Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the dangers of combining outdated religious beliefs with modern technology, highlighting the threats to freedom and the consequences of extremism.
Salman Rushdie's quote draws attention to the perilous merging of medieval religious ideologies with contemporary weaponry, suggesting that such a combination poses a significant risk to individual freedoms. Rushdie emphasizes the detrimental transformation within Islam due to totalitarian beliefs, exemplified by the violent events witnessed in Paris, underscoring the urgent need to confront these issues in the context of modern society.
In practice
During a discussion on the impacts of religion on modern society, this quote could be used to emphasize the need for reform.
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.
We owe much to the fruitful meditation of our sages, but a sane view of life is, after all, elaborated mainly in the kitchen.
Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God's dust is greater than your idol.
I don't look at myself as a commodity, but I'm sure a lot of people have.
People say that the soul, on hearing the song of creation, entered the body, but in reality the soul itself was the song.
It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have preference above the accurate.
Each moment is defined by a multitude of histories, the past constantly converging upon us, perpetually decaying and reforming itself on the steady pulse of now, now, now, now.
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