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Salman Rushdie Claims "This War Is About Islam"
LONDON, Nov. 3 (IslamOnline
& News Agencies) - Novelist Salman Rushdie provoked new controversy Friday by claiming that the war in Afghanistan was "about Islam" and that world leaders are wrong to insist that terrorism, and the fight against it, were not about Islam.
The British daily, The Independent, reported that Rushdie, who was once the subject of a
Iranian-issued
fatwa (legal ruling) after publication of his controversial novel The Satanic
Verses, claimed that Islam was being hijacked by "radical political movements".
Writing in The New York Times, Rushdie said "paranoid Islam," which blamed "infidels" for all the ills of Muslim societies, was the fastest-growing form of the religion and needed to be challenged.
Rushdie said Western leaders had cited "the mantra" that "this war isn't about Islam."
"The trouble with this necessary disclaimer is that it isn't true," wrote the author.
"If this isn't about Islam," added Rushdie, "why the worldwide Muslim demonstrations in support of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda? Why are the war's first British casualties three Muslim men who died fighting on the Taliban side? If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern [world] is based, and without which Muslim countries' freedom will remain a distant dream."
The Independent reported that Rushdie's claims were rejected by prominent British Muslims.
Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain told the paper there was already a "tremendous internal debate" within the Muslim world to reconcile Islam with modern life.
"Rushdie has lost his own faith and seems to be enraged that millions of Muslims are rediscovering theirs," said Bunglawala, quoted by the
Independent.
Also speaking to the paper, Iftakhar Khan of the Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism said: "Prior to
Satanic Verses, no one, apart from the chattering classes, had even heard of Salman Rushdie. He is a publicity-seeking, shallow person without any morals."
The Indian novelist spent years under the threat of death following a fatwa issued by the late Iranian leader, the Ayatollah Khomeni. The Ayatollah's 1989 religious decree declared Muslims had a duty to kill Rushdie for allegedly blaspheming Islam in
The Satanic Verses.
Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the 1988 Nobel prize in Literature, criticized Khomeini for "intellectual terrorism," but later changed his view. The renowned Egyptian novelist said that Rushdie did not have "the right to insult anything, especially a prophet or anything considered holy."
Rushdie was born in Bombay, India, to a middle-class Muslim family. His paternal grandfather was an Urdu poet, and his father a Cambridge-educated businessman. At 14, Rushdie was sent to a Rugby school in United Kingdom. He currently resides in Britain.
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