We Are All Salman Rushdie In The War Against Radical Islam
Amid the lurid insanity of Islamists rioting and killing over insults, we forget that the leading powers of political Islam as practiced today have been trying to kill Salman Rushdie for 23 years now.
Not over a sophomoronic attempt at a video, but because he wrote The Satanic Verses — a remarkably well written and artistically imagined novel that dared to express a view at odds with the global dictators of religious intolerance.
Rushdie has a new book now, Joseph Anton, which is a memoir about being radical Islam’s #1 criminal apostate.
WE ARE ALL SALMAN RUSHDIE, LIKE IT OR NOT
My biggest take-away is what should be obvious to every person who is not a radical Islamist: We are all Salman Rushdie. Yes Islamists want to kill each of us for being Christians, Jews, atheists, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists, followers of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence or Dykes on Bikes.
They especially want to kill gays, lesbians, “uppity” women, and apostate Muslims — those who are against child brides and female genital mutilation and who support religious tolerance, the education of women, or have some other unorthodox view of Islam.
This New York Times interview with Rushdie — “Life During Fatwa: Hiding in a World Newly Broken” — offers a taste of what underpins Joseph Anton. In it, he says:
“I found myself caught up in what you could call a world historical event. You could say it’s a great political and intellectual event of our time, even a moral event. Not the fatwa, but the battle against radical Islam, of which this was one skirmish.
“There have been arguments made even by liberal-minded people, which seem to me very dangerous, which are basically cultural relativist arguments: We’ve got to let them do this because it’s their culture. My view is no. Female circumcision — that’s a bad thing. Killing people because you don’t like their ideas — it’s a bad thing.
“We have to be able to have a sense of right and wrong which is not diluted by this kind of relativistic argument. And if we don’t we really have stopped living in a moral universe.”
STRIKE NO RISK PERSONAL BLOW AGAINST RADICAL ISLAM
No risk at all:
First read the NYT review: Rushdie Relives Difficult Years Spent in Hiding. That will show you where the book’s headed.
Second, buy Joseph Anton. And The Satanic Verses .
Third, form a reading group … even an impromptu one with close friends. Discuss the books.
Fourth — and most importantly — try to imagine what would be like if you were in Rushdie’s shoes.
Because you really are.
FEAR THE FUTURE
As Rushdie says, what we see so far are skirmishes. The war remains. Iran’s active support of Syrian President Assad’s slaughter of his own people. A nuclear Iran. Nightmare upon nightmare, around the globe, 24/7/365.
The death and destruction we have seen in the last weeks, the rioting and burning in a score of countries all whipped up by Islamist demagogues are scenes of a primitive past that is a harbinger of the future.
And we will not sweet-talk them into any sense of peace, sanity or co-existence. Obama and the UN have already tried that.
Now, imagine what alternatives the future holds.
