Here is the law regarding 1st degree murder in New York. It looks like it it what other states might call murder with aggravating circumstances.
So the essential question becomes, is writing The Satanic Verses an expression of Rushdie’s religious belief?
The Protocols argument is not necessarily analogous because Nazism is not a religion (it can be argued). IIRC there’s no such protection for political beliefs, and punching him would maybe be based on his politics as much as his distributing something insulting.
it seems to me at this point Rushdie’s attacker is doing what all perps should do when arrested and keeping silent. OTOH, he may have enough on his social media to determine a more precise motive.
It’s unambiguously not. It’s a magical realist novel about a mentally ill Muslim man who comes to believe he’s the angel Gabriel after surviving a plane crash. It’s not a statement of religious belief, and it wasn’t the target of a fatwa because it represented a competing religious dogma. It was targeted because it was perceived as insulting to Muslims and Islamic culture.
Practically speaking, assuming:
- Person A gets up on stage and attempts to murder someone by repeatedly stabbing them in the neck because person A was just looking for someone to stab that day.
- Person B gets up on stage and attempts to murder someone by repeatedly stabbing them in the neck because the person on the stage is part of a protected class and person B hates that class.
I assume person B gets charged with a hate crime and person A doesn’t. But does that make their sentencing different?
In my book both should be locked up and the key thrown away, no matter whether this was a hate crime or not. But I’m curious what the law says.
Theee’s no one « the law » that says anything here. Each country (or state with criminal jurisdiction) can deal with the issue in its own way.
In this particular case, it’s the law of New York.
So what does New York law say about this?
New York law says that a crime motivated by the religious beliefs of the victim can be charged as a hate crime. And sentencing can be different.
Whether or not it should or will be charged as such would be up to the discretion of the prosecutors. And that will be determined by the available evidence and what they think would be in the best interests of the public.
It’s not like there’s a list of crimes and they just check the appropriate boxes and those charges are automatically filed.
In this case, I would suspect they don’t try to apply a hate crime designation. Those can be difficult to prove and the direct attempt at murder is quite serious on its own.
It unambiguously is (per radical Islamic belief). A devout Muslim (from their point of view) would never conceive of writing such a book. So it is an expression of Rushie’s non-radical Islamic beliefs. That it is a work of fiction is irrelevant to them.
Well, yes, it’s trivially true that people who follow the fatwa believe that the book is evidence that Rushdie is not a devout Muslim, because they believe the book is deliberately mocking Islam. But The Satanic Verses doesn’t advocate for a competing religious viewpoint. It’s not a pro-Christian, or pro-Jewish or pro-Hindu, and it wasn’t singled out for retribution for advocating for a different religious viewpoint, which could bring the attack under the umbrella of hate crime legislation. It was targeted because it was believed to be mocking Islam. And if attacking someone for disrespecting a religion is a hate crime, that brings us back to my comparison of a Jewish person punching someone for distributing anti-Semitic literature.
This is probably the best answer. Considering the level of debate here, the “hate crime” aspect would require some interesting debate. More easy to prove would (I assume) be premeditation and planning, which I assume resulting in attempted first-degree murder.