The PEN Center Germany (to avoid confusion with other existing German PEN associations: the original, also PEN Darmstadt or simply the Bratwurstbude) has a new honorary member: Salman Rushdie, hastily appointed after the writer was stabbed last Friday.
Rushdie, who is still in “critical condition” (his son Zafar announced) and hospitalized, has not yet been able to accept the honor, but on the one hand he himself was PEN President in the United States and on the other hand honorary memberships are to be awarded This organization primarily serves to protect authors who are directly threatened, so the appointment is a constitutive act that does not require acceptance.
The PEN Center Germany now has more than a hundred honorary members, Rushdie is the hundred and seventh.
Whereby this number is irritating.
Wasn't the author of the "Satanic Verses" under threat for a while?
Khomeini's fatwa dates back to 1989 and has claimed several lives since then.
Rushdie himself survived because he went into hiding for nine years and was under 24-hour surveillance.
Even then, honorary membership would have been appropriate.
But PEN described this period of desperate hiding in its press release on Rushdie's appointment as "living in a luxury cage," and by doing so, Rushdie had apparently disqualified himself for an honor.
But what has changed now?
Did Rushdie first have to be physically attacked and almost killed so that the PEN Center Germany could finally become "greatly concerned" (another quote from the press release) about him?
After assassination attempts on sharp critics of Islamism, relativizations are heard with unsightly regularity: Theo van Gogh or the employees of "Charlie Hebdo" should have blamed themselves for their murder, they didn't have to provoke it.
Were any of you honorary members of PEN at the time of your death?
No, they too had only been the target of death threats for years and were under police protection, so they could no longer move freely, but apparently therefore lived in a "luxury cage".
Rushdie recently received no personal protection;
According to the PEN statement, he has been able to “live a new freedom” since moving to New York.
If that's how he sees it, why didn't PEN fight for Rushdie when he was slave?
Possibly the honoree no. 107 can still refuse such a belated honor.