False anti-Islam quote attributed to Salman Rushdie
Quote surfaces amid release of Salman Rushdie’s latest novel
Claim: Author Salman Rushdie recently said, “The large majority of peaceful Muslims don’t matter because I was attacked by just one Muslim who followed Quran. All religions are not same because they have not codified death to whoever doesn’t believe in their religion. On my life I want to warn the world that Islam will not rest till every other society, culture, and religion is either annihilated or converted.”
Fact: No reliable platforms attributed this quote to Rushdie, who himself has refuted it as “fake”.
On 7 February 2023, Facebook user ‘Saket Kumar’ posted a visual comprising a picture of Indian-origin British-American author Salman Rushdie and a quote attributed to him.
The quote claimed to have been said by Rushdie — who is described in the visual in question as a “Survivor of an Islamic violence” — is as follows:
“The large majority of peaceful Muslims don’t matter because I was attacked by just one Muslim who followed Quran.”
The viral quote comes following the publication of the 75-year-old Rushdie’s first interview in The New Yorker after an assassination attempt in August 2022, when the 24-year-old suspect, Hadi Matar, stabbed the novelist over a dozen times when he was on the stage at an event in Chautauqua town.
The author has been mired in controversy for much of his life, especially after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — Iran’s then-Supreme Leader — issued a fatwa, or Islamic decree, against him, calling for his execution and labelling his novel “The Satanic Verses” blasphemous.
Rushdie resettled in New York in 2000 after almost a decade living under police protection. He released his latest book, “Victory City,” on 7 February 2023. The August 2022 attack left him blind in his right eye, with a scar on his cheek.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check ran a keyword search on Google and tried to find the quote on Salman Rushdie’s social media profiles as well but no relevant results came up.
We did, however, find a rebuttal on the author’s Twitter account — a legacy verified profile — in which he wrote: “Fake quote. Not said by me.”
Fake quote. Not said by me, https://t.co/TzaZq158aJ
— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) February 7, 2023
The tweet by Rushdie, which was posted on 7 February 2023, was viewed over 660,100 times, as of writing time. The post he responded to includes a longer quote, which reads as follows:
“The large majority of peaceful Muslims don’t matter because I was attacked by just one Muslim who followed Quran. All religions are not same because they have not codified death to whoever doesn’t believe in their religion. On my life I want to warn the world that Islam will not rest till every other society, culture, and religion is either annihilated or converted.”
The grammatical errors in the false quote attributed to Rushdie also hint at its baselessness.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the quote here, here, here, here, here, here, and here on Facebook, here on a news outlet’s website, and here and here on Twitter.
Conclusion: Salman Rushdie has refuted the anti-Islam quote being attributed to him as “fake”.
Background image in cover photo: Randall Slavin via salmanrushdieauthor
[…] Therefore, Soch Fact Check concludes that the quote was falsely attributed to Rushdie. We have previously debunked another anti-Islam quote that was wrongly linked to the author here. […]