The sheer craziness of Muslim conspiracy theories involving Jews and Israelis is in evidence yet again. This time, our clinical case is one Nader Hashemi, a professor at the University of Denver, and the head of that university’s Center for Middle East Studies. He has a theory about the attempt to murder Salman Rushdie in Chautauqua, New York on August 12. While the man who held the knife was a Muslim born in the U.S., of Lebanese parents, Nader Hashemi thinks he may well have been convinced to do it by a Mossad agent posing as an operative of the Iranian ICGC. Robert Spencer wrote about Hashemi’s remarks briefly here, and a full report on his preposterous explanation is here: “Mossad ‘likely’ behind Salman Rushdie stabbing, claims Denver professor,” Jerusalem Post, August 23, 2022:
…Hashemi said that one possibility is that Iran wanted to take vengeance on the United States for the 2020 assassination of IRGC general Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike at Baghdad Airport.
“So one possible explanation,” he said, “could be that after the assassination of Iran’s top general in January 2020, Qassem Soleimani, Iran was looking to retaliate. And the Department of Justice, a few days before the attack on Salman Rushdie, announced that the Iranian [Islamic] Revolutionary Guard Corps were seeking to assassinate Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. So this could be one possible explanation. They couldn’t go after Pompeo and Bolton, in other words, the IRGC couldn’t go after those high-value targets so they chose a soft target such as Salman Rushdie. Perhaps, possibly, we don’t know.”
Note that Nader Hashemi overlooks entirely the straightforward and obvious explanation for the stabbing of Rushdie.It need not have been in retaliation for a hostile act by either the American or Israeli government, such as the killing of IRGC General Qassem Soleimani in 2020 by an American drone strike at Baghdad International Airport. In 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa, or religious decree, to the world’s Muslims. Nothing more was needed to prompt Hadi Matar’s attack. Khomeini wrote:
We are from Allah and to Allah we will return.. I am informing all brave Muslims of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses, a text written, edited, and published against Islam, the Prophet of Islam, and the Qur’an, along with all the editors and publishers aware of its contents, are condemned to death. I call on all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill them without delay, so that no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth. And whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr, Allah willing. Meanwhile, if someone has access to the author of the book but is incapable of carrying out the execution, he should inform the people so that [Rushdie] is punished for his actions.
Thus anyone who was killed trying to carry out the death sentence should be considered a “martyr” who would go to paradise. Why would that fatwa not be enough to prompt Hadi Matar?
A $2.8-million bounty was initially put on the writer’s head by Iranians; it has subsequently been increased.
Though until this August Rushdie had not himself been attacked, his translators and publishers were not so lucky. His Japanese translator was stabbed to death in 1991; in the same year his Italian translator was seriously wounded, and two years later, the Norwegian publisher of The Satanic Verses was also attacked. The fatwa has had consequences.
Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, in 2005 declared the Rushdie fatwa to still be valid; the Iranian government even added $600,000 at the time to the bounty to be awarded his killer. Besides, a fatwa cannot be revoked in Shia Islamic tradition. In 2017, a statement was published on the official website of the current supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, stating that “the decree remains as Imam Khomeini issued it” and in February 2019, the Khamenei.ir Twitter account stated that Khomeini’s “verdict” was “solid and irrevocable.” Why seek a highly implausible alternative when the obvious reason for Hadi Matar’s fatwa, repeatedly confirmed, is staring everyone in the face?
Was Israel’s Mossad behind the stabbing of Salman Rushdie?
That is the question Nader Hashemi, head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, wants us to take seriously. It’s most implausible. Of course, the Mossad has been blamed for all sorts of things by Muslim and antisemitic conspiracy theorists including, most notoriously, for the 9/11 attacks (beginning with the absurd claim that “no Jews went to work at the Twin Towers that day”) that all sane people know were carried out by nineteen Al-Qaeda operatives. Why not accuse the Mossad here as well? Hashemi has not a shred of evidence for this charge, but he can explain that, too: it just means that the Mossad has been diabolically clever in covering its tracks.
Another possibility, Hashemi said, adding that he believes this is more likely, is that Rushdie’s attacker, Hadi Matar, had been convinced to commit the attack by a Mossad agent masquerading as an IRGC operative or supporter.
Why does Nader Hashemi reject as “less likely” the obvious explanation that Hadi Matar was dutifully carrying out Khomeini’s fatwa? Hashemi chooses to ignore the fact that Matar has said nothing about having to be convinced by anyone to stab Rushdie. The fatwa in force since 1989 was all he needed.
The other possibility, which I [Nader Hashemi] actually think is much more likely, is that this young kid Hadi Matar was in communication with someone online who claimed to be an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps member or supporter and lured him into attacking Salman Rushdie and that so-called person online claiming to be affiliated with the Islamic Republic of Iran could’ve been a Mossad operative.”
“Could’ve been a Mossad operative.” There is no evidence that Hadi Matar had been in communication with anyone before his attack. The FBI has turned up not the slightest hint that anyone lured him to stab Rushdie. That includes Mossad agents pretending to be Iranian agents. Every part of this fable is a product of Nader Hashemi’s perfervid imagination, and his malevolent desire to blame Israel for the attempted murder of Rushdie. What we do know, from Matar’s mother Silvana Fardos, is that her son’s 2018 trip to visit his father in Lebanon changed him, as she put it, from an outgoing, American-raised boy to an angry introvert who criticized her for not raising him to follow Islam. In other words, his stay in Lebanon “radicalized” him. And that is what turned him into a would-be killer.
Why would the Mossad attack Rushdie?
Hashemi went on to suggest that Israel’s motive for carrying out a false flag operation would be to galvanize opposition to the ongoing efforts of world powers to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement.
“Israel has taken a very strong position against reviving the Iran nuclear agreement,” he said. “We were in very sensitive negotiations, like an agreement was imminent, and then the attack on Salman Rushdie takes place. I think that’s one possible interpretation and scenario that could explain the timing of this at this moment during these sensitive political discussions related to Iran’s nuclear program.”
It is absurd to think that the attack on Rushdie, even had he died, would have prevented a return to the 2015 Iraq deal that Israel opposes. After all, Iran has been carrying out all sorts of attacks, directly and through its proxies, including the Houthis in Yemen, the Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, across the region for years. Yet none of that has affected the negotiations in Vienna.
The real question is this: why is Nader Hashemi, who has now shown himself to be a crude and semi-demented conspiracy theorist, still a member of the faculty at the University of Denver, and director of its Center for Middle East Studies? Even tenure should have its limits.
