It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.
Interpretation
The quote addresses the conflict between freedom of speech and religious institutions' influence on that right.
Salman Rushdie's quote highlights a critical issue in society where the fundamental right to free expression—protected by many constitutions—is being challenged by religious institutions. This tension raises important questions about the balance between respecting religious beliefs and upholding the freedom to speak one's mind, suggesting that such freedoms may be increasingly threatened in contemporary discourse.
In practice
During a debate about censorship and its impact on democracy.
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.
One's own self or material goods, which has more worth?_x000D_ _x000D_ Loss (of self) or possession (of goods), which is the greater evil?_x000D_ _x000D_ He who loves most, spends most,_x000D_ _x000D_ He who hoards much loses much
Black women's intersectional experiences of racism and sexism have been a central but forgotten dynamic in the unfolding of feminist and antiracist agendas.
Perhaps fate isn't blind after all. Perhaps it's capable of fantasy, even compassion.
We have to stop thinking of criminals as 'them' and admit to ourselves, 'There but for the grace of God go I.'
If the philosophy of Christianity were lived, wars would cease, unhappiness would cease, economic problems would be solved, poverty would be wiped from the face of the earth, and man's inhumanity to man would be transmuted into a spirit of mutual helpfulness.
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
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