Writing is a wondrous and fulfilling endeavour but it can place your life and friendships at risk

A few months ago, a friend and fellow writer recalled to me something that was said by someone whom I cannot recall at the moment. It went something like this: “When a writer is born, the family dies…”.

In the days following the cruel and merciless attack on Salman Rushdie, and the savage criticism of “the liberal” press I have thought hard and long about that reference to “when a writer is born, the family dies.” The same, I guess, can be said about everyone with whom we share a multiplicity of affiliations.

Of course, nobody is born a writer. Once you start out on the road to writing — the privilege of becoming a full-time writer, especially — and if done well, remaining loyal to sound principles that include critical thinking is difficult, but to the writer, it can be fulfilling.

It can also be thankless, and as we have known from years of persecution of journalists and thinkers, and more recently with the attack on Rushdie, it can also be dangerous and life-threatening. I have lost count of the number of times members or followers of the Economic Freedom Fighters have sent me blood-curdling messages, and more recently faced almost complete rejection by family and friends because of what I have written.

These are, of course, small potatoes compared to the cruelty, and I want to say zealous populist moralism passing itself off as righteousness or self-endowed “superior logic”, that is at the base of the persecution of writers and thinkers who dare to confront orthodoxy or things that have slipped into “common sense” — like the convention that certain religious texts are beyond question or satire.

The attack on Rushdie is, therefore, part of a tradition that reaches back to the vicious persecution of thinkers, and notably of scientists, by religious zealots for publishing anything that runs against the grain of religious doctrine.

The most notable of these was, of course, Galileo Galilei who was convicted in 1633 for publishing evidence that supported the fact that the Earth revolved around the Sun whereas the Catholic Church (at the time) placed the Earth and not the Sun at the centre of the universe.

More recently, one of my favourite thinkers, Alan Turing, was chemically castrated in the 1950s for “homosexual acts” — and was removed from his research position for what was described at the time as abnormal and uncontrollable behaviour. A couple of years ago I was told that my interest in quantum physics would be significantly enhanced if only I read the Quran…

As for writers, we do so at our own peril, especially if you stay behind principles — like getting as close to the truth as possible and defending it — and brace for the worst coordinated forces that batter you from all sides.