Category: World Service
Date: 20.09.2005
Printable version
The novelist Salman Rushdie has given a warning about the danger of the 'silent majority' among British Muslims remaining silent in the wake of the London bombings.
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"If it goes on being silent, then its culture and religion will be hijacked by the extremists and it will be very difficult to go on saying 'That's not us'... you've got to speak up," he told 大象传媒 World Service.
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Asked on The Ticket arts programme by presenter Mark Coles why people did not speak up, he said: "I think they will - maybe it takes something as horrifying as the bombings in London to make people break ranks.
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"But I think there's a lot of evidence that there's a great deal of soul-searching and re-thinking going on."
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He added: "We seem to live in a time when people do seem to define themselves by their anger. People, communities and groups are very quick to be offended.
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"It's as if what offends you defines you. The culture of 'offendedness' in which we live is extremely problematic and very disturbing.
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"The kind of rhetoric coming out of places like radical Islamic groups is not judicious or analytical - it is purely a kind of bilious rage.
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"There's something seductive - especially for young men - to get involved in a world where you can just be angry for a living and your anger is its own justification."
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Rushdie went into hiding in 1989 when the former Iranian religious leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa - or religious edict - ordering his execution for alleged blasphemy in his novel The Satanic Verses.
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His latest novel, Shalimar the Clown, is about a Muslim boy from a village in Kashmir who is guided by a radical mullah to become an Islamic terrorist.
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Asked about his nine years of living under the threat of death, Rushdie said: "Being the target for that kind of deliberate political rage, I came to understand it rather well".
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But was he worried that writing and commenting on Islamic terrorism might again make him a target?
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"We are all targets now," he said. "After 7 July (when suicide bombers killed more than fifty people in London), it doesn't matter who you are or what you've said or not said - that is the nature of the terrorist attack."
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Asked what needs to be done, he replied: "It's clear that a large part of the problem is within the Muslim community and needs to be resolved inside that community."
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The full interview with Salman Rushdie can be heard on The Ticket, broadcast on 大象传媒 World Service on Saturday 24 September at 8.06pm and Sunday 25 September at 9.06am.
