I’m compelled to reply to James Hudson’s letter in the Feb. 24 Northern Star, since he has unduly linked an earlier argument I had made on the infamous Sigma skit and race relations on campus to make a case for Salman Rushdie and the Satanic Verses controversy.

Hudson’s argument revolves around “intolerance” by the so-called liberal governments of the world for the likes of Rushdie, upon whom sanctions should be imposed. This position disregards the political truism that regimes of diverse persuasions feel threatened by views, teachings or lifestyles that are incompatible with the principles or ideologies wielding those society’s. Thus, the United States rightly fears communism at its back door—in Cuba, and now, in Nicaragua. The USSR, on the other hand, rightly fears a non-communist country on its front porch—in the now unstable Afghanistan and the historically pugnacious Poland.

This is what makes educator and thinker Allan Bloom exclaim, “Always important is the political regime, which needs citizens who are in accord with its fundamental principle.” Hence McCarthyism. Iran is in a very similar position. It would have been surprising and illogical for Khomeini not to condemn Rushdie. The Ayatollah did not “overreact.” This is as it should be, considering Iran’s strain of fundamentalist Islamic teachings, which are inherently ultra-assertive and self-propagative.

Suffice it to say here that the Islamic religion has not been “bombarded” by the Enlightenment as much as Christianity by virtue of geography and historical forces. Consequently, Islamic groups in India and Pakistan have (like Christians in the past, for whom the religious was larger than the political) adopted positions similar to that of the Ayatollah’s.

Accordingly, condemnation of the Ayatollah by “governmnents around the world” is the just and best response. The Afghans justly resisted the Soviets. The Sandinistas are justly resisting the U.S.-backed contras, and the Iraqis are justly resisting Iranian encroachment. The “no toleration” principle that Mr. Hudson evokes is inconceivable in a anarchical international order. If Rushdie apologized, he did not have to. He deserves all the protection he can get from the British government. Needless to say, the same principle of “no toleration” assumes different proportions within the USA. Thus, since Hudson is guilty of compressing my original argument into a different context, I will tolerate him, and perhaps invite him to a roundtable of insightful and thought-provoking discussion.

Raymond Mulli

political science/international relations