Rushdie on Violent Reaction to Free Expression

Who else could nail it like this? From an interview in Salon:

I would say that there’s two things. One is that we need to have the courage of our convictions. That we need to understand that we are privileged to live in one of the relatively few countries in the world where we get to say what we think. Yes, that means that some of those utterances will be unlikable, even objectionable, even insulting, because not everybody thinks well, not everybody’s a nice person. But if you’re going to have the good fortune of living in this kind of society, then you have to cherish it and defend it, that’s just full stop.

We have to not negotiate that. Because it’s too valuable. There are too few places in the world that let you do this. And most of the citizens of the earth do not have these privileges. Increasingly, India doesn’t allow you these privileges. There’s more and more restrictions on free speech in India. China? If you put India and China together that’s two-sevenths of the human race. Add up most of of Africa; try having free speech in Zimbabwe with Mugabe watching you. In most of the world, people do not have this privilege and desperately want it. And we have it, so we need to defend it. That’s one thing. No compromise, no negotiation. This is what we have and we’re not giving it up.
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The other side, I think, is to recognize the extent to which there is now a deliberate attempt in the Muslim world — for reasons of power, not religion — to manufacture outrage, in order to put mobs on the street, to create an atmosphere of violence and to show yourself a person of great consequence by doing so. You’ve got in Egypt now a Muslim Brotherhood president trying to bid up against the extremists to try and retain the ability to be the person who decides where the country goes.

So on the one hand, we have to hold our ground, and on the other hand it has to be exposed for what it is, the outrage in the street. That it’s not about religion, it’s about power. We need to expose the ruthlessness and the unscrupulousness of these leaders who are doing this for completely corrupt and venal reasons. Exploiting religion in order to create a political atmosphere that they think will benefit them. It’s an old fight, but it’s a fight we need to have.

Salon.Com

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