re the inimitable rushdie i apologize for the long delay in getting a response to this posted i ve been working reduced hours the past couple of weeks because i had a son born the day after umar s article was posted btw i did respond within a couple of days but it turns out that a a coincidental news software rearrangement caused postings from this site to silently disappear rather than going out into the world this is a revision of that original response in article c q ct ra nrl navy mil khan itd itd nrl navy mil umar khan writes in article ps finnm u dsi dsinc com perry dsinc com jim perry writes only a functional illiterate with absolutely no conception of the nature of the novel could think such a thing this was in response to the claim that rushdie made false statements about the life of mohammed with the disclaimer fiction i know but where is the line between fact and fiction i stand by this distinction between fiction and false statements 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 you keep saying things like this then you accuse people like me of making ad hominem arguments i repeat as i have said in previous postings on aa i have read tsv from cover to cover i had not seen that claim or i might have been less sweeping you have made what i consider factual misstatements about events in the book which i have raised in the past in the islam a clearer view thread as well as the root of the yet more rushdie re islamic law thread my statement was not that you had not read the book but that you had not convinced me that you inter alia had as i said before if you want to defend your position then produce evidence and respond to the evidence i have posted so far you have not of course my statement was not directly aimed at you but broadly at a number of muslim posters who have repeated propaganda about the book indicating that they haven t read it and narrowly at gregg jaeger who subsequently admitted that he hadn t in fact read the book vindicating my skepticism in at least that one case so far the only things i have to go on regarding your own case are a the statements you made concerning the book in the a clearer view posting which i have challenged not interpretation but statements of fact for instance rushdie depicts the women of the most respected family in all of islam as whores and b your claim which i had not seen before this that you have indeed read it cover to cover i am willing to try to resolve this down to a disagreement on critical interpretation but you ll have to support your end by responding to my criticism i have no doubt as to the ability of a particular muslim to go through this book with a highlighter finding passages to take personal offense at but you have upheld the view that tsv is intended as an attack on islam and upon muslims this view must be defended by more than mere assertion if you want anyone to take it seriously i am trying very hard to be amicable and rational and i appreciate it but welcome to the club i am defending my honest opinion that this book should not be construed as a calculated or otherwise insulting attack on islam and the parallel opinion that most of the criticism of the book i have seen is baseless propaganda i have supported my statements and critical interpretationa with in context quotes from the book and rushdie s essays which is more than my correspondents have done of course you are more than welcome to do so jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours
