This paranoid Islam, which blames outsider, 'infidels', for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world.
Interpretation
The quote discusses a version of Islam that blames external forces for its problems and seeks isolation from modernity.
Salman Rushdie highlights the worrying trend of a paranoid interpretation of Islam that positions outsiders as the scapegoats for the issues faced by Muslim societies. This perspective promotes a retreat from engagement with modernity, which is seen as a threat rather than an opportunity for growth and progress. Rushdie argues that this mindset is spreading rapidly, indicating a need for critical dialogue and openness to change within these communities.
In practice
In a discussion about cultural challenges in modern society, this quote can illustrate the importance of openness to external influences.
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.
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?
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.
Plenty of people did not care for him much, but then there is a huge difference between disliking somebody - maybe even disliking them a lot - and actually shooting them, strangling them, dragging them through the fields and setting their house on fire.
Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.
It is seldom, that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom, that it must steal upon them by degrees, and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be received.
A man's liberties are none the less aggressed upon because those who coerce him do so in the belief that he will be benefited.
Perhaps the enemies of liberty are such only because they judge it by its loud voice.
I always say that people should not rush to change religions. There is real value in finding the spiritual resources you need in your home religion.
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