File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1996/96-02-20.131, message 163


Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1996 21:48:42 -0500 (CDT)
From: mfk4301-AT-utarlg.uta.edu
Subject: Re: Rushdie


As Rushdie is back in the news, it is again fashionable to sing his 
praises and condemn those 'fundamentalist Iranians'....both of these 
stances are taken as absolute..there is no middle ground....what is sad 
about this sorry 'debate' is conducted under that auspices of 
literature...people seem to talk in absoulte terms about 'Fundamentalists' 
(ie.'others').... There is no middle ground, thers is no room for the 
often ignored but nevertheless crucial third perspective on things....

Just because I disagree or criticize Rushdie, it is immediately and, I 
must point out, rather naively interpreted by a number of people (who 
sent replies to my first posting) as me being an 'intolerant' person, as 
someone 'who had decided to hat Rushdie before even reading him' and many 
other such interpretations.... Has the pressure to jump the bandwagon 
become so intense that people are unwilling even to consider that there 
MIGHT be other interpretation apart from their own.  Just because 
others may have a different interpretation from those of 'us' who are 
blessed with the ability to read naked abuse about other people's basic 
principles of morality as nothing more than the elusive magical realism 
or all encompassing postmodernism. And since 'those people' are not 
enlightened enough to see things Rushdie's way, they are wrong, for how 
dare they attack someone for defiling thier way of life.... for 
besmirching thier beliefs.... (whereas in 'our' ..aka 'American way of 
life'..it is Ok to wage wars and kill thousands of people..)....

So, in my humble and 'third-worldist' point of view, before we jump up 
and stand in line to kiss Rushdie's hand, we should, maybe for a second 
pause and think that if this man, brilliant writer that he might be, has 
offended millions of people in all corners of the world, myabe maybe, 
there is something we are overlooking in his message which may actually 
be demeaning and isulting to a large and otherwise silent 
majority...think about it......

Be Welll
Furrukh 


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