There was kind of a moment around 9/11 & invasion of Iraq&Afghanistan when the "left" (a term I hate, but I'll put aside that hate for now) pivoted on how it tr

There was kind of a moment around 9/11 & invasion of Iraq&Afghanistan when the "left" (a term I hate, but I'll put aside that hate for now) pivoted on how it treated Islam, Islamic countries & immigrants and speech which was inflammatory around Islam. And in that context I think there was on the whole some sympathy on "the left" for Rushdie before, and less so after. (But like, I also think you can't make any broad generalizations about "the left" which in the US especially is some sort of stupid umbrella term which collapses neo-liberal centrists in with radical socialists, as if they have much in common at all.) Prior to 9/11 the feminist movement and the left generally was fairly openly hostile about Islamic fundamentalism (and probably Islam generally), the Iranian regime, in the same way as it was around Christian fundamentalism, etc. e.g. I vaguely remember a feminist convention of some kind, I think in Toronto, late 90s? when a pro-Iranian women's group showed up and had a table, and it caused a big stir and a far left socialist feminist group of some sort went over and vandalized their table and tried to evict them, etc. But after the American/Republican reaction to 9/11 and the wave of brutal Islamaphobia ("clash of civilization" crap), acts of violence against immigrant Arab populations, invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, etc. many people on the left took principled positions on this that I think were on the whole more nuanced and were sympathetic to most Muslims in the context of the times; to try to denounce the imperialism colonialism, Christian nationalism, etc. that was flooding the culture. I think burning a Koran or whatever in a post-9/11 era is a lot different from pre/9-11. At least in the first 10 years of the millenium doing something like that is a clear and explicit racist and bigoted act. Rushdie, tho, that's more complicated. I think this has been a hard line to straddle. And many since took far more un-nuanced positions; idiots like George Galloway have taken their so-called anti-imperialism from this time and turned it into an outright pro-Putin, pro-Assad, reactionary politics which is in no way left wing or socialist, but ... at some point originated from there? It's worth pointing out that post the post-9/11 point Hitchens himself pivoted from "left" (with a good critique of liberalism) to neo-conservative hawk. And he did so in a pretty ugly way.