Nov 26 2008
24 Books and Controversy
Today in the news:
Writers Rushdie, Saviano discuss death threats at panel discussion in Sweden
Security high for visit of Rushdie and Saviano
All these years since The Satanic Verses controversy and the death sentence by Iranian Mullah’s I am wondering how it came exactly like Rushdie had planned. He wanted controversy and he knew that conservative Muslims would be infuriated. The news would go around the globe like a forest fire and he would be famous.
Why are Muslims so easy to trick to do exactly what is the aim of these provocateurs?
The same phenomenon was with the infamous Danish Islam caricatures. They were publishes i.e. in Egypt half a year earlier and nobody bothered to protest. Only after it came international news, when radical Muslims started burning Danish flags and puppets. Governments were forced to give statements that they are powerless, because there is a law for freedom of speech. Again and again provocateurs are trying the same trick. These days, so I read, in Holland is a new cartoon movie in the making about Islam.
Fortunately Muslims are awakening and do not react as they wish anymore. There is a sura in the Quran that advice believers to answer to provocateurs with words of peace:
Quran [25.63] “And the servants of the Beneficent God are they who walk on the earth in humbleness, and when the ignorant address them, they say: Peace.”
I am not a literature critic but at the beginning of this all I read several critics which suggested that Salman Rushdie is a mediocre writer at best. Now there are even rumors, that the Swedes would give him a Nobel literature prize soon.
