Rushdie's knighthood was at best undeserved and at worst a stupid mistake. For a start, apart from 'Midnight Children', the man's contribution to literature has been small - love or hate 'The Satanic Verses' it is not a great work of literature! Furthermore it is a work which caused great offense to many Muslims. By giving the knighthood to Rushdie they have provided fuel to the hardliners at the same time as alienating the moderates.

Condell is right to point out that some Muslims and Islamic Organisations - including the Muslim Council of Britain - are always the first to point the finger of blame at the West and scream about Islamophobia, without ever condemning hatred and intolerance in the Islamic world. Condell is also right to distinguish between moderate peaceful Muslims and extremists (a distinction which he later forgets when he attacks all Muslims as irrational idiots). But it is the failure to make this distinction which is instilling a very real and a very dangerous phobia of everything Islamic in the hearts and minds of many people in the West.

It is very easy to poke fun at the idea of Islamophobia when you are not subject to the hostile actions which such a phobia has produced. And let me be clear what I mean by hostile actions. I'm not talking about the verbal abuse and threats of violence which many peaceful Muslims - including myself - have been subject to. Nor am I referring to the aggressive media reports - particularly in America - which seek to tar all Muslims with the same brush. I'm talking about an irrational fear of the whole Islamic world and the Islamic peoples - not just the extremists - which created popular support for America and Britain's aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East and the wider Islamic world - including the blind and unobjective support of Israeli aggression against Palestine and Lebanon. I'm talking about a fear of everything Islamic which has been behind America's continued support for tyrannical secular dictatorships throughout the Islamic world - simply because the main opposition parties in those countries happen to be Islamic. I'm talking about the fear which leads to support for reactionary domestic terrorism legislation which erodes essential civil liberties which we have held dear for centuries.

If Condell was just condeming extremists I would support him. But his simplistic rants against Islam - which, even when they distinguish between extremists and moderates, always end by abusing all Muslims (and religious people in general) as irrational fools who aspire to a creed of hate - just help to engender an irrational fear of everything Islamic. The irrational Islamophobia which Condell himself suffers from and likes to teach others just creates more hatred, more misunderstanding, and more unobjective support for misguided foreign policy.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Richard-Rubenstein-Understanding-Islamophobia

"By giving the knighthood to Rushdie they have provided fuel to the hardliners at the same time as alienating the moderates."

No, By giving him knighthood, they have done WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY WANT TO. Its not their fucking fault people fail to take criticism.

YOU are the intolerant one here, you fail to accept other peoples opinions, You fail if you think that opinions critical of islam are racist, intolerant or offensive , Islam is a mind-virus, a brainwashing indoctrination cult. Your failure to see this despite all your "open studies", is only a testament to the fact. You can see it in scientology's Suppressive Persons/fair game policy , or Jehovas Witnesses excommunication policies, Or Christian burning of heretics , surely if you saw a convert TO islam from these religions undergoing processes like these, you would see it, Islam condones murdering anyone who leaves the cult, Its happening in countries where islam is the order of the day. Once again, you'll conjure up some shit about "real islam" but to me, real Islam is the Islam that is real. The islam that doesnt issue fatwas against people who stone small girls to death, The islam that doesnt indict and punish the countless crimes done in the name of Islam, name of the Prophet, I can only speculate as to why the fuck not, but I think its pretty obvious that when you do stone young women who have been raped, (Or rape them in order to be allowed to stone them) it doesnt exactly contradict the scripture, does it?* Which is why these crimes are given a nice little free pass, while the crime of writing an honest book, or drawing a bearded dead man with a bomb for a hat, sparks fatwas, death threats, riots and condemnations from every layer of the islamic world.

*It may well be that alot of imams etc (including you) do resent these crimes as much as I do, but simply do not show outrage because you know the consequences, When Norwegian born Kadra, for instance, vaguely suggested that some of the views on women in the Quran should be re-interpreted, she was consequently given a good beating by 8 brave muslim men who defended the dead winged-horse-flying victim and his supernatural friend in the skies.

I'm sorry, but your lack of self-perception with regards to islam is frightening and borderlining insanity.

