re the inimitable rushdie references deleted to move this to a new thread in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes in article phkf inn p dsi dsinc com perry dsinc com jim perry writes rushdie is however as i understand a muslim the fact that he s a british citizen does not preclude his being muslim rushdie was an atheist to use local terminology not to put words in his mouth at the time of writing tsv and at the time of the fatwa in february well if he was born muslim i am fairly certain he was then he is muslim until he explicitly renounces islam so far as i know he has never explicitly renounced islam though he may have been in extreme doubt about the existence of god being muslim is a legal as well as intellectual issue according to islam to put it as simply as possible i am not a muslim i do not accept the charge of apostacy because i have never in my adult life affirmed any belief and what one has not affirmed one can not be said to have apostasized from the islam i know states clearly that there can be no coercion in matters of religion the many muslims i respect would be horrified by the idea that they belong to their faith purely by virtue of birth and that a person who freely chose not to be a muslim could therefore be put to death salman rushdie in good faith god satan paradise and hell all vanished one day in my fifteenth year when i quite abruptly lost my faith and afterwards to prove my new found atheism i bought myself a rather tasteless ham sandwich and so partook for the first time of the forbidden flesh of the swine no thunderbolt arrived to strike me down from that day to this i have thought of myself as a wholly seculat person salman rushdie in god we trust i think the rushdie affair has discredited islam more in my eyes than khomeini i know there are fanatics and fringe elements in all religions but even apparently moderate muslims have participated or refused to distance themselves from the witch hunt against rushdie yes i think this is true but there khomenei s motivations are quite irrelevant to the issue the fact of the matter is that rushdie made false statements fiction i know but where is the line between fact and fiction about the life of mohammad only a functional illiterate with absolutely no conception of the nature of the novel could think such a thing i ll accept it reluctantly from mobs in pakistan but not from you what is presented in the fictional dream of a demented character cannot by the wildest stretch of the imagination be considered a reflection on the actual mohammad what s worse the novel doesn t present the mahound mohammed character in any worse light than secular histories of islam in particular there is no lewd misrepresentation of his life or that of his wives that is why few people rush to his defense he s considered an absolute fool for his writings in the satanic verses don t hold back he s considered an apostate and a blasphemer however it s not for his writing in the satanic verses but for what people have accepted as a propagandistic version of what is contained in that book i have yet to find one single muslim who has convinced me that they have read the book some have initially claimed to have done so but none has shown more knowledge of the book than a superficial newsweek story might impart and all have made factual misstatements about events in the book if you wish to understand the reasons behind this as well has the origin of the concept of the satanic verses see the penguin paperback by rafiq zakariyah called mohammad and the quran i ll keep an eye out for it i have a counter proposal i suggest that you see the viking hardcover by salman rushdie called the satanic verses perhaps then you ll understand jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours
