back to article Salman Rushdie hissy-fit forces Facebook name U-turn

Facebook has upset Salman Rushdie after the company initially refused to let the controversial author use his common name rather than his first name when signing up to the network. The writer, who is a newcomer to the Web2.0 game, explained on Twitter that his full name is Ahmed Salman Rushdie. "Amazing. 2 days ago FB …

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  1. nichomach
    Thumb Up

    Still don't fancy

    trying to finish Midnight's Children, but full marks to the man.

  2. Tom_

    Twat

    I'm glad he's ok, but it's tough shit if you're not famous.

    1. oddie

      yup, doubt many of us have the fame to excert this kind of pressure..

      but surely all the problems with him initially being declared not-salman-rushdie comes from him being famous in the first place? and his only objection to using his 'real' name after establishing that he was indeed himself, is that he is better known as 'salman rushdie' (as per my post, the name of the article, and the name on the cover of his books?)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        real?

        Salman is his "real" name. He just happens to have more than one christian/forename. I also use the middle name. Handy, people trying to be matey by using my first name clearly are salesmen or agents and at any rate people not knowing me well enough to use my christian name at all.

        We do not all fall into some tidy USA-centric box, thank heavens.

      2. Arthur Dent

        @oddie - yup, doubt.....

        You are obviosly so completely bound by some North American Anglo-Saxon concept of how names work that you are not aware that some parts of the rest of the world have different conventions.

        IN Scotland, we used to suffer badly from this: during teh 19th and most of teh 20th centuries the dominant English speakers provideed all the registrars of births, and they refused to record Gaelic names. So the parent's of someone whose name was Seumas Dhomhuill Mac a' Phi would be asked what the hell that meant, and when they replied "it's the Gaelic form of Donald's James Mac a Fee" the name would be registered as "Donald James MacAfee". So the patronymic is first, the personal name is second, and the family name is third (and all three names are completely screwed up, but that's not the point - the point is the re-ordering caused by different for order of nouns in genetive grammatical relationships).

        Think of it this way: to many cultures the natural order of the names, when translated to English, is <father's name><my name><family name>; the second term in that string is the only real name, all the rest is just explaining which one of the people who use that real name you are.

        I understand this because I suffer from it personally; and I suffer from the lunatic idea of translating names in the first place too: notice how the personal name in the above (which, incidentally, has no connection with me) changed from Seumas (which would be "Sheumais", which you probably know as "Hamish", in the vocative case) to James. If all your friends and family and neighbours call you "Hamish" how do you react when some total stranger starts calling you "Donald" instead, and would "James" be much better? One of my pet complaints about speakers (especially USAian ones) of English is how they don't understand that other cultures have other conventins and certainly don't understand that names are declined by grammatical case in many languages.

    2. Robert E A Harvey

      Yes, I reckon that as usual it's the poor what gets the blame or whatever.

      I know loads of people whose name everyone knows is nothing to do with what it says on their passport.

      In the UK at least your name is what you are known as, nothing more nothing less.

  3. Mike Flugennock
    Thumb Down

    Well, Rushdie _is_ right...

    Farcebook _is_ run by morons. This kind of pissfight over "real" names is proof.

    At any rate... good for you, Mr. Rushdie. Shame you have to be famous to get any action out of Farcebook, and a shame he was forced to show them his passport.

    I recently was forced to give up my mobile phone number to have one of my Gmail accounts reactivated after Google suspended it, citing "suspicious activity" (as they have yet to define what the "activity" was, I'll have to assume they're doing it to drag in all the "refuseniks" who aren't giving in to the "let us have your mobile number in case your account is compromised" nag). Technically, it wasn't a phish as I got the message from Google as I was logging in (rather than a scam email), though due to their inability to tell me what the actual "suspicous activity" was, I'll have to assume that Google is phishing for mobile numbers.

    Normally, I would've withheld my mobile number and abandoned the account, but it was the account I had to establish to set up a blog on Blogspot. Bastards. Call it a "hissy fit" if you want, but I'm totally behind Rushdie on this one.

    1. TheRealRoland
      Unhappy

      Compartmentalizing...