Looks like I'm not the only one who sees you for what you really are, gwaan. You remind me of Scientology's Tommy Davis from this video. Unfortunate that you've got so many here fooled. Don't upvote videos such as this as it might upset the resident Muslim, and we don't want to do that, do we. Might make one look ill-informed , or, egads, an intolerant little bigot. The only intolerant one here is the person who downvotes every video critical of his religion and tries to justify it in some lengthy accompanying dross. Of course, the same person claims to be against censorship, but somehow manages to rationalize every downvote.

You are insane, gwaan. No doubt.

Expired in Queue - 4 day limit.

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Saving this video from queue deletion, sending it to the top of the queue for one more try. Originally submitted on Thursday 21st June 2007 (save called by gold star member Fletch)

Rushdie is a bad, second rate writer. He's just one of those churning book machines like Paulo Chuello, and testifies to the utter degradation and fall of everything good, descent and valuable in the human race. A journalist - he testifies to the fact that today anything goes, people today read things that they are ideologically close to. They also did that before our time but at least there was a space for good things to bloom and flourish. There hasn't been a really good book in print since the 1950s.

lol. could you possibly have discredited yourself more with such transparent buffoonery? Let's have a little rundown of the people who somehow escaped your ever so erudite realization that he's a "bad second rate writer" shall we? Here's a wiki sampling of some of the prestigious literary awards he's won:

Booker Prize for Fiction
James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Fiction)
Arts Council Writers' Award
English-Speaking Union Award
Booker of Bookers or the best novel among the Booker Prize winners for Fiction
Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger
Whitbread Novel Award (twice)
Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Children's Fiction
Kurt Tucholsky Prize (Sweden)
Prix Colette (Switzerland)
State Prize for Literature (Austria)
Author of the Year (British Book Awards)
Author of the Year (Germany)
Mantua Prize (Italy)
Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy)
Hutch Crossword Fiction Prize (India)
India Abroad Lifetime Achievement Award (USA)
Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Cultural Humanism (Harvard University)
Aristeion Prize (European Union)

Nice appeal to authority. For your information there's a surfeit of serious literary criticism casting doubt upon the merit of Rushdie's abilities. As much as I'd like my own soon-to-be-finished novel to be shortlisted for the Booker you have to remember that such hackery as "Vernon God Little" and "The Life of Pi" have won in recent years.

There hasn't been a really good book in print since the 1950s.

Lol, really? Guess its no surprise that Rushdie sucks so much then. I havent read any of his books, but I dont really care how good or bad they are. Rushdie deserves, like every one of us to live in a free world, with free speech.

And Fatwa's , if they ever warrant a distribution, should be reserved for people who murder, rape, degrade, torture and oppress women, children and innocent, all in the name of the Prophet. But alas, they seem to be reserved for cartoonists, writers and people who like stuff like freedom and free speech too much.

Rushdie deserves, like every one of us to live in a free world, with free speech.

Yup, that's it isn't it - as long as any lunatic can say what he wants we call that free speech. And the poor and hungry of all countries are really happy about that, since they can say what they mean and starve to death .



Yes, and I'll try to discredit myself with bufoonery in the future.

Gwaan, I share your concern about the irrational fear of Islam, but you've missed Condell's perspective here. He condemns all religions, and takes jabs at followers of all kinds, extreme or moderate. His general point with respect to religion, is that is was conceived and persists as an instrument of mass control, and that it stifles objectivity. So it is rather pointless to defend your "moderate" views in this context. He distinguishes only between those that accept fairy tales as reality and those who do not.

bluecliff... I think you meant to write Paulo Coelho Yeah... he's crap.

as long as any lunatic can say what he wants we call that free speech

I didnt really get this post, but just to be clear on what I mean, "free speech" doesnt mean any idiot should deserve to speak unchallenged about whatever, Criticizing Rushdies books, picking apart his argument, or calling him an outright fool is as much free speech as anything, what I am talking about is outright death threats, death sentences in the form of fatwas. That, is what is indefencible, it is undemocratic, it is cruel, primitive and an insult to human intelligence to condemn people TO DEATH for writing a book or drawing cartoons or having sex with consenting adults.

People who condone and excuse these things are no better than nazi collaborators, and I am a principle opponent of capital punishment, but they do need a good smack in the face, if nothing else but to wake them up.

No response from that muzzie qwaan...I wonder why?

Me and gwaan have our differences, but I don't think "that muzzie" is called for.