ninme

The Independent - Salman Rushdie: His life, his work and his religion
In the 17 years since Ayatollah Khomeini passed a death sentence on Salman Rushdie, the writer’s unflinching criticism of the religion into which he was born has never been stifled. Now, as the force of Islamist fury reverberates around the world, the acclaimed Anglo-Asian novelist tells Johann Hari why we’re all living under a fatwa now

“If tomorrow the Israel/Palestine issue was resolved to the total happiness of all parties, it would not diminish the amount of terrorism coming out of al-Qa’ida by one jot. It’s not what they’re after,” he adds, his foot tapping against mine as he leans forward. “Yes, it’s a recruiting tool, rhetorically. Many people see there’s an injustice there, and it helps them to get people into the gang, but it’s not what they want. What they want is to change the nature of human life on earth into the image of the Taliban. If you want the whole earth to look like Taliban Afghanistan, then you’re on the same side as them. If you don’t want that, you’re not. They do not represent the quest for human justice. That, I think, is one of the great mistakes of the left.”

Within this Talibanist morality, there is room for great slabs of delusion and hypocrisy. In Shalimar the Clown, Rushdie shows sparingly how the jihadi fighters of Afghanistan have sex with adolescent boys, and the next day chop to pieces men they have dubbed “homosexual”. “One of the great untold stories of al-Qa’ida is that they are all these men who fuck little boys. They all have these disciples who they’re ostensibly training in the way of the warrior, but they’re also enjoying. For a while, then they go off - and they have their wives and families at home. It’s like Classical Greece.” Does he think Osama bin Laden has done it? “I wouldn’t like to say,” he says tactfully. “He’s an Arab, he’s not an Afghan. But Mullah Omar, he’s another story…”

He senses soft racism in the refusal to see Islamic fundamentalists for what they are. When looking at the Christian fundamentalists of the United States, most people see an autonomous movement of superstitious madmen. But when they look at their Islamic equivalents, they assume they cannot mean what they say. “One of the things that’s commonly said by Islamists is that it’s acceptable to bomb a disco, because a disco is a place where people are behaving in a disgusting way. Go away and die - that’s all bin Laden wants you to do. It’s not just about Iraq, it’s about ham sandwiches and kissing in public places and sex with girls you’re not married to.” He pauses. “It’s about life.”

Anyone who hasn’t should go read The Kite Runner. So now a few quibbles:

And he has another blast at Blair: looking to the United States as our anti-Islamist saviour is, he explains, a “terrible mistake. America, like all superpowers, uses only the criterion of self-interest. That’s the way in which a superpower operates, whether it’s the Soviet Union or the United States. The criterion is what serves the interests of the power. When that coincides with what we call liberal democratic values then, yeah, it will be on that side. But superpowers of every stripe have a history of installing puppets which will serve their interests. Whether it’s in Nicaragua, or the Shah of Iran. You can’t look to a superpower as a moral arbiter, because its job is not morality. Its job is the preservation of its sphere of influence.”

Um, either he hasn’t been paying attention in the last few years, or he’s still very much stuck in the 70s and 80s. Of course, since then he’s been mostly in hiding, so maybe there’s something to that.

I ask what he thinks about Christopher Hitchens’ belief that the US has become a Jeffersonian superpower, bent on spreading democracy across the globe. “It’s not true. It’s just not true,” he says.

You know, if you don’t believe it, it won’t happen, and then you’ll end up being right. A bit silly, I’d say.

And he says this:

Rushdie feels sick to be “put into the position of hoping that Pervez Musharraf [the country's dictator] has a long and healthy life just because - what is the old rhyme? Keep a hold of nurse so you don’t get something worse?

and earlier this:

When people ask me how the West should adapt to Muslim sensitivities, I always say - the question is the wrong way round. The West should go on being itself. There is nothing wrong with the things that for hundreds of years have been acceptable

And yet he can’t stand the US for propping up the Shah (wanna talk about getting “something worse”?) and that “British society has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism”, getting rid of said filth being what the Islamists want, thusly adapting to Muslim sensitivities which he says we shouldn’t do?