So are you saying its understandable why people he has villified in his books may respond negatively? After all, it is their history and lore?
Islam vs. the Western World: off-topic posts from a Religion thread
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So are you saying its understandable why people he has villified in his books may respond negatively? After all, it is their history and lore?
Lahiri relates to the eastern ethos. Rushdie writes stuff that no one cares about. I remember reading Midnights Children and thinking wtf? It doesn't matter what you think of the audience, it matters what the audience thinks. Pulitzer prizes are not worth much if books gather dust on shelves. Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth even Kiran Desai and Kahlid Hosseini will be recognised. People ironically will recognise Salman Rushdie mostly because of the fatwa.
Sure you do. The only reason you even know how many civilians are being killed is because Western humanitarian agencies keep track of it, for the purposes of holding governments' feet to the fire. And then there are the myriad smaller organizations and individuals that speak and act on such a basis.
Who's ignoring anything? One can condemn both the Rushdie fatwa AND actions of Western states, after all. And many people do exactly that. You seem to have some crazy idea that you need to downplay the Rushdie fatwa if you want to also oppose US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is nonsense. The two don't depend on one another in any consequential way.
And while Rushdie managed to survive by going underground with government guards for many years, many others weren't so lucky. Real murders really took place. That said, the "whining" (fuck you, BTW) is about the assault on free speech the world over, not the particular fate of one man. How many publishers the world over have been intimidated into refusing good work, lest some asshole on the other side of the world target them as part of a Holy War?
Not a lot
Compared to the civilians bombed in the last three months by the US? Gee what do you think? Compared to "the price is worth it" half a million kids under five killed in Iraq under UN sanctions? Negligible. Compared to the people tortured in Gitmo? We don't do body counts.
Ridiculous. I've read both authors, and Lahiri is noticeably more "Western" in her orientation than Rushdie. Also, formulaic, superficial and introverted. So take your identity assertions back where they came from: bad writing is bad writing, and great writing is great writing.
Rushdie is a challenging author, and I doubt very much that you possess the intellect to appreciate his work. Which is okay: postmodern epics are infamous for alienating casual readers. An open, flexible mind is required, along with a serious investment of time and consideration, none of which seem to be your strong suits.
Meanwhile, people who know about these things are pretty much unanimous on the subject of his value as an author.
Actually, I regard the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction to be a mark against the quality of a book. The Booker Prize (which is the one Rushdie actually won) is more reputable, but the real test is the sentiment of the literary community. And they are pretty clear on both Rushdie's monumental status, as well as Lahiri's niche appeal and limited skills.
Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses are two of the most celebrated English-language novels in the past few decades. Of my friends that are serious readers (which is most of them), all have read at least one. These will still be read decades after Rushdie is dead. Lahiri, on the other hand, probably not.
Again, the vacuous response. None of this has anything to do with Rushdie, and responding this way just makes you look dishonest and immature.
Probably. Won't change the fact that Rushdie writes about things that not many people care about in the east. Its the Mahabharata that survives, not Aryabhattas treatise. Literarature is what people want to read. Not what someone thinks they should.
IOW, Iranians who have been 25 years under the Savak are less likely to care about free speech than those who voted for Mossadegh.
When the policy is to declare self determination as terrorism and puppets as friendly allies, there is not much moral ground for assertions of freedom of expression.
IOW, you eat babies for breakfast, and support the dispossession of ethnic Tibetans.
The price is worth it *burp* *kick*
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Of course, there always is disinformation with issues of this magnitude and they're probably worth discussing, but not if the focus is entirely one sided. Disinformation exists on both sides of the issue.
If you're referring to Bush's born-again Christian zealotry, I might tend to agree with you that he most likely places those beliefs squarely in the middle of his Islamic based decision-making processes.
And, you can rant on and on about Bush, but that doesn't preclude the fact there shouldn't be focus on anything else.
No, they're not.
Why do Muslims demand to incorporate Sharia law outside of Islamic nations, particularly in the West?
Perhaps you'll go there some day and see for yourself?
Islam becoming a raging lion? Yes, I see the hypocrisy of that.
Yes, more of a fantasy.
The lack of intellectual honesty?
The facts as presented by Diamondhearts?
Ashes?
More were killed by Muslim extremists in suicide bombs and car bombs ...yet you seem to simply gloss right over that fact. Why?
More Muslims are killed my Muslims than anyone else!
Baron Max
Its cause and effect Baron. How many [unsupported by the US] Muslims were killing Muslims before the American occupation?
Again, you have no basis for claiming that people in "the east" (where is that, exactly?) think anything about Rushdie, or anything else for that matter. That YOU don't like Rushdie is a failing on your part, not a defect of "easterners."
You should stop trying to inflate your personal opinions into issues of national identity. It begs the question of why you are so insecure in your own beliefs, and implies that you don't have defensible reasons for them.
What policy? Not mine, certainly. I have no trouble recognizing the difference between terrorism and self-determination, and so I should have plenty of ground left over to complain about both free speech, policy on airstrikes, geopolitics, and anything else I might like.
You don't get to say who is entitled to speak about what. That's what freedom of speech is.
So what? He didn't vilify anyone. He attacked religious bigotry.
Interesting religion y'all have, SAM. A few Americans land in a Muslim country and Muslims begin killing other Muslims! Damn, we should land the Marines in every Muslim country, then there'd be a helluva lot less Muslims, wouldn't there?
Muslims killing Muslims is really a strange thing to me. And even stranger is that most of the Muslims here seem to defend that killing. Odd, really odd.
Baron Max
Yeah, I'm sure Salman Rushdie is a household name in India. Before the fatwa, he was just another Anglo-Indian author.
After it, he went through phases, lying and pretending, to cash in on it.
Now he visits Israel and pretends he's accomplishing something.
Exactly.
It is perfectly understandable that both Ayatollah Khomeini and Indira Ghandi reacted negatively to the ways they were portrayed in his novels.
But his books don't contain villification of Muslims, in general, or Islam, in general. He comes from a Muslim family, after all.
And if you think that his works DO villify Muslims, or whoever, then I would be willing to bet money that you haven't read them in the first place.
He is one of "them," in the sense of inheriting history and lore.
The "situation" has little to do with the content of Rushdie's books. Clueless.arsalan said:
I haven't read the Satanic Verses, and probably never will read it. I read some earlier stuff, but I'm not a fan.
And I suggest to you that the implications of speeches or writings by "church leaders" are not the same thing as the congregation of a church shouting "death to the Arabs and Palestinians", which I doubt ever happened even once in the US.arsalan said:
Now it's "core laws from which our traffic rules are derived". So neither the Constitution nor the kinds of laws you listed earlier? It keeps shifting. You keep overlooking the nature of the conditioning you are talking about - in which the Pillars are involved, apparently, or at least so it appears to an outsider. Something like that is involved.arsalan said:
Now you are hypothesizing research and educational institutions equivalent to the top tier of the Western world, that those of us in the West have never heard of and that do not translate their reports.arsalan said:
What language are they in?
Clueless. No such double standard exists. Nobody is complaining about anyone's denunciation of Rushdie's novels. You are not clueless because you denounce Rushdie's novels, and your denunciations of his novels are perfectly OK with me. If all any Muslim had done was angrily proclaim that Rushdie's novels were offensive, this subject would have vanished years ago, along with Rushdie's novels probably, into the remainder bins.arsalan said:
There is no such straw, or camel. Again, this kind of response is completely typical of the common responses I encountered by otherwise educated, literate, competent people who happened to be Muslim. And so I learned something about the Muslim religion.arsalan said:
Bullshit.arsalan said:
Not a single one of those books has been banned from my State, local bookstore, public library, or shelf in my living room. No one, let alone a head of state, has put a contreact out on any of those authors, and none have had to go into hiding. You are apparently attempting to compare the exclusion of some books from things like school libraries here and there, with an intrenational contract put out on an author's life and the banishement of all of his books and his person from entire regions of the globe.arsalan said:
If you recall, he was not brought up in any such context. He was brought up in the context of how Westerners form their opinions of Islam.SAM said:
And insisting that there is no problem with Islam there, because the US government is bombing civilians in a Muslim country, is not likely to answer anyone not already persuaded - and, probably, already Muslim.