Salman Rushdie on Faith and the Future
Dec. 14, 2006 — -- The world-renowned author Salman Rushdie is no stranger to controversy.
His 1988 novel, "The Satanic Verses," sparked an international firestorm. The Ayatollah Khomeini called for Rushdie's assassination because of what he felt was the author's scathing critique of Islam. In the wake of Khomeini's death threat, Rushdie became an icon of free speech.
After spending years underground, Rushdie is once again in the public eye. He recently sat down with ABC's Diane Sawyer to talk about everything from Islam to love.
Diane Sawyer: I have to ask because everyone still wonders...do you live in fear?
Salman Rushdie: No, I'm okay, thank you.
Diane Sawyer: No?
Salman Rushdie: I'm okay except that none of us are okay.
Diane Sawyer: What do you mean?
Salman Rushdie: I mean now it's all of us. It used to be just me, now it's everybody.
Diane Sawyer: Do you think ultimately religion is going to end the world?
Salman Rushdie: I hope not. I mean I think...it's a good chance that it might, but obviously one has to be optimistic about these things.
Diane Sawyer: [If you] could say one thing to Americans, about Islam, and about what they must understand about Islam, it would be?
Salman Rushdie: What you have to know about Islamic fanaticism is that the ... people who are most oppressed by it, at first oppressed by it, are other Muslims.
Diane Sawyer: And so the solution --
Salman Rushdie: The solution is to look away from the fanatics to the...rest of the Muslim world, which actually isn't like that at all.
Diane Sawyer: Would you just prescribe a book to everybody? How would you suggest that we go about starting to build the bridge that hasn't been built for hundreds of years?
Salman Rushdie: I do think that what's happening is that people are looking for books that explain the world. It actually is a moment for literature. A moment when storytellers, by making you care about people, can take you into worlds which otherwise you would have no interest in.
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