In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Interpretation
The quote criticizes religion as a source of conflict and calls for an honest examination of its impact on society.
Salman Rushdie's quote reflects a strong condemnation of the role of religion in perpetuating violence and injustice in the world. He argues that while society often discusses religion with a veneer of 'respect,' this narrative fails to address the real harm and crimes committed in its name. Rather than allowing religion to be a protective cloak for wrongdoing, Rushdie urges a more candid conversation about its influence, suggesting that innocence cannot shield individuals from accountability in the face of religiously motivated acts of violence.
In practice
In a debate about the role of religion in global conflicts, one might use this quote to challenge the status quo.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
Good advice is rarer than rubies.
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?
Where every something, being blent together turns to a wild of nothing.
All manifest life seems to require a period of sleep, of calm, in which to gain added strength, renewed vigour, for the next manifestation, or awakening to activity. Thus is the march of all progress, of all manifest life - in waves, successive waves, [of] activity and repose. Waves succeed each other in an endless chain of progression.
Victory and defeat are each of the same price.
Insanity is in the eyes of the beholder. So I will continue to live my personal folly.
Opponents of civil liberties contend the NSA data collection has made our country more safe, but even the most vocal defenders of the program have failed to identify a single thwarted plot.
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