Hadi Matar, the 24-year-old Lebanese-American charged with attempting to murder the British author Salman Rushdie, appears to have been acting on his own. Matar claims to be an admirer of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian supreme leader who issued the murderous fatwa against Rushdie in 1989 following the publication of the author’s novel The Satanic Verses. But there is no evidence that the attacker is linked in any way to the Iranian government.

Nonetheless, at least one commentator has called the assassination attempt an “act of statepromoted terrorism.” That description sounds about right. “State-promoted” is not the same as state-sponsored, much less state-directed. Even though the Iranian government has not in fact tried to kill Rushdie, Khomeini’s fatwa still stands, and the state must bear some responsibility for inspiring murderous fanatics like Matar.

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Killers or would-be killers have been fired up by violent language before, of course. Anders Breivik, the Norwegian who murdered 69 young people at a social-democratic summer camp in 2011, was an avid reader of writers who warned that Muslims, coddled by European liberals, posed a dire threat to Western civilisation. Does this mean that individual writers and bloggers whose output convinced Breivik that he should kill to save the West were partly responsible for his horrific deeds?

Much has been said, and rightly so, about Rushdie’s defence of free speech, and the price he has paid for his fortitude. In the United States, the Constitution protects right-wing activists who claim to be “at war” with Muslims or leftists, whom they see as an existential menace to America and the Christian way of life, so long as the culture warriors do not create “a clear and present danger.”

They may not threaten violence against any individual, because that would pose “a real, imminent threat,” but they can freely spout their hatred of any creed they want. European laws on free speech are tighter. In France, and many other European countries, it is prohibited to “defame or insult” a person or group on the grounds of ethnicity, nationality, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or disability. You may say that Islam, Christianity, or any other religion is abominable, but you may not insult an individual for his or her belief. There is a difference between insulting someone and offending them.

Whereas an insult is a deliberate attempt to wound, to offend is to hold an opinion that someone might find offensive, even though no offence is intended. A writer can be held responsible for an insult, but not for an offence. There is no evidence that Rushdie intended to insult anyone in The Satanic Verses, but he offended many people, whether they read the book or (usually) not. But, for many people, religion is much more than a set of rules or beliefs to which they adhere. Like nationality, it can constitute the core of a person’s identity.

A version of this story appears in the print edition of the September 3, 2022, issue.