      At least we now know that when we see a scan of Mr. Rushdie's passport online, we know with a relatively high degree of certainty where it must have come from.

      :-(

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Farcebook _is_ run by morons...."

      Billionaire morons.

      1. Andy Enderby 1

        but....

        ..... still morons. Riches are no indication of common sense merely that someone has something that someone else wants to buy. If folk should no longer want to buy then those riches can potentially start to disappear when the venture capitalists call in the debt.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anything that annoys Rushdie is good with me

    As he is a self-important, pretentious dick; like Umberto Ecoo but with less of a sense of humour. To call his output turgid would be unfair to turgidity...

    </rant>

    I feel better now. As you were.

    1. Marvin the Martian
      Meh

      Just a thought.

      Maybe try a literacy program first, then possibly some Enid Blyton, before chewing off large pieces...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @AC

      Blimey - I never realized he was able to force you to buy his books and make you read them?

      What a git. He never does that with me, or anyone else I know.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        re: "@AC"

        According to a friend who worked for the publisher, they actually had an in-office prize of a crate of wine for the first person to actually finish The Satanic Verses. No-one claimed it.

        Also, to the angry daily mail reader foaming about Enid Blyton above, I was paid to review it, in fact. The review was not favourable. Unlike you, I am quite comfortable with books that lack pictures.

        Go on, downvote me again, and then go back to fapping over the Clarkson voice on your satnav, thereby confirming every redtop stereotype.

        1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
          Meh

          Just in case he didn't, I did.

          Happy now?

        2. Marvin the Martian

          "angry daily mail reader"

          Whahahahahahaha hahahah. Hahahah. Hm... snif. Mwahahaha ahhahahhhahhahah.

          A reader would not have linked "(possibly) pro-Rushdie and (definitely) anti-Blyton" to the DM. And "angry"? Hm. Possibly I'd expect a reader's vocabulary on emotions to extend beyond those in the books I give to my one year old --- happy/sad/angry, but maybe you didn't review it in the English version.

          Try again.

    3. Naughtyhorse

      lemmie guess...

      running your finger along the page under all those words gave you a booboo?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The moral of the story...

    Sometimes Jihad works.

  6. banjomike
    WTF?

    Morons???

    This from a man who managed to insult his own religion enough to get death threats from other members of it.

    1. Armando 123
      Mushroom

      Hey!

      You say that like it's a bad thing. Insult socialism in front of my in-laws and you get the same thing. And they are exACTly the kind of people who approach socialism as a religion.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Insult socialism in front of my in-laws and you get the same thing."

        Issue an edict calling for your execution? That's pretty harsh. Maybe you should have your wife talk to them.

    2. Martin
      WTF?

      It shouldn't matter whose religion it is....

      ...it should be possible to insult it without actually getting death threats.

      1. Robert E A Harvey

        You can't insult the church of England

        No matter what you say, one of the idiots will turn round and say "You might have a point there".

        It makes them impervious to satire and ridicule.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    writer's block?

    "Rushdie kept up the pressure on the dominant social network by continuously tweeting to his 115,000 followers in the hope of getting a response from Zuckerberg's crew."

    Doesn't he have better things to do?

    1. oddie
      Happy

      I know, does he think he can write for a living or something?

    2. Stratman

      I wonder how many of the 115,000 managed to finish reading his tweets.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      re: "writer's block?"

      Don't knock it. Every hour that he wastes on facebook is one less squeezing out a new novel.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Highly unlikely, self serving a-holes are just like that.

  8. Tegne
    Childcatcher

    I hear Jon Venables had a similar problem.

    That is all.

  9. The Vociferous Time Waster
    Thumb Down

    I do wonder...

    I do wonder why so many people wanted to kill Ahmed Rushdie, he's such a 'people person'.

    Twat.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @VTW

      Like all authors - his name *is* his public profile, or brand.

      For him to make a fuss to assert/use is name/brand makes perfect sense to me?

    2. R.P.Charlie
      Devil

      Maybe they confused

      him with A(c)hmed the Dead Terrorist?

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwOL4rB-go

  10. Alien8n
    Alien

    We had a kid at school who was muslim make a big fuss about the Satanic Verses so I went out and borrowed it from the library. Don't think I even got past the first page, only book I think I've ever read that was written worse than the first Harry Potter book.

  11. austerusz
    WTF?

    Yeah

    Thank you Salman Rushdie, master of the obvious.

  12. AlexS
    IT Angle

    Saw Mr Rushdie once

    True story - I was at a members bar full of er.... younger individuals. Salman comes in with his very tall girlfriend. When he left (which was a pretty quick drink) a young man comes up and says "You are Salmon Rushdie right?" "Yes" he replies.... the man responds "I'm such a fan - I've got all your records!".

    ... Quick exit....

    1. elsonroa
      Devil

      I _have_ got all Salman Rushdie's records!

      A little known fact about Mr Rushdie is that back when he was an advertising drone he wrote and was credited with the lyrics of a promotional record for the Burnley Building Society. You can find it on YouTube, but be quick before he pulls another hissy fit and issues a takedown request...

      1. JulianB

        Also "The ground beneath her feet"

        I think it was called that. Lyrics by Rushdie, music by U2.

  13. Days-Of-Wild

    Now all he has to do

    Is deactivate his account and state that Facebook is crap and it all wasn't worth the trouble.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    His Only Mistake

    Was not walking away in the end.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Clearly...

    ... Mr Rushdie doesn't want to be Ahmed and Dangerous.

  16. Levente Szileszky
    Stop

    Conclusion: FB is run by ignorant morons

    But,sadly, I'm not surprised - I noticed this trend here, in the US: for some reason it's now a badge of honor to be absolutely stupid, clueless, ignorant and it's not limited to the flag-wavers of right-wing populist idiocy anymore but it's widespread among the rest of the so-called 'educated class'...

    1. Old n Cynical
      Thumb Up

      Sad, but true.

      The contagion has spread. It's been surreptitiously spreading throughout the UK for a few decades, predominantly in the far right and the socialist left and is now infecting many in the central ground. The Moron Contagion has also been prevalent among those directing education policy in the UK for many a year.

      1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
        Unhappy

        Moron-ism is the new 'kool'

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        The Cat Crap on the Vegetables...

        ... probably explains it.

        http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/07/brain_manipulating_parasite/

  17. tonysmith

    the same guy who had millions of tax payers money spent on his security by the British.gov and then he said he hated Britain? (or something like that)

    He most probably needed the cheap publicity - FB should charge him for that.

  18. mumm-ra

    Yay

    Rushdie is a slimy, pretentious twat, whose output is best employed in the construction of papier-mache clown scarers. His dreary, self-congratulatory drivel is a depressing waste of dead trees, so this story of him finding something new to squinny about pleases me greatly.

    Cheers, reg.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    One of Life's Great Mysteries .............

    How did Khomeini manage to wade through enough of Rushdie's claptrap to decree that Satanic Verses insulted Islam?

    (If you know anyone who has read SV all the way through, you belong to the world's smallest minority group.)

    1. Graham Marsden
      FAIL

      Like so many idiots...

      ... Khomenei didn't actually bother reading the book before condemning it.

      Rather like a lot of commentards on this thread...

    2. RaeS
      Happy

      Read it. Enjoyed it. Re-read it some years later.

  20. malfeasance

    Why the fatwa

    The I'm a member of the worlds smallest minority group. It's been a while since I read it but IIRC the section that resulted in the fatwa was a dream sequence-esque thing whereby the prophet Mohammed was imagined to be human and to have human foibles.

    That was pretty much it. It was about 1/2 way through.

    Facebook doesn't allow you to compartmentalise your social relationships so I have to have more than 1 account. One for me and another for my evil twin skippy.

    1. tonysmith

      there was more to it I think

      I just read the wiki entry for this - never really knew what the actual issues where

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses_controversy#Controversial_elements_of_The_Satanic_Verses

      it looks like he went out of his way to cause a storm in every way possible. I suppose it was the only way he was going to sell the book.

  21. AlexS
    Holmes

    Strange

    Spotted him today with his guitar. He's very polite and humble in real life to be quite honest.

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