jordan484 wrote on Oct 1^st, 2008 at 9:09am:


He seemed confused, I was just seeking clarification.

I was surprised that you didn't jump onto it...being the grammer nazi that you are. Oh right...sorry, I forgot..he isn't muslim.

Lestat wrote on Oct 1^st, 2008 at 1:43pm:


That's grammAr Lestat, grammAr.

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A muslim believing muslims never contribute to anything bad in the world ever. I don't think one can get any more biased or blind. It must be nice living in your world of delusion and deflection, although I suspect you just could not fathom believing anything else, that would be too hard for you to accept. I was amused by you, now I just pity you.

Not really, I have my family and friends around to keep me company. Not that you mean any by that, just trying to have another dig which fails completely.

I'm not that blind as to deny the fact that non-muslims have their share of blame in the whole scheme of things. Being a muslim does not protect one from fault. But that's what you and apu try to prove. It is biased. It is bigoted. It is blind.

Ooops....I made a typo. I forgot to add the "thing" to "anything". Thanks for picking me up on that, and I will try and learn from my mistakes and not make the same mistake twice. Perhaps you could do the same?

I don't hate people based on their religion, I despise people who are blinded BY their religion, those who believe their religion is not responsible for anything, whose religion is never at fault, and whose religion never causes death, destruction and violence. I despise those who ARE bigoted, who are biased and who cannot accept any other alternative than what has been dictated by some odd ball hundreds of years ago. I am happy to explore alternatives, to be involved with freedom of thought, independent thought and progression. I despise those who are not.

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Must be.

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No, I said I despise people who are blinded BY their religion. There's a difference.

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You are bigoted against non-muslims, past, present and future.
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Believe what you want, do what you want, but that doesn't prove you are right.

back to the topic.


TWENTY years after the publication of the book that almost cost him his life, Salman Rushdie is still glad that he wrote The Satanic Verses.

In the second of a series of interviews with leading cultural figures filmed exclusively for The Times, he tells Clive James that he "wouldn't not have wanted" to be the writer asking the big questions about religion and civilisation posed by the book.

His remarks are uncomfortably pertinent, coming at a time when Muslim extremists have again driven a literary figure into hiding. This time the victim is Martin Rynja, a Dutch-born London publisher who had agreed to release The Jewel of Medina, a controversial novel by Sherry Jones about the Prophet Muhammad's relationship with his nine-year-old bride, Aisha.

Mr Rynja's home in Islington, North London, was firebombed in the early hours on Saturday. Undercover police tipped him off hours earlier and arrested three men from East London.

Rushdie criticised Random House, his own publisher, in August for refusing to publish the book in the US, calling it "censorship by fear."

The interview stretches beyond the fatwa against Rushdie. It ranges from the partition of India to how he played air-guitar Elvis on a squash racket when a child in Bombay.

Rushdie says he is an atheist who finds dead religions "much more attractive" but says he has nothing against true believers until their faith spills over into the public sphere and becomes "my business".

Like all the interviewees in the series (Sir Tom Stoppard was the first and Germaine Greer is among others to appear later on Times Online) Rushdie is filmed chatting on a sofa in James's London flat.

The Times first reviewed The Satanic Verses 20 years ago today. The review carried no hint of the controversy to come but praised the book as "better than Midnight's Children", Rushdie's Booker Prize-winning second novel.

The first sign of serious trouble came four days later when India banned the book after complaints that it was offensive to Muslims and protests began in Muslim communities around the world. In February 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini, then supreme leader of Iran, issued a fatwa calling on all Muslims to murder Rushdie, and the writer went into hiding for the best part of ten years.

Rushdie says: "The question I'm always asking myself is: are we masters or victims? Do we make history or does history make us? Do we shape the world or are we just shaped by it? The question of do we have agency in our lives or whether we are just passive victims of events is, I think, a great question and one that I have always tried to ask. In that sense I wouldn't not have wanted to be the writer that asked it."

During his time in hiding there were explosions at bookshops in London, York and High Wycombe, the book's Japanese translator was stabbed to death, its Italian translator survived a stabbing, its Norwegian publisher narrowly escaped an attempt on his life and 37 people died after a gang set fire to a Turkish hotel where the Turkish translator was staying (he survived).

The writer is more relaxed about his security today but the fatwa cannot be annulled, and when he was knighted last year protests in Pakistan and Malaysia called for his death. No wonder Rushdie prefers "dead religions".



http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24430461-2703,00.html