From: Bernt Budde <bug@arachne.udac.uu.se>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Prof. Mazrui's public lecture on Islam and Rushdie, paraphrased
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 19:56:19 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: UDAC, Uppsala, Sweden

To sum up my opinions, first before wading into all this, it seems
that the Muslim world is a bit sensitive and don't take humor and
satire particularly well.

OK, why not a more suiting form of revenge? Let the Islamic world
sponsor ten indecent books about Rushdie that figures him as a
tool of Satan? And ten well researched books about the Christian
religious dirt? The last ones have to be quite thick, I guess.

As originator of this solution, I only ask for copies of the ten
books about the Ch. religions as payment.

And we all lived happily ever after!

RBNXHS@rohvm1.bitnet writes:

>In this part of Muslim response (#2), I shall paraphrase what
>Prof. Mazrui (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) said in the
>Public Lecture, given at the Cornell University on March 1, 1989,
>in NO particular order (his actual speech is about 18 pages long):

>In Islam there is no sharp demarcation between the church and the
>state. The concept of treason is often indistinguishable from
>apostasy. The supreme penalty of treason to the Ummah, or the
>religious community, was often death.

We had something like that in the western world a few hundred years
ago. The Islamic world will pull the claws out of their own religion
too, sometime.
 
>A real equivalent of comparative blasphemy would be in portraying
>the Virgin Mary as a prostitute, and Jesus as the son of one of her
>sexual clients (na' wudhu' billah). Also comparable would be any
>novel based on the thesis that the 12 disciples were Jesus's
>homosexual lovers, and the Last Supper was their last sexual orgy
>together.

There has been worse. Have you heard about the music genre 'Heavy
Metal'? .) The (allowed) Church of Satan in (of course) California?
Nothing special.

It would be very interesting to speculate which one of
>the leading western, *civilized* writers would march in procession
>in defense of the rights of such a novelist.

Most probably would. At least if it was a well written book (or fun!)
as I hear 'The SV' is (have to read it someday.)


> .. lots of text about how important the Qur'an is to Muslims ..

Lots of Christian groups regard the "Good Book" as the one true
and final word about life, the universe and everything. (the
starters of the cults never having read 'THHGTTG' :-))

They do complain about some of my favorite music! But nothing more.

>... The blasphemy lies
>more in Rushdie's suggestion that it is the work of Devil. Indeed,
>Rushdie gives the Prophet a name which Rushdie himself describes
>as the "Devil's synonym".

I laughed out loud here (again)! My favorite curse comes from the
Swedish west (atlantic) coust: 'Gud i helvete!'. Literally: "God
in Hell!" (The fun thing I like is that there is an euphemism that
goes 'God in London!')

I guess the Christians in all the world should nuke Gothemburg? .)
(Would be a shame! It's an even nicer town than London!)

>If Hitler hurt the Jews, and Rushdie hurt the Muslims, did both
>dislike the 'Blacks' as well?

I stopped laughing. Really. Do he really compare killing half a
dozen million people to writing a satirical book? This is truly
disgusting. Only shows that how cynic and blase' you ever become,
humans can still disgust you.

> ... Descriptions of what a racist pig Rushdie is ...

Might even be true, who cares?

If having and voicing racist opinions would merit the death penalty,
you probably wouldn't have much people left on Earth. But I doubt
an intellectual with such a broad cultural background like Rushdie
would despice people for anything less than personal reasons. And,
of course, if they held despicable opinions. I'm starting to feel
sympathy for him IF he out of hand condemns certain Muslim subcults.
(The Sufi mysticists, on the other hand, seems quite interesting.
But that is my own uninformed opinion, totally unrelated to this.)

>Motives of writer Rushdie hardly interest Western political
>speculators. On the other hand, Muslims are more mystified by the
>author's motives than by the motives of the demonstrators in the
>streets.

I'm not particularly hot on the local religions around where I
live. He probably doesn't really like the one he grew up in. So
what? You have to be able to write (even humorously) about any
subject. How can you othervise look at the world from all sides
and decide what you think?

>Prof. Ali Mazrui ended his talk by asking the Muslims to forget and
>forgive the author as a fellow human being and to appeal to Imam
>Khomeini to lift the 'fatwa' of death sentence (in absentia) on
>Rushdie.

Amen.


Bernt Budde                            |Religion, n: A daughter of
bug@arachne.udac.uu.se                 |Hope and Fear, explaining to
UDAC (Uppsala Univ. Computing Centre)  |Ignorance the Nature of the
                                       |Unknowable.
Don't for a moment believe UDAC,       |
while being a nice place, have         |-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's
opinions like me!!                     |                 Dictionary