Satanic Verses Versus Bush Administration (moved from ATSNN), page 1

Subject of one of the most famous fatwahs of all time, Salman Rushdie, has come out of perceived reclusiveness for a time to speak about how the Bush adminstration's performance has actually facilitated the goals of terrorists. The message is not anti-American, but it is for Americans. He expresses that at this particular moment in the history of the world ordinary American people should get as broad a sense of how the world is thinking as they can. He was speaking in preparation for the PEN World Voices festival, from April 16-22, which brings more than 100 international authors to New York.

story.news.yahoo.com
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Bush administration helps the cause of Islamic terrorism by failing to engage in serious dialogue with the international community, author Salman Rushdie said on Tuesday.

Rushdie -- who lived for years under threat of death after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1989 pronouncement that his novel "The Satanic Verses" was blasphemous -- said he believes U.S. isolationism has turned not just its enemies against America, but its allies too.

"What I think plays into Islamic terrorism is ... the curious ability of the current administration to unite people against it," Rushdie told Reuters in an interview. Rushdie said he found it striking how the "colossal sympathy" the world felt for the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been squandered so quickly.

"It seems really remarkable that the moment you leave America ... you find not just America's natural enemies, but America's natural allies talking in language more critical than I, in my life, have ever heard about the United States," he said....

"There seems to have been a breach in our ability to listen to each other," he said.

... The event is the first international gathering organized by PEN since 1986, when Norman Mailer headed the group.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

Should the opinion of Salman Rushdie, controversial writer and organiser of the first PEN Festival in 19 years, matter to anyone? Has it all been heard before?

Maybe the Bush administration correct in heading on its unilateral 'go-it-alone', "you're either with us or against us" course, but that could only be measured in outcomes, and as Rushdie says the outcomes have not been in the direction of dialogue about peace, only anti-US foreign policy sentiments.

* Thanks for the grammatical hints, now fixed.

*

[edit on 13-4-2005 by MaskedAvatar]

[edit on 13-4-2005 by MaskedAvatar]