Monday, September 12, 2005
SALMAN RUSHIE RESPONDS
The Times (via my wife):
(His original piece is here.) In this follow up, Rushdie is rightfully firm, and goes so far as to take up the challenge and offer his own prescription for "reformation" or (as he was willing to re-term it) "Enlightenment". Two of his points:
Go read the entire thing. ¶ by Robert, Monday, September 12, 2005
The Times (via my wife):
A FEW weeks ago, in an article written in response to the London bombings, I wrote about the urgent need for a “reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age”.
The response to this article has been widespread and extremely interesting. Naturally there were those who rushed to dismiss my arguments because they came out of my mouth...
The response to this article has been widespread and extremely interesting. Naturally there were those who rushed to dismiss my arguments because they came out of my mouth...
(His original piece is here.) In this follow up, Rushdie is rightfully firm, and goes so far as to take up the challenge and offer his own prescription for "reformation" or (as he was willing to re-term it) "Enlightenment". Two of his points:
...The idea that all Muslims are kin to all others should be re-examined. The truth is that, as the bitter divisions between Iraqi Sunnis and Shias demonstrate, it is a fiction, and when it deludes young men such as the British 7/7 bombers into blowing up their own country in the name of an essentially fantastical idea of Islamic brotherhood (few British Muslims would find life in conservative Muslim countries tolerable), it is a dangerous fiction.
Pan-Islamism, part 2: the people most directly injured by radical Islam are other Muslims: Afghan Muslims by the Taleban, Iranian Muslims by the rule of the ayatollahs; in Iraq, most people killed by the insurgency are Muslims, too. Yet Muslim rhetoric concentrates on the crimes of “the West”. It may be that Muslims need to re-direct their rage against the people who are really oppressing and killing them...
Pan-Islamism, part 2: the people most directly injured by radical Islam are other Muslims: Afghan Muslims by the Taleban, Iranian Muslims by the rule of the ayatollahs; in Iraq, most people killed by the insurgency are Muslims, too. Yet Muslim rhetoric concentrates on the crimes of “the West”. It may be that Muslims need to re-direct their rage against the people who are really oppressing and killing them...
Go read the entire thing. ¶ by Robert, Monday, September 12, 2005
