In response to critics of PEN American Center’s decision to award Paris-based satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo with the 2015 Freedom of Expression Courage Award at the 2015 PEN Literary Gala—set to occur on May 5, 2015—Salman Rushdie had some strong, fighting words.

“The award will be given. PEN is holding firm. Just 6 pussies. Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character,” Rushdie wrote on Twitter on April 27.

The six authors Rushdie, former PEN president and author of The Satanic Verses, refers to are Peter Carey, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, and Taiye Selasi, who have withdrawn from the gala due to PEN’s decision to recognize the magazine in the wake of the January 7^th massacre the New York Times reports. Kushner’s comment to the Times sums up the reasons why the writers have withdrawn: she withdrew out of uneasiness with Charlie Hebdo’s “cultural intolerance” and “a kind of forced secular view.”

Cole elaborates on this concern in a January essay for the New Yorker’s website, in which he argues that the magazine “has gone specifically for racist and Islamophobic provocations. … The Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were not mere gadflies, not simple martyrs to the right to offend: they were ideologues. Just because one condemns their brutal murders doesn’t mean one must condone their ideology.”

Andrew Solomon, the president of PEN, told the Guardian that the award does not recognize the content of what Charlie Hebdo expresses, but rather, “expressed admiration for that commitment of free speech.”

“If we only endorsed freedom of speech for people whose speech we liked,” he said, “that would be a very limited notion of freedom of speech. It’s a courage award, not a content award.”

Solomon added in a letter sent on April 26 to the PEN Board, “We do not believe that any of us must endorse the content of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons in order to affirm the importance of the medium of satire, or to applaud the staff’s bravery in holding fast to those values in the face of life and death threats.”

Charlie Hebdo staff member Jean-Baptiste Thoret, who missed the attack because he arrived late for work that day, will accept the prize.