Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Poisoning the well
Iran has stepped up its protest over the knighthood awarded by Britain to Salman Rushdie, whose 1988 novel The Satanic Verses outraged many Muslims. Iran's foreign ministry summoned the UK ambassador in Tehran and said the knighthood was a "provocative act". Pakistan voiced similar protests, telling the UK envoy in Islamabad the honour showed the British government's "utter lack of sensitivity". Britain denied that the award was intended to insult Islam.
When Rushdie's "The Moor's Last Sigh" came out, I was in Mumbai, staying a couple of hundred yards away from Shiv Sena headquarters. Now that book of Rushdie's was in fact banned in Mumbai, and I felt almost instinctive sympathy for its ban for various perhaps rather recondite reasons. For example, I have always had a genuine but tangential interest in undertakers of all sorts and their views, having considered the purchase of a mortuary in North London and for other reasons, and also a deep, genuine abiding interest in religion of all sorts - as well as in the lack of it.. The conclusion that many people had was that the ban in Mumbai may have had political motives. In actual fact I read the book, and could not make out the motives in that way. Still less could I see much merit in taking the trouble to read it in the first place.
To keep the matter short, many people feel that there are no obvious religious motives for banning Rushdie's work. It is probably banal, but at the same time banausic, to say Rushdie's work is total crap, and his motives, particularly with respect to his later work, are self-promotion. Of course you can say the same about Charles Dickens, so the arguments in that sphere are endless.
The big problem in banning such work is that to do so can in itself be the "poisoning of the well" of Islam or, possibly to a much gentler extent, Hinduism.
That is in the trivialisation of religious matters by such measures, and, as just one example, causing the devout to stray from the paths of righteousness by antisocial behaviour. In short, give the complainants an ASBO or plenty of ASBOs if they otherwise deserve them. I think the point is that Rushdie largely sneers at the subcontinent which as a novelist is certainly his right though not necessarily his prerogative. That is all a pity, and whilst doing so he also sneers at organised religion which is perhaps also rather a shame - little more.
[ANGER over a knighthood for author Salman Rushdie has escalated into a full-blown diplomatic row, with effigies of the Queen burnt in Pakistan and Iran calling her an "old crone". IMO: A ridiculous POV, and an apparent affront to Islam as I imply above]
When Rushdie's "The Moor's Last Sigh" came out, I was in Mumbai, staying a couple of hundred yards away from Shiv Sena headquarters. Now that book of Rushdie's was in fact banned in Mumbai, and I felt almost instinctive sympathy for its ban for various perhaps rather recondite reasons. For example, I have always had a genuine but tangential interest in undertakers of all sorts and their views, having considered the purchase of a mortuary in North London and for other reasons, and also a deep, genuine abiding interest in religion of all sorts - as well as in the lack of it.. The conclusion that many people had was that the ban in Mumbai may have had political motives. In actual fact I read the book, and could not make out the motives in that way. Still less could I see much merit in taking the trouble to read it in the first place.
To keep the matter short, many people feel that there are no obvious religious motives for banning Rushdie's work. It is probably banal, but at the same time banausic, to say Rushdie's work is total crap, and his motives, particularly with respect to his later work, are self-promotion. Of course you can say the same about Charles Dickens, so the arguments in that sphere are endless.
The big problem in banning such work is that to do so can in itself be the "poisoning of the well" of Islam or, possibly to a much gentler extent, Hinduism.
That is in the trivialisation of religious matters by such measures, and, as just one example, causing the devout to stray from the paths of righteousness by antisocial behaviour. In short, give the complainants an ASBO or plenty of ASBOs if they otherwise deserve them. I think the point is that Rushdie largely sneers at the subcontinent which as a novelist is certainly his right though not necessarily his prerogative. That is all a pity, and whilst doing so he also sneers at organised religion which is perhaps also rather a shame - little more.
[ANGER over a knighthood for author Salman Rushdie has escalated into a full-blown diplomatic row, with effigies of the Queen burnt in Pakistan and Iran calling her an "old crone". IMO: A ridiculous POV, and an apparent affront to Islam as I imply above]
# posted by uv : 10:30 PM
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