Statements by Writers at Public Forum Organized by American P. E. N

Usually in this century writers are killed by secular authorities. Hitler and Stalin habitually murdered writers who offended them, the Gang of Four went after the writers and poets of China, and of course, Latin American generals, to this moment, take turns outdoing each other in the peculiar sport. Iran itself under the rule of detested Shah Palavi, who was installed in a coup staged and funded by the CIA, committed writers and other Islamic intellectuals to prison without trial and then routinely tortured and murdered them. In fact, such excesses of secular dictatorship led to the Iranian revolution under the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini. So in this century at least, we in the West tend not to think of the killing of writers as a particularly religious thing to do. Islam is a great worldwide faith. An Outsider can imagine a writer's blasphemy against it as a profound sacrilege, and at the same time wonder why the blasphemer cannot be recovered for the faith under the instruction of the clergy. We have to wonder why the blasphemy must be the occasion for the writer's contract murder rather than his enlightenment by means of serene spiritual counsel that would lead him through his penitence and remorse to true piety and possibly redemption. Even if such a course were not possible, one thinks surely the mechanism of excommunication, the most extreme punishment in the language of religion, would be the preferred theological version of the death sentence without trial, which has been established in this century as the technique of the profane tyrannies. The great religions endure by their magnanimity of embrace. This is part of their truth, their embrace of the wretched fallibility of each of us, so that we may hope to live in some state of worshipful reconciliation with our maker. To go with God, to apprehend what is sacred, to live in clear spiritual resolution, is the desire of every human being of whatever faith. It is even the desire of intellectuals,