Salman = Satan? BAH!
Last week I attended a rally condemning the knighthood of Sir Salman Rushdie, organized by the Muttahida Majlis e Amal, a coalition of religious political parties in Pakistan.
The rally, held after the Friday prayers, took place in Guru Mandir, the heart of Karachi, next to the Binori Seminary. Flags with the kalma imprinted were all one could see. Not a single woman, however, was present at the rally. Many a fiery speech was given, as the religious leaders called for the extradition of Rushdie to Pakistan, condemned world leaders, termed the knighthood of Rushdie as a Western conspiracy and even asked for his head, or at the very least, his blood.
At the rally, I met with a bunch of anti-Rushdie supporters. All of them called for Rushdie’s death. However, none of them had ever read the book “The Satanic Verses”. They said that since their clerics had read them, they were going to believe in the religious leaders, and did not feel the need to read the book for themselves. When I asked them how a religion that preaches peace could at the same time allow for fatwas that called for a person’s death, they said that anyone who gave their life in the name of religion would go to heaven.
I itched to tell them that heaven is a fairytale world, which really doesn’t exist in my book.
While all of the above is perhaps not frightening, considering an average Pakistani has seen and dealt with far worse, what really had my stomach churning was when I met this 21 year old boy, who was a student at the Binori Seminary. He said, and I quote, that if he met Rushdie, he would like to kill him as a suicide bomber.
Why a 21 year old would want to become a suicide bomber and kill a man he has never met and has never read the works of, is a question I would like to ask the Pakistani establishment, as they are responsible for the Islamization of this country. They solely, have encouraged young children to become terrorists, and have put a stop to free thinking in this country. The state and religion have become so deeply entwined its unbelievable.
All this in a country that was founded by a man who wanted Pakistan to be a secular nation.
I read The Satanic Verses when I was 15. While I was still a believer at the time [am now an atheist], at no point did the book shake my faith. Instead, it left me in a sense of awe at Rushdie’s writing skills, the man has a way with words that very few authors in today’s world have. Should I too be dragged to the gallows for not being a believer and for having dared to read a book that is REALLY a work of FICTION?
For the love of all things that one considers holy, please stop this vendetta of hatred. And for once, close your eyes and do a Lennon: imagine there’s no religion.
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Excellent timing Huma, did anyone else see the Al Jazeera debates last night about Salman where two Muslim researchers discussed whether or not the Muslim world should react as violently? And whether Salman’s Satanic Verses was actually worthy of such a fiasco? One of the guys was incredibly hateful towards all things Western, while the other (the more enlightened one) stated that Muslims are the ones harming their own religion by preaching the type of violence that Islam in its purest and most original form doesn’t actually approve of.
And Huma you hit the nail on the head when you imply that none of these protestors actually read the book. This is so true and only proves the unworthiness of these protests. The people involved are nothing but embarrassingly uninformed.
I remember during the London protests against the pope, a Muslim blogger posted about the absurdity of the protestors, where he asked one “what exactly do you have against the pope?” and the guy said the pope attempted to re-write the Koran to make it pro-Zionism. Another thought the pope was a political leader of the UK. Can you see the level of ignorance that almost always accompanies these type of protests? It’s a shame that they are the ones representing us in the media!
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Christopher Hitchens, the left-wing intellectual who coined the term Islamofascism, comments on the anti-Rushdie rallies, and in the process coins a new term: Rage Boy.
http://www.slate.com/id/2169020/
The term is quite apt in describing a phenomenon in the Muslim world we’ve all become too familiar with.
I thought Islamofascism was coined by Oriana Fallaci?
“they were going to believe in the religious leaders, and did not feel the need to read the book for themselves.”
In America we would call those mobs “sheeple” for a combination of sheep and people: human, but incapable of thinking for themselves and dumb enough to follow anyone who will lead them.
Smart people who hate — KKK leaders, for example — wouldn’t be nearly as dangerous if they didn’t have mobs of violent sheeple to use as weapons.
“I thought Islamofascism was coined by Oriana Fallaci?”
Hmm. You may be right. I remember reading somewhere that Hitchens came up with it, but that attribution might have been wrong. Fallaci certainly made use of it more prevalently.
These people need jobs.