The recent protests across the Arab world in response to an anti-Muslim film are yet another product of the “outrage industry,” author Salman Rushdie said in an exclusive interview with Lawrence O’Donnell on Tuesday's The Last Word.
“There are people in Islamic world whose job it is literally to find a flashpoint and use them to launch a larger attack against American values,” Rushdie said.
This latest outrage is not dissimilar to the fatwa that was declared on Rushdie after the publication of The Satanic Verses 23 years ago. Rushdie's new book, the memoir Joseph Anton, documents the decade he spent in hiding after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini declared the fatwa.
Often, people in this so-called “outrage industry” don’t read or view the media they condemn, Rushdie said. In the case of the video that sparked the recent protests, “it got translated into Arabic and sent to these people. It just played into their hands and they used it.”
Regarding the controversy that surrounded The Satanic Verses, “it’s quite clear that the Ayatolla Khomeni didn’t read a 600-page book in English on his deathbed,” before issuing the fatwa, Rushdie said.
Indeed, on Monday's The Last Word, Ayaan Hirsi Ali—author of a recent controversial Newsweek piece—discussed the rage that lead her to burn that same book without having ever read it.
“I understood one thing, and that was anyone who offended or said anything insulting about the Prophet Mohammed should die," she said. "I did that unthinkingly, and I think the huge mobs we’re seeing are doing that unthinkingly, but that does not excuse the individual responsibilities once they leave the company of the crowd.”
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Until and unless someone comes along like a King James and does an editing of the Koran to remove the calls for militarism and jihad against the infidels there will be no peace between the Western World and the fundamentalists in Islam. Realistically we are in for centuries of conflict in this war on Islamic terrorism, and the sooner we realize that, and have foreign policies and defense postures that act accordingly the better off we will all be for it, including the moderate Muslim peoples.
Your words are well taken. The religious wars of the past do have a way of surfacing periodically in the present. But I also think that religious texts will always be subject to the ignorance, hatred and avarice of those who will use the prejudices of people to advance a point of view or a conflict. From the perspective of the latter, I believe that as more people rub against the equality of other people under the law and acquire critical thinking skills, that the Fatwas, jingo politics, and spins to create religious antagonism, etc., will be less and less effective. This phenomenon, will be specially true in the United States.
The internet has brought us the ability to obtain knowledge faster and more efficiently than ever before. The internet industry will spark caution among politicians not to lie to different constituencies in the name of all is free in Love and War. Romney ´s loss to Obama is the beginning of a trend towards the future of political discourse in this country. Our populace is becoming more knowledgeable about their self interest and the people who voice them.
Regimes who have power due to the ignorance, hatred, avarice of the population will slowly become more democratically structured in process as well as purpose. The United States is the leader in that movement. The Tea Party may have great Ideas. But the element of avarice spelled failure for them once they saddled themselves with the Super rich Corporations. Even Romney may have been a good leader if his opportunistic heart did not betray him into attempting to make the super wealthy wealthier at the expense of the Middle Class. The spins of the Plutocrats have become the mantra of The Republican Party. Religious wars are usually more the exploitation of the inflamed ignorant by opportunist who benefit from pseudo-religious fervor.
Valid points, except that bit about the highly overrated internet as a source of knowledge, Beowulf. A good college or univeristy education coupled with life experience in employments and civically responsible living provide so much more of what is important to the success of individuals and the societies that they live in.
All religion poisons everything.