From an interview with Salman Rushdie by Spiegel Online:
SPIEGEL:... Perhaps your sharpest critic, John le Carré, accused you of having attacked a known enemy, one that reacted as was to be expected, to which you cried "foul."
Rushdie: I think he would probably regret having said these things, because it is a way of saying all intellectuals who have ever stood up against tyrants deserved what they get. García Lorca knew how brutal Franco was. Osip Mandelstam knew what to expect from Stalin. Should they just have kept their mouth shut? Raising their voices against known enemies is precisely what writers have done honorably throughout the history of literature. For le Carré to say that's their own stupid fault is naïve at best. It dishonored the history of literature.
SPIEGEL: But perhaps attacking a religion isn't the same thing as criticizing a dictatorship.
Rushdie: I insist on the right to freedom of expression, even when it comes to religions.
This, from John Kampfner (with whom I do not always see eye to eye), is also to the point here:
Incitement is a direct exhortation to violence. It is not saying something that could lead to violence by people who feel offended.
Yea, verily.
