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Created: April 14, 2003
Latest Update: April 14, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Salman Rushdie and Islam

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, April 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This essay was prompted by Jack Miles review of Salman Rushdie's non-fiction collection. Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction, 1992-2002 L.A. Times, Sunday, April 14, 2003. Backup.

"Rushdie himself was sentenced to death in the infamous fatwa of Khomeini. (Through Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Khomeini's successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, renewed the sentence as recently as Feb. 14, 2003.) The existence of an Islamist network with so global a reach and so lethal a capacity was unrecognized before Rushdie. Its significance was underestimated even after Rushdie because the world thought Rushdie would be its only victim.

"Rushdie is a historic figure because he has become, for the whole world to see, a rich, happy, admired and successful ex-Muslim. In his worldwide fame, Rushdie is undoubtedly the most prominent apostate in Muslim history. The longer he lives, the more he changes the sociology of apostasy within the religious community into which he was born.

"For long centuries in their linked histories, Judaism and Christianity unhesitantly punished apostasy with death. Apostasy was defection to the enemy, whether the enemy was another faith or outright unbelief. It was religio-cultural treason; and as such, it was no less serious a crime than defection to the Soviet Union was for an American during the Cold War. In much of the Muslim world, apostasy is still a crime of this magnitude. But Muslims will eventually acquire the same freedom to change or abandon their religion that most Jews and Christians now enjoy. And when they do, Rushdie, unsaintly chap though he may be, will be honored as Spinoza and Hus are honored in the West."

Jack Miles in cited article.

Today, as we try to rediscover ways to speak to and hear one another, a questioning of our own views of apostasy are in order. Are we willing to kill over such differences, or can we relocate our flippancy and gain some social distance from our emotions. Refer back to Jack Miles' appreciation of Rushdie's flippancy.

More to come . . . jeanne. April 14, 2003.