Sir Salman...

So, having been inspired by Sir Salman Rushdie's quote on Selfistan to start this particular blog, I feel it is necessary to comment on his recent knighthood. Rushdie, as many of you hopefully know, is an author of Indian origin. Born in Bombay, he did his initial schooling in the city of dreams and then went to the UK - Cambridge if I am not mistaken - for his post-grad degree(s).

His family background, as his name suggests, is Muslim; but Rushdie left the ummah at a young age. Why? I don't know; perhaps he found it too restricting. Anyway, in 1988 he wrote The Satanic Verses - a book that touched on the issue of verses delivered to the Prophet Mohammed by Satan, which were then apparently rescinded once Mohammed realized their true nature. On February 14th of that year, he received a fatwa - essentially a death sentence - from Ayatollah Khomeini for being a traitor to Islam and for questioning Mohammed and the religion. For the next few years, he went into hiding; one of his publishers was killed; stores that sold his books were firebombed.

Anyway, so his recent knighthood has rekindled hatred for the author in the Islamic world. Now, as you may have guessed, I'm a huge fan of Sir Salman's and have always hoped that he would receive the Nobel Prize for Literature someday. I have also always maintained that he is a much better writer than VS Naipaul, who received the Nobel a few years ago. But at the same time, I think that knighting Rushdie at this point in time was an incorrect move. The Middle East is already feeling as if the West wants to destroy its culture and religion, and this notion is somewhat reinforced by knighting one who has lambasted Islam, at times, and is not in favour with those in the Muslim world.

I was born here in the West and I am also of Muslim heritage - although I do not consider myself Muslim in the true sense. I feel a connection with both sides and I am afraid that Samuel P. Huntington's theory of a Clash of Civilizations is going to occur. Obviously, like countless others, I will be caught in the middle. It seems to me that the West - in particular the USA and the UK - will stop at nothing and will continue to clash head-on with the Islamic world until one side wins and the other loses. I went to a graduation ceremony the other day, and a prominent right-wing journalist delivered the keynote address. In it, he stated that his parents' generation had fought fascism. His generation had fought communism, and it was up to us to fight fear and Islamism.

I agree, to an extent. It is up to my generation to fight fear - not just the fear that Islamists supposedly instil in us - but the fear that the West instils in the Middle East. The fear that is heightened every time the USA supports Israel and invades another Middle Eastern country; the fear that is heightened every time the USA threatens to bomb an Islamic country into the Stone Age; the fear that is heightened every time CNN deals with Islamism.

They - the Middle East's radicals - are not the only ones who have the ability to make others afraid. We - the Western nations - perhaps have a greater ability to do so. We have the economic and political means to do so. Sir Salman's knighthood, is just one of those.


That's it for now...ciao, adios, au revoir..and remember...to be born again first you must die...

~me