Salman Rushdie and the freedom to offend

Why won't the Royal Society of Literature stand up for one of our finest authors?

In his novel Shalimar the Clown, Salman Rushdie traces the deterioration of Kashmir from a place where Muslims and Hindus could live together in peace and co-operation to a country ravaged by conflict. This descent is signalled early in the novel with the arrival of a character called the Iron Mullah, a blood-and-thunder preacher with “skin the colour o…