured and hospitalised after the attack, concludes Fria Tider